Sacrilege!

Congrats. This is the first genuinely funny response I have read to this whole affair.

I don’t get it.

I think Dsquared has outdone himself on this one.

Step one: Hypocritically look down on those who have a go at others for the sake of it.
Step two: Brazenly imitate this behavior.

It’s times like these that I realize that I can never really measure up in the area of being a pretentious, sarcastic wise-ass. It’s almost enough to make me give it all up, but I’m not sure my friends and family could bear the loss.

I just had a big argument at work about asymmetric arguments, with someone who tried to make the case that “rationality” as a superior cognitive process to ‘religion’ should be separated from the most prominent activists of that line of discourse who are clearly trying to demarcate boundaries between a segment of the West and Muslims and the Christian right. The person feared for the danger that those public intellectuals are putting themselves into rather than the millions of Muslims who are seeing their liberties curtailed, or have their outreach programmes labelled as BNP rallies.

“The secular humanists’ Achilles Heel … [is] their wildly disproportionate hatred of religious education.” What would you offer in the way of evidence that secular humanists, generally speaking, have such a disproportionate hatred?

If you are basing this on the sayings of a strident few, you should say so.

If you are speaking generally, I think there are millions of secular humanists that don’t much care one way or the other. Tarring them all seems wrong to me.

Like many sensible people, you obviously find people who share your sensibilities but express them in a slightly differently manner than you might to be vastly more annoying than people whose outlook you actually find abhorrent.

An exposition of why this is so would make for an interesting read.

And further, I think Daniel is demonstrating how to do performance art badly.

As in “Those people think crackers are sacred. You think rational thought is sacred. So you *both* think something is sacred. You’re annoying the believer in the sacred cracker by throwing it out. Some I’m going to annoy you by trying to make a child think irrationally. GOTCHA, HOW DOES IT FEEL HA HA!”

It’s actually a very stupid analogy, and it’s playing to the crowds with no value underneath (sigh, assuming some basic ideas of value, I know, I know!).

I suspect if people could get past their dislike of militant atheism they’d perceive that crackers and education are not a good equivalence.

The fact that you can generate such a reaction merely by claiming you plan to do something–which is, in the final analysis, totally harmless–says a lot about the New Atheism. As they say on the less reputable parts of the Internet, 10/10.

The very fact that you refer to the nailing a page of Dawkins’ book as “joke-desecration” is interesting. It’s clear that the only point of PZ doing so is to show how little a concept like “desecration” means to him, no? It’s symmetric in action and wildly asymmetric in response. That’s the point.

But speaking of asymmetry, perhaps you do need to think more about the differences between children and food.

The fact that you can generate such a reaction merely by claiming you plan to do something—which is, in the final analysis, totally harmless—says a lot about the New Atheism.

Yeah, that we like to think about whether or not things should be “sacred”, whether telling children lies is proportional to stabbing bread, etc. I mean, beyond the comment calling Daniel “mean”, I don’t anybody’s too up-in-arms over the action itself, yelling “Think of the children!”, etc. It’s harmless, duh. But it’s still worth thinking about.

Speak for yourself, weserei. I wasn’t wound up at all by Daniel’s post- I thought it was good clean fun.

It’s pretty funny, though, that “you can generate such a reaction merely by claiming you plan to do something—which is, in the final analysis, totally harmless”, while being way over the top as a description of this comment thread, exactly describes the anti-PZ venom issuing from Donohue and his scurvy crew.

Correction: a rainbow is a reminder God made for himself not to destroy humanity again. Because as omnipotent and omniscient as God is, he still has a hard time remembering not to destroy humanity…

…which in all honesty is quite understandable.

Nice, but slightly lame and amateurish. Hardworking professionals like Howard Stern have been doing these things 5 times a week 50 weeks a year for decades.

This is about 50% very funny, and 50% really fucked up. Funny because, well, it just is. Fucked up because, well, lying to a child is much worse than religious desecration.

(What’s “wildly disproportionate” about hating religious education, anyway? Religious education is a very bad thing — it takes people at their most vulnerable and fills their heads with destructive lies. All propaganda is bad, but especially propaganda directed at children.)

I am presuming that all the “o noes! You lie! To a child!” Posse are childless themselves. How on earth does one get through a typical day without lying to a child.

PS: just for that, I’m going to tell my own kids that Santa Claus exists for one year longer than I’d planned.

Good luck with that if they’re smart. Mine started asking very inconvenient questions around age 5 and I couldn’t come up with clever enough answers to satisfy her, so that was it for old Santa. Probably what will happen is that your kids will pretend to believe in Santa for that extra year so as not to hurt your feelings.

Hey, you stole my post title, and my somewhat-middle-of-the-road point of view on this affair (yes, I’m linkwhoring). My reaction: I’m irked by the pretense of PZ that it’s about “a fricking cracker”. Obviously, the cracker is a symbol of some very deep feelings. The question is what respect is owed to people’s deep feelings. Answers about this can vary, of course, but it’s kind of stupid and dishonest to focus on the symbol rather than what is being symbolized.

I love how sophistocated atheists imagine themselves when they distinguish religious thought/praxis from “reason. ” As though there is a thing called Reason out there untainted by all sorts of personal and cultural assumptions which can be scientifically proved. If that’s so, spend a few minutes looking under a microscope or into a telescope for proof that it’s wrong to lie to children about the meaning of rainbows. Or that democracy is better than, say, theocracy (or autocracy or whatever). Maybe you’ll succeed where all the brilliant thinkers before you have failed. But I don’t have much faith that you will, as it were (if you’ll permit my use of the F word).

I think you guys need to (a) lighten up and (b) read a little philosophy. Maybe start with MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Or even better, maybe spend some time meditating on why you have such disdain for religious belief but not for other, equally unprovable influences on society like political ideology, scienticism (i.e., the irrational belief that science will answer all problems and make everyone happy), consumerism, et al.

“How on earth does one get through a typical day without lying to a child[?]”

My sentiments exactly, and probably one of the reasons I wasn’t particularly horrified by dsquared’s suggestion.

Paul Gowder wrote: “Religious education is a very bad thing—it takes people at their most vulnerable and fills their heads with destructive lies.”

This of course is the Dawkins take on religious education. I think that American religious education is generally so anodyne, that most people familiar with it are a little bit astonished at this sort of vehemence. For an only slightly atypical example, my Baha’i wife subjects our daughter to something called “virtues education.” For the most part, since it consists largely of moral exhortation, nothing remotely approaching a lie is involved. As for matters of Baha’i doctrine: well, Baha’is actually believe that stuff, so they’re certainly not lying when they impart it. (This is, by the way, a point that’s often lost on P.Z. Myers, who plays very fast and loose with the words “lie” and “liar” in his denunciations of the pious.)

But, you will say, Sunday School is different! Not a whole lot, really, in the mainline denominations. Mostly it’s moral uplift, with some very basic church dogmatics thrown in (“Jesus loves me,” that sort of thing.) For these reasons, I believe that most Americans just can’t get what Dawkins is so upset about.

But, you will say, Sunday School is different! Not a whole lot, really, in the mainline denominations.

You can’t generalize this. I went to an Anglican one and the actual services the adults went to were bland and unremarkable while us kids got the full measure of horror stories.

Gowdah, come on. This is a pretty trivial lie to tell a child. People lie to kids all the time, anyway, about secular matters. I say go team Davies here.

The point is not religion but “faith” and we all operate on faith most of the time and it’s up to others to catch us on it (when it causes a problem). For that reason we don’t run our societies on “reason” which will always slide into assumption, but on the interpretation and reinterpretation of written laws. My response posted on on Myers’ page was a link to this: FACING UP: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries, by Steven Weinberg.

Look at chapter 14. If Steven Weinberg, nobel prize winning physicist and arch secularist can’t be relied upon to tell logic from ideology, then no one can. And as I’ve said before, if you examine the arguments of Colin McGinn, another arch moralizing atheist, you’ll see that his a prioris are basically Catholic. He claims to be an atheist but he isn’t.

I think it would be interesting to have a society built on, as a founding document, the complete works of Shakespeare, so that public arguments over the direction of the laws, of freedom and obligation would be built around the divisions of the Comedies the tragedies and the Histories; call it divided government. The Sonnets might be a problem though.
In a world of reason, justice would be ad hoc.
Everyone lies to themselves, all the time. A Ph.D won’t cure you of your assumptions. Usually it just magnifies them.

Sorry, I was of by 1: It’s Chapter 15.

It isn’t lying to a child. Myths are not lies.

They are on Fox News.

“How on earth does one get through a typical day without lying to a child[?]”

I know what you mean! Also, a day without tasting their sweet, salty tears is like a mornin’ without coffee. Looks like it’s time for another family pilgrimage to Santa’s Tomb.

“One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said. “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.” (Jack Handey)

“The fact that you can generate such a reaction merely by claiming you plan to do something—which is, in the final analysis, totally harmless—says a lot about the New Atheism.”

Oh dear.

there seemed to be a predominance of the nerdy, socially inept and the neuro-atypical

Really? That’s shocking, and so completely unlike the comments section on this blog.

How on earth does one get through a typical day without lying to a child?

Anthropomorphize your ass off.
.

Offending religion is rather lame, the hate letters quoted are insipid. There are plenty of more interesting sacrosanct concepts out there to desecrate.

PZM writes well about biology — he does interesting research and you can learn stuff. But he knows bupkis about religion, and his tiresome, troll-baiting rants on the subject are unproductive of insight not to say corrosive of discussion.

How do you share community with people whose ritual lives and understandings of the world differ in important ways from yours? I don’t think the most obvious answer is taunting them and interrupting their rituals.

“How do you share community with people whose ritual lives and understandings of the world differ in important ways from yours? ”

Myers doesn’t think he has a “ritual life.”

He’s lying of course.

ritual anthropophagy/theophagy thing is pretty interesting, or at least, strange

Really? I thought the idea of circulation, food/wine produced by the soil fertilized by the bodies of one’s ancestors was pretty common. Just a few days ago someone described to me some such stuff she heard from locals when visiting Sicily; I think it had something to do with Etna volcano.

I’d have been more impressed with PZ’s stunt if he’d burned about $1000 in cash. After all, “it is just paper” right?

After all, “it is just paper” right?

Not at all. I don’t think much of the stunt, but yours is a completely inept analogy.

I just don’t see how proving the equivalence of “atheist” and “asshole” is doing Myers’s cause much good.

In fact, I’m a bit worried about him, on the grounds argued in “Death or Glory”:

But I believe in this — and it’s been tested by research —
That he who fucks nuns, will later join the Church.

P.S. — site suggestion: preview button?

No it’s not, it’s actually a very good analogy. Communion wafers, like money are valuable because they are scarce.

Feel free to mail these valuable wafers to a poor family in Bangladesh. Then mail their neighbours $1000. Then visit both families.

Unless they are going to eat the money, it will only help them if they can exchange it for things that are valuable.

Are you positing that they might not be able to?

In any case the analogy doesn’t hold because money does not involve magical transformation through ritual, its value is an agreement, not a miracle.

Rightous Bubba, you are proving my point: if, as you argue, the Bangladesh family would prefer the cash to the wafer that proves that the cash is not “only paper.” It is valuable because of the symbolic attachment humans place on it. If it is possible the cash is more than “just paper” is it not possible that the wafer is not “just a cracker?”

And, you don’t have to be Catholic that believes in Transubstantiation to think that the wafer has symbolic value beyond its physical “crackerhood.”

I wonder how these militant atheists behave on holidays in far away countries: do they run around mocking people congregating at Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines or Mosques?

“Also, rationalists are powerless, except possibly on the internet, so it’s not much of a joke.”

Rumsfeld was a rationalist. The neocons are rationalists. Give their rationalism a referent… say an Iraqi, and that referent doesn’t act the way “logic” says he should, they blame the Iraqi.
You want a longer list of rationalist garbage? Try the long 20th century.

“phosphorious 07.25.08 at 11:01 pm
“Feel free to mail these valuable wafers to a poor family in Bangladesh. Then mail their neighbours $1000. Then visit both families.”

Unless they are going to eat the money, it will only help them if they can exchange it for things that are valuable. Paper money is valuable because people value it.

The analogy holds.”

The poor family in Bangladesh would be better for eating the money than the translucent dried paste that passes for the body of Christ.

And whoever called a communion wafer a rare thing…surely you jest.

My impression, because I didn’t pay that much attention was that PZ was zinging Bill Donahue and his band of insane attention whores. Would PZ have done this if the Catholic League, etc. hadn’t gone bonkers about it?

Maybe if those religious types stopped being obnoxious about forcing their religion on us – harassing gays, trying to rewrite abortion laws, trying to get creationism taught in public schools, maybe, just maybe, fewer people would be compelled to be obnoxious to them.

Just a thought.

ScentOfViolets re: Making the world a better place

ur doing it wrong.

I’m a secular humanist. The phrase I’d use to describe Dawkins & Myers et. al. is “proselytyzing athesist.”

Dsquared’s explanation of the rainbow is on par with “lightning is when God goes bowling” or the tooth fairy or something.

Would that it were so. Alas, Genesis 9:8-17.

“Why is Myers insinuating himself into an internal affair?”

because crazy catholics went on national news and wahhhhed about it?

I heard about it in the news somewhere, not from my quarterly church letter…(yeah, I still get the thing, though I am about as feral a Catholic as one can be…and I married an Episcopalian..they have better wafers).

Colin Danby :
“PZM writes well about biology—he does interesting research and you can learn stuff. But he knows bupkis about religion, and his tiresome, troll-baiting rants on the subject are unproductive of insight not to say corrosive of discussion.”

You are assuming here that there are religious truths that one can know. That assumption is very much in dispute. One can meaningfully talk about the history of religions and the sociology of religion and even the competing ideas of religion, but any such knowledge is not religious knowledge so much as knowledge about religion.

A friend of mine knows a lot about Klingons and their ways and even writes notes to herself in Klingon. I do not have to be equally versed in “Klingon knowledge” to know that it is all made up. She knows it’s made up, too, but what if she didn’t….

Try for a moment to understand that non-believers, when confronted with the claim that they do not have sufficient theological knowledge to have an opinion, feel just as you would if my friend told you that you could not make dispute the truth of her Klingon knowledge because you lack the requisite knowledge.

You would, rightly, be justified in laughing at her assertion, and doing so would not make you a bigot. In fact, you might still be quite fond of her.

We really are laughing at you, usually behind your backs. We are not therefore bigots. And we are still quite fond of you.

Various (Ben et. al): fair enough re: the minorness of the lie. (Though I don’t buy this “myths are not lies” bullshit — if I tell someone something that I know is false, I’m lying to them. The Santa Claus business is acceptable only because it’s understood that children will eventually be told the truth — something that hardly applies to religious indoctrination! (But probably — hopefully — applies to the rainbow thing standing alone.))

But I don’t buy the constant claims (36, 44, 45) that religion is on an epistemic par with science, or that the empirical approach to the universe is just another form of faith, etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah — and I don’t think anyone does in good faith. Because that way lieth global skepticism, and it’s impossible to sustain that.

A couple of facts some of you commenters don’t seem to be aware of:

1. Professor Myers is not a “militant” athiest. He does not commit or endorse violence, even against religious people.

2. It is a crime to destroy or deliberately damage money in the USA.

3. Non-religious Americans, and scientific Americans, have PLENTY to be legitimately angry about. The ongoing effort by organized religion to pollute science classes with a theory of the supernatural. (Governor Jindal is a disgrace to the Rhodes Scholarship and should be forced to pay back the money Rhodes Trust spent on his education.) The abuse of science by right-to-lifers (see for instance http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/
). Government funding of “faith-based initiatives”. Religious prosletizing to captive audiences in prison.

4. Noen, you are right that myths are not lies. However, telling a child that a myth is literally true IS a lie. And science is not a religion.

I go back and forth on whether I approve of desecrating the Eucharist. On the one hand, it is certain to alienate at least some potential converts to non-religion. On the other hand, a shock is sometimes the best way to wake people up. And if anyone deserves to have their sacred symbols desecrated, it is the Catholic League (and muslims).

Speaking of muslims, can anyone explain to me why they have not reacted publically to his desecrating pages of the Koran? I am very surprised that he has not received muslim death threats. (Islam is, after all, the two-year-old child in the world’s family of religions.)

A couple of facts some of you commenters don’t seem to be aware of:

I think this has something to do with that mean thing Noen said.

This post is very amusing. Finally, someone said it rather than requiring that we take umbrage on one tetchy side or the other. In a strange way, it was somewhat interesting for me as it suddenly dawned on me why tolerance isn’t some wishy–washy boring thing but a genuine civic virtue. I’ve thought little about tolerance over the years and sort of concluded it was sort of a minor wimpish virtue, entirely overshadowed by community or unity on the one hand and then intolerance for the truly icky. It’s clear to me now that tolerance is the best we can get and dang, I think we need it. There will be no friendly beer between the atheist and the priest at the local pub, as I was envisioning, in my naive way.

But if you want something to really sting, have a mass said in his name.

You are assuming here that there are religious truths that one can know.

I think you’re interpreting “PZ knows bupkis” about religion incorrectly; you can know an awful lot about religion without, per se, being a believer, understanding, at the very least, the extensive history involved, and even the sociology and psychology — and you can understand the latter two without, not to put too fine a point on it, being a prick about it.

Myers may know a great deal about religion historically, but I’ve tried to read his blog on multiple occasions — one of my friends is a great fan — and he consistently comes across as if the extent of his interest in religion both begins and ends with the conclusion that it’s unscientific and has demonstrably lead to bad things. Yes, this is more logical and, dare one say, enlightened than the religious followers whose interest in science begins and ends with the conclusion that it makes them uncomfortable and can lead to questions they’d rather not face, but bluntly, that’s an awfully low bar to beat.

When this affair began I was pretty sure that PZ Myers had jumped the shark. Now I’m not so sure. I believe it was Dr. Tartakower who pointed out that every chess game is won because of a mistake, but sometimes the mistake is made by the winner.

Daniel missed the boat, as did phosphorious (unless she was being tongue-in-cheek) and by a wide berth. “Nothing should be held sacred” refers (quite plainly) to no THING, rather than no ONE. P.Z. was mocking those who anthropomorphize (and thereby deify) crackers and books. Children, by contrast, are true moral subjects, not merely objects. You guys seem to have overlooked the entire point of this excercise. It was supposed to be a few mental laps, not a mental lapse.

My take on the, err, evolution (sorry) of this incident is that it started out as a bit of snarking at a news item, like one sees on high-traffic blogs every day, and then escalated wildly. But you’d have to condemn a lot of blogging (which maybe one would want to do) to read too much into the origins.

“I fail to see that Myers has a dog in that fight.”

For years now I’ve been waiting for the right time to make a comment about ‘having a [member of the] Dominican [order] in that fight’. Sadly, this is not that time.

Intelligent design? Gay Marriage? Birth Control? All good reasons to reject the church and fight them tooth and nail.

But this was exactly the wrong battle to pick

This makes no sense. Mocking the dogma – using ridicule as a weapon – has been used for literally _millenia_. Are you saying you don’t get this? I’ve made snarky comments myself pertaining to crackers and body parts when discussing the absurd opposition to gay marriage and other matters of doctrine. Things like, “Well, these people also believe a cracker can turn into a dead body and wine can turn into blood. I don’t think we need to take their views on anything concerning science seriously.”

I might also mention that my daughter was baptized in a Catholic church, her mother is Catholic, my mother is Catholic, about 3/4 of my whole family is Catholic . . . and not a single one believes that jive about ‘the blood and the body.’ So you’re wrong those counts as well.

I also detest this use of convenient proxys. If the church really found Donohue’s statements disagreeable, they could lean on him plenty hard. If the people who claim that what Donohue and his claque did was reprehensible, they could lean on their priests, bishops, etc. to do something about him. They haven’t done that to any extent that I’ve seen. I have seen a lot of hand-wringing over the fact that while Donohue may be behaving badly, there’s really nothing anyone can do about it.

As the Church Lady says, “How _conveeeeeenient_.”

I believe it was Dr. Tartakower who pointed out that every chess game is won because of a mistake, but sometimes the mistake is made by the winner.

I don’t remember who said it, but the way I heard it was: “the winner of every chess game is the player who makes the next-to-the-last mistake.”

One bit of background that’s missing from the discussion is that Donohue is a bully who actually gets people fired. His bluster actually kept Amanda Marcotte and another feminist blogger from working for the Edwards campaign, and he was trying to get a student expelled from a public university for mistreating a host.

It’s generally held that the best way to stop a bully is to stand up to him, which Myers did. Anything less than a threat to desecrate a wafer wouldn’t have done the job.

As for the differences between a consecrated wafer and a banknote: you can’t manufacture a banknote by casting a magic spell upon a blank slip of paper. It is not difficult to distinguish a banknote from a blank slip. The value of a banknote is a function of its scarcity. Better analogies, please.

Colin, I’m not saying that it was a wise or effective gesture, just pointing out its motivation. For what it’s worth, Ms. Marcotte was appreciative.

One of the comical aspects of this affair was the insistence of the angry Catholics, even as they were making death threats, that at least they weren’t as violent as the Muslims, a sentiment that one wit dubbed “fatwa envy”. So far, the Muslims don’t seem to have taken umbrage over Myer’s adding a few pages of an English copy of the Koran to his kitchen garbage.

“I might also mention that my daughter was baptized in a Catholic church, her mother is Catholic, my mother is Catholic, about 3/4 of my whole family is Catholic . . . and not a single one believes that jive about ‘the blood and the body.’ So you’re wrong those counts as well.”

This I don’t get: do they also reject the church’s position on gay marriage and abortion and so on? If so, in what sense are they catholic? Can vegans eat meat, and see nothing wrong with eating meat?

And if they reject that “jive” about transubstantiation, but accept all the other crap. . . then attacking transubstantiation obviously doesn’t make a difference.

Right?

The secular humanists’ Achilles Heel isn’t their reverence for any particular book or artefact – it’s their wildly disproportionate hatred of religious education.

Not true, for example I’m very much in favour of religious education :-)

Noen… I don’t even know where to start with this.

Joseph Campbell?! Nothing but warmed-over Jungian mysticism, with a dose of Taoism for spice.

Not knowing how something can be neither true or false? Let’s get the sorts of sentences we’re talking about clear here. In large part, we’re talking about simple declarative sentences, like “God made rainbows” or “some guy blew a trumpet and the city walls fell down,” or “the cracker turns into the body of Christ.” What kind of a meaning are you giving these sentences?

Sorry, was that inhuman? Such melodrama! And then there’s the “yawning abyss”… please.

Oy. So missing the point about the chess anecdotes. “It isn’t right. It’s not even wrong!”

Just to make things clear to the international audience: in America, only 73% of atheists don’t believe in god, according to a recent Pew survey. Roughly a quarter avow a naturalistic view of evolution; the rest agree that godidit.

Within that context, it’s not without value for someone to stand up and say “I don’t respect your religious magic and I’m not afraid of the power of your bully pulpit.* This is a free country.”

* All puns intended

Forgot to mention that rainbows remind me of Ganymede.

“wildly disproportionate hatred of religious education.”

Idiot

It’s good for children to be lied to by adults. It’s how they learn not to trust them.

But if you want something to really sting, have a mass said in his name.

yeah, but that would be a bit like overkill – at the end of the day, it was just a fricking cracker.

Kris–
It’s one thing to make fun of a religious group, it’s another to attend a religious ceremony, lie, violate ritual space, steal an artifact and make fun of it. If you went to a Buddhist temple, made off with something, and desecrated it on your blog, I’d assume you were being a bit of an asshole.

“at the end of the day, it was just a fricking cracker.”

But as touched on above, if it’s just a fricking cracker, he did something far worse than sacrilege – he wasted food. If my grandmother was still around, I think she’d be sending him death threats. Or at least highly guilt-inducing letters.

And as for ripping pages out of books . . .

noen: “There is never a good time to be an obnoxious jerk. ” Right. That’s why Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is usually condemned – oh wait.

On another note: offering up unsupported opinions is usually considered very bad form, as well as making you look ridiculous when they are so easily refuted. Next time, give reasons for your opinions.

phosphorious:

“I might also mention that my daughter was baptized in a Catholic church, her mother is Catholic, my mother is Catholic, about 3/4 of my whole family is Catholic . . . and not a single one believes that jive about ‘the blood and the body.’ So you’re wrong those counts as well.”

This I don’t get: do they also reject the church’s position on gay marriage and abortion and so on? If so, in what sense are they catholic? Can vegans eat meat, and see nothing wrong with eating meat?

Sigh. It’s obvious that you don’t get a lot of commonly understood actions. Most Catholics also reject the Church’s official stance on birth control as well. Does that make them not Catholic? Do you mean to tell me that you’ve never heard the term “Cafeteria Catholic”?

And if they reject that “jive” about transubstantiation, but accept all the other crap. . . then attacking transubstantiation obviously doesn’t make a difference.

Sigh. The _point_ is not to attack transubstantiation as absurd; the point is to attack the synthetic ‘outrage’ . I would be not be surprised if most of those who made death threats against the kid in this case really think that wine literally turns into the blood of Christ. What gets them going is the ‘desecration’ bit. Did you not at least look at the first few minutes of that ‘Four Horseman’ video? And you still ventured to put forth your uninformed opinion?

I’m outraged, outraged, Dammit!!! And I demand an apology for you being so insulting!!!!!

Britta,
That is an interesting analogy. I admit that the youtube video he has is a bit tasteless, though I think it really is in reaction to the initial response he got. I should point out in this context (of desecration) that many of the asian idols and statuettes found in museums in the West were obtained by desecrating temples and similar monuments. I am sure there are some very religious people who would be extremely offended that these are objects of curiousity rather than worship.

abb1,
I am not sure that your remarks were directed my way. If you thought I was being needlessly insulting to (southern) baptists, here are a couple of links about their *prayer guides*:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sbc_pray1.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sbc_pray1.htm

note that they are not exactly a fringe church.
If you thought I was insulting the pope, here is a sample of what the
current his holiness had to say (about buddhism):
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1390460

See, I have no real problem with people saying insulting things about religions; I think that all religious doctrine should be subject to attack and criticism. What I do find offensive is the hypocrisy behind all this outrage about Mr Myers’ actions. There is no comparable offense taken when a prominent catholic or many other religious figures say something nasty or offensive about other religions. It is almost as if this is kind of expected from them. Where is this convention of “politeness” when it comes to their remarks? So, yes Mr Myers may have been a bit tasteless, but he surely does not deserve this sort of opprobium (death threats etc). It does no service to free expression to generally attack him for breaking some fictitious conventions of “politeness”.

Thanks to Britta for making a point I could only gesture at earlier. Rituals have structure and sequence and make community.

The counterexample would be the chocolate crucifixion that Mr. Donohue was upset about some years back. In that case someone could retort that it was just a symbol (admittedly a centrally powerful symbol) that had been appropriated. There was no interference with ritual.

The ritual point is *recognized* by a desecrator — PZM does *not* write long blog posts about tossing out ordinary saltines. Anyone who goes to the trouble of obtaining a consecrated wafer, making up their own counter-ritual to damage it, and documenting the whole thing, is being totally disingenuous when they say it’s “just a cracker.”

Kris 146,
no, I meant that PZ Myers starts his post with a long list of outrages committed by Catholics, and that list, as I understand, somehow leads to his action and justifies it.

Thus Britta’s analogy:

If you went to a Buddhist temple, made off with something, and desecrated it on your blog, I’d assume you were being a bit of an asshole.

is incomplete, unless he can attach to it a list of outrages committed by Buddhist, who, I heard, are the nicest people imaginable. Or maybe not, what do I know.

Someone (145) finally spat out the “there is no truth” line. I think that’s up there with hitlering a thread… is it time to stick a fork in it? Doubtless.

He means Truth, not truth.

John Emerson — I don’t think anybody (here that is) has said that Myers’ actions are or ought to be illegal. He has the right to be an asshole, but that doesn’t mean it’s a right that should be exercised, especially by someone who is a tenured academic and thus ought to have a little more judgment, discretion, and wisdom.

A secular liberal polity requires that people be allowed to have their private spaces in which they can exercise their weird beliefs while keeping the public sphere secular. Actions like Myers’, by consciously invading and desecrating someone else’s religious symbols, serve to damage the walls between church and state, and gives people like Bill Donohue an excuse to appear on TV and call for blasphemy laws.

Fucking brilliant.

“Believing that Christ is literally present in the host is, sophistries aside, sheer idolatry”.

How do you make the distinction here between religion and idolatry? This accusation of knowing little of the religion they criticize has been leveled at PZ, Dawkins and others countless time and does not become more convincing by sheer repetition. Beside the fact that somebody like Dawkins or Dennet know far more about their own religion than the average christian (whose knowledge of theology is, in my experience, very poor) it is also inconsistent. If you don’t accept the proofs given for the existence of god, pointless discussion about its presence in this or that will always leave you cold.

Also mtraven, a right that you cannot exercise does not exist.

“I understand that this is a joke, but you seem to be blaming the victim here,”
You mean the iraqis?

This all reminds me of this thread from your own past. Belle Waring makes an ass out of herself, as usual. D2 also (it happens).

I don’t think in the 5 years I’ve been reading this page, I’ve read one description of a logically and emotionally complex situation that didn’t rely on generalizations, boilerplate and cheap sentiment. D2 is a hilarious ironist, but that doesn’t solve the problem.

abb1,
This was the whole point of the “cracker stunt”, namely the idea that “it’s just a frikkin cracker”. Cracker abuse is just not comparable or equivalent to racial abuse. The fact that some people say the cracker is holy does not make it so. Religion is an idea and as such can be discussed and, if need be, ridiculed.

Your opinion would I suppose make sense if we had not in the past few years, well before the motoons affair in fact, seen the religious clamoring for more and more “respect”, for a special and protected place in the public arena, from which they can talk down to us and try to order our lives without being held to account. They have become very good at pretending to be victims (think of the War on Christmas) while grabbing for more and more of their old influence.

You know, I am starting to think that in some weird ways, PZ is showing more respect for the Catholic drones howling right now for his blood and that of his family than all the “I suppose he is right in theory but he shouldn’t act all surprised when he received death threats” people. He seems to actually think that they are potentially able to think rationally, that somehow, his ideas could ultimately go through to them. He makes a nice change from the smugness of some so-called liberals who think of them only as an ineducable plebe.

Arnaud said: The fact that some people say the cracker is holy does not make it so.

What a weird statement. It seems to imply that holiness is some natural property, independent of human action. What else could make something holy, other than a group of people saying it is? Or are you saying that nothing can possibly be holy?

The fact that some people say the cracker is holy does not make it so.

Actually, that is exactly what makes anything sacred. You seem to be demanding that everyone believe as you do. In order to get along we all have to accept that there are other people in this world whom we cannot control. This is called growing up.

the religious clamoring for more and more “respect”, for a special and protected place in the public arena, from which they can talk down to us and try to order our lives without being held to account.

How dare they! That’s your job!

“no – absolutely none – connection with the fact that the people who claim to believe in transubstantiation made some death threats. ”
Uhm, well, gosh, wait a minute, isn’t there a term for that? When the acts of some members of a group are treated as acts undertaken by all members?

Americans in Iraq.
Terrorist Muslims.
Catholics making death threats.
Collective guilt, that’s it. Inviting collective punishment.

Nutball zealots attack some kid for breaching the sacrosanct. Myers attacks the organization those nutballs get their nutball identities from.
The non-violent non-threat-making Catholics who have their sensibilities tromped on by Myers’ righteous-indignation-in-action are just collateral damage, because this too is a war.
By whom against whom is a little murky.

I know nothing of Catholic magic, but in defense of PZ I will remind everyone that the good Doctor originally was just coming out in support of a teen who was being harassed by Donnahu’s thugs for spiriting a spiritual cracker out of their tabernacle, and chatting about it on the inerwebs. In passing I believe PZ asked for readers to send him a magic cookie. It was at this point that “Crackergate” was born.

I believe the brownshirts are still making the kid’s life miserable.

SCofV171:
What’s irritating and sad is the inability of otherwise intelligent and rational minds to see how inaccurate these acts are, regardless their motives at inception.

The death threats aren’t issuing from the majority of the Catholic faithful. Who feel, naturally enough, attacked by the cracker-busters. Because they are.
The collateral damage thing there.
“Who cares? They’re all loonies anyway!”
This is not kind.
People who find refuge inside those church walls aren’t seeing welcoming hands outside them. They’re seeing sneering vicious mobs not much different than the one Donohue fronts.

RightBub 173:
Any idea what the ratio between liberation priests and nuns out on the front lines of Latin American struggle and pedophile priests is, or was?
Me neither.
Does the one discount the other?
I don’t think so.

But the public perception of all priests as pedophiles or parties to cover-ups goes a long way to discounting the very brave and unsung heroes of active Catholic engagement with the darkness that was Latin American politics for the last half of the 20th c.

The Catholic church may be a morally bankrupt and archaic institution whose time has long since passed, but that doesn’t make the lives of all active Catholics void and unimportant.
No more than thinking Saddam Hussein took down the WTC voids the lives of those simple folk who’ve bought that innuendo whole cloth.

The Pope, like our President and our presidential candidates, appears to be a Zionist lackey. Does that discount the Catholics in the Dorothy Day movement voluntarily working to feed the increasingly desperate American homeless?
How about the nuns who picket the gates of the School of the Americas? Tarred with the same brush?
I don’t think so.

Does ridiculing all Catholics give those selfless volunteers even more shit to deal with in their already overburdened days and nights?
I do think so.

Interesting how of all religious persuasions the Catholics when they do become activists are way past genteel and decorous when they hit the front lines. Any connect between that and the high profile media condemnations?
I think there maybe could be.

Yes Myers began by simply defending a smart-ass kid who bit off way more than he could chew.
But in the aftermath of that somewhat gallant gesture too many shotguns went off with all too little aim.
Should have been rifles instead, and they should have been carefully sighted on truly deserving targets.

Collateral damage is a disgusting rationalization for moral and strategic failure, no matter who’s using it.

“. Anyone who goes to the trouble of obtaining a consecrated wafer, making up their own counter-ritual to damage it, and documenting the whole thing, is being totally disingenuous when they say it’s “just a cracker.””

Indeed, I found the symbolic and ritualistic nature of that damage – piercing it with a nail – extremely offputting: all else aside, that seems to grant the whole thing so much power and significance, albeit in a rather inverted way from the folks sending death threats over it.

“ There have always been Donohues.“‘
What a horrible thought.

“A secular liberal polity requires that people be allowed to have their private spaces in which they can exercise their weird beliefs while keeping the public sphere secular. Actions like Myers’, by consciously invading and desecrating someone else’s religious symbols, serve to damage the walls between church and state, and gives people like Bill Donohue an excuse to appear on TV and call for blasphemy laws.”

On the other hand, it’s possible to imagine that stuff like Myers’ desecratathon – intentionally 0r unintentionally – could act as a kind of unpleasant way to shore up those walls. That is, groups who step over the line – as in sending death threats and suchlike to a kid who did something dumb – get immediately slammed with this kind of symbolic violence. And they have to decide whether to sit there and take it (perhaps with some angry but quiet muttering and ineffectual protest), or to flip out, hereby alienating some of the growing number of secularists and secular-like people, many of whom may well decide the Myers is an arse, but these screeching Christers are worse.

Now, whether it would actually work that way, instead of being useless or acvtivele counterproductive, I’m really dubious. But hey . . .

Mtraven 166 has a good point: “What else could make something holy, other than a group of people saying it is?” And group of people is not even necessary, it works on individual basis as well. For example: you visit your parents’ graves, bring flowers, you wouldn’t want anyone to – what’s the word? ah, – desecrate their graves or their ashes. Is that rational behavior – fricking ashes for chrissake. Why not flush them down the toilet?

“What a weird statement. It seems to imply that holiness is some natural property, independent of human action. What else could make something holy, other than a group of people saying it is? Or are you saying that nothing can possibly be holy?”

You see, mtraven, that’s the kind of smugness I was talking about. (Also note that I said holy, not sacred) You know that, I know that, I strongly suspect that PZ know that too. The problem is: he is not talking to you.

So I will make it easier for you. The holiness of the eucharist is not, for catholics, a social construct, it’s a quality coming directly from god. At least PZ Myers is not lost in some kind self-congratulatory group hug about how clever he is, he is talking to them. Well, yelling at them, maybe, but it still make a refreshing change.

the religious clamoring for more and more “respect”, for a special and protected place in the public arena, from which they can talk down to us and try to order our lives without being held to account.

How dare they! That’s your job!

Irrelevant and demonstrably false. I am a barman, the only occasion I have to tell people what to do is at closing time. A bishop or a pope on the other hand…. (I know it was a joke, Noen. But you know, a joke should be funny. Ideally it should also be original, but let’s not try to run before we can walk, hey?)

My sensibilities are deeply offended by the mere existence of many of the opinions expressed here, and almost anywhere else in blogland. Do you see me complaining? I really don’t see what any intelligent Catholic would have to say to PZM except ‘Huh, twit’. Not that I’d agree with them, but going beyond a shrug, *in what is supposed to be a secular republic*, is where the problem lies.

And yeah, I appreciate that religions are not good at shrugging at ‘desecrations’, for longstanding reasons. But see the bolded passage above.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a right that should be exercised….

A right that’s never exercised is lost. Soviet citizens had lots of formal rights that meant nothing. Even in present-day Japan, insisting on your rights is condemned.

I think that atheists should be able to express their views as aggressively and offensively as Christians do. There’s a history of this kind of deliberate sacrilege, for example in France, and I think it’s a good thing in its small way.

I think that the response to Myers is of the “Let sleeping [mad] dogs lie” kind — the way leaders of black, gay or Jewish communities encouraged their people to keep a low profile (and for the same reasons). Myers is Mr. Atheist and Proud and should be supported.

There’s too much deference to religious wackos like Donahue in this country. They’re violent, ignorant, destructive, and wrong.

If I’m wrong, it’s because the U.S. is so far dominated by the right that atheists will never cease to be a pariah group and should accept that status. Religionists show now restraint at allin their condemnations of atheists.

P.S. Seth is wrong about Myers being a pedant. He’s fascinated by life forms and knows a lot about them, and he’s able to communicate his fascination to others. I read his blog mostly for the biology, and often skip the atheism. Seth seems to have mushed all of science into an ideological horror called Science.

Stomping on an American flag. On July 4th. Outside Arlington Cemetery.
Stomping the Israeli flag after a holocaust memorial event hosted by Steven Weinberg.
“It’s a gaddamn piece of cloth!”
It’s not about religion it’s about metaphysical valuation.
Myers is opposed to metaphysical valuation of inanimate objects, except perhaps as themselves?
“It’s a gaddamn piece of cloth! I love pieces of cloth. And look at the thread count! 400!!”
I do not fall in love with rocks. When I want to feel like doing something worthy of a public pat on the back I ponder moral responsibility and the relation of of perception and ideas of the “just.” But that’s just me I guess.

A pedant can be a good high school science teacher or an auto mechanic.
Myers is a pedant and a fool. Bien pensant? That’s the title they’ve been fighting over.

A right that’s never exercised is lost. Soviet citizens had lots of formal rights that meant nothing.

A right that’s never exercised is not lost, it’s just not exercised. Our right to (say) have sex with aardvarks is not lost if no one cares to exercise it.

Soviet citizens had never lost any rights for neglecting to exercise them. They just never had those rights in the first place.

Perhaps what you meant to say is that you don’t know for sure if you really have a right until you (or someone else) exercises it without retribution? That’s fair enough, but I don’t think there is any doubt that in the US of A one can stab crackers on their blogs with impunity.

You’re full of shit, Seth. Myers is not a pedant. You probably have no idea what he does. To you I guess biology is boring and The Enemy. Your problem.

When Myers says “It’s just a cracker” he’s saying “You think that this is some big deal, but it’s just a cracker”. He’s not ingenuously saying “What’s the big deal? This is just a cracker, why would anyone care?” He’s not pretending that he wasn’t rying to offend anyone.

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”

Nietzsche put it quite well.

There is a symmetry between fundamental preachers of religion and fundamental preachers of science. You take “God, God, God” and substitute with “facts, facts, facts”. But there are no facts… facts are what we want to think of as facts. When you start learning physics, you think “ah, so now we know what electrons are!”. Then you learn more and understand that electrons are in our heads only, they’re just abstract concepts. Physicists 50 years ago thought they had the world at their feet. Now it’s the biologists, like PZ.

People criticize the OP for “lying to a child”. Well — when we teach children about electrons flying around the atom following circular orbits, aren’t we lying to them as well? There’s no symmetry here, because our models of atoms (and the concept of atom itself) are useful, even if they are what they are — just stories. We build computers and cure disease using these stories. Stories about God and rainbow are also useful (for emotional reasons), but much less. So as I said, there is no symmetry. But there is also no opposition “Reality vs Myth”. No. There are only different stories, some of them more useful (and not force-fed at gunpoint), some of them less useful (and from time to time force-fed at gunpoint). PZ and his cohort think they are fundamentally better than religious fundies because a) they don’t send death threats and b) because they have “Reality”. a) is correct, b) is a scam.

” To you I guess biology is boring and The Enemy”
No John.
“Donahues will continue rule our world,”
They certainly rule Israel.

I could quibble and say that Catholicism is a religion and Jews are an ethnicity. Israel was founded as a secular state.

To be “reactionary” is to act not on reflex. Myers acts on reflex no more or less than Donohue.
Here is an example of someone responding to reflex by trying to understand it and not simply responding in kind. It’s on object lesson.
It’s been ignored.

Sorry

@s.e.

“Here is an example of someone responding to reflex by trying to understand it and not simply responding in kind. It’s on object lesson.”

My God, someone should really revive Lenin’s corpse to teach the Democrats a lesson: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country”.

How, to take a subset of that question, do I persuade a student to engage with material they think is wrong; how do I encourage a student to go take some science classes if their impression of the alternatives is the kind of thing you see above?

Gee, I dunno. How did you do it before the infamous cracker incident when there was no blasphemy in the world?

Emerson 184: Argh. Just because you have the right to do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. For instance, the 1st amendment says you have the right to say things that are stupid, hateful, or nonesensical — that doesn’t mean you should do so.

There is a line between expressing your views aggressively, and deliberately violating the sacraments and rituals of somone else, and PZ crossed that line. You mention France’s tradition of sacrilege, as if the bloody religous warfare of Europe is something we would want to emulate.

Arnaud 180, it appears to me as if you are being the smug one, by assuming that the religious plebes are incapable of reflection, incapable of acknowledging the existence of other belief systems, and incapable of existing peacefully in a pluralistic society. Let’s hope that’s not the case.

PZ and Donohue are both appealing to the unreflective, intolerant side of human nature. They are promoting conflict, they are both promoting their own stature by stoking the flames of conflict.

If Dan meant it he’d kill a kitten.

hey how was your holiday Alex?

It’s the discipline that I appreciate. All around great post.

Seth, what are your grounds for calling Myers a pedant?

You guys are saying it doesn’t matter as long as Donohue gets it. We’re saying there’s a default responsibility to everyone affected by the attack.

No, _I’m_ saying that those who are making noises about ‘inoffensive Catholics’ are full of it. Did these ‘inoffensive Catholics’ put pressure on church authorities to officially condemn, or sanction, or otherwise rebuke this crowd?

Yes or no? The fact of the matter is, those ‘inoffensive Catholics’ don’t want anyone pointing out that their cracker is, well, just a cracker. How nice that they have someone like Donohue who’s willing to do their dirty work for them so they can be high-toned.

ciao.

In some parallel universe he means it.

arnaud
I am a barman, the only occasion I have to tell people what to do is at closing time.

You took my joke literally? Do you think that I actually believe your occupation involves you talking down to other people? See, this is another thing I’ve noticed about the New Atheists. A certain inability to think in all but the most concrete and literal terms. Metaphor is lost on them.

I think that the response to Myers is of the “Let sleeping [mad] dogs lie” kind—the way leaders of black, gay or Jewish communities encouraged their people to keep a low profile (and for the same reasons).

If I’m wrong, it’s because the U.S. is so far dominated by the right that atheists will never cease to be a pariah group and should accept that status.

So the response of the Atheist community is based in fear? A fear that you believe is legitimate. I think we have a right to be deeply concerned. I don’t want Christian extremists to have too much political power either. My objection, aside from my bad jokes, is a pragmatic one. Your tactics are ineffective and will backfire on you. You want a world where scientific research and education are not being interfered with by those with a religious or political agenda.

With all due respect this is not how you go about creating that kind of world. You are doing it wrong. All that has been accomplished is that the situation has been further polarized and passions inflamed. You seem to hold the French, and in general the European, attitude towards religion in high regard. Yes, I saw those comments on Pharyngula too. The argument appears to be that we Atheists need to stand up to and fight back against region and religious intolerance just like the Europeans did so that we too can live in the bright shining Light of Reason.

Be careful what you wish for.

I think this is a bad idea. The way you make the world a better place is by forming alliances, advocacy and political action. The way that you get other people who may not wholly agree with you to join you in some objective is by convincing them that you share their goals and values. Once you have achieved some sort of political unity you can then move forward towards getting what you want. Better schools, better healthcare or whatever. Alienating your potential allies undermines your own goals.

Oh! You don’t think they are or could ever be your ally? They are your eternal enemy, darkness to your light? Think again. Right now environmental groups are forming alliances with evangelicals who in the past were their sworn enemies. Why? Well one reason is that they simply are not monolithic entities. The evangelicals believe they have a responsibility, stewardship, for the earth. They’ve also noticed that Jesus had a few things to say about caring for the poor. So they got together with others who share their goals.

If you really wanted to hurt the Donahues and the Robertsons of this world you would try to find those Catholics and Fundamentalists who dislike what they are doing, and I assure you they exist, and try to form an alliance with them and then together speak out against whatever it is you’re against.

There is a catch. In order to do this you are going to have to drop the self-righteous tone. If it really is important enough to you that is what you’ll do. The world opens up before you, you have a choice. Which will it be?

My main objection to PZism is that it strengthens the hands of the fundamentalists and haters like Donohue.

How would this be measured?

RB 216: Well, let’s see. In the month before this particular brouhaha hit the fan, how many times did you think about Bill Donohue? How many appearances on TV did he make? Compare that to after PZ’s declaration of intent to desecrate. I’m going to assume that donations are now pouring in to the Catholic League, ensuring that Donohue will be able to ply his trade well into the future.

ScentofViolets
Did these ‘inoffensive Catholics’ put pressure on church authorities to officially condemn, or sanction, or otherwise rebuke this crowd?

Actions do not exist in a vacuum. The actions by PZ Myers only made it more difficult for moderate elements to speak out. In what ways have your actions made it more possible for those who might object to what Bill Donohoe is doing to voice their disagreement? Or have you instead simply inflamed the issue and by doing so caused those moderate elements to react against you?

Life is not a simplistic thing. It is not “everyone who does not agree with me is against me”. Taking that path will only lead to sorrow. The world comes in shades of gray, most especially people. By seeing your opponents in terms of black or white, what the recovery community calls stinkin’ thinkin’, you are in effect rejecting their humanity. And that is an act of violence.

This is your blindspot, the point through which your unconscious motivations leap forward and take control. Do you really believe that these people you hate so fiercely are the unthinking, inhuman characters you paint them to be? No, they are people just like you, just like me. They have lives filled with hope and fear, love and laughter just like you, just like me.

Drop the pose honey, just drop it. Drop the childish “I am the center of the universe” attitude and join the human race.

“arnaud
I am a barman, the only occasion I have to tell people what to do is at closing time.

You took my joke literally?”

Noen, was that quote-mining? In order to refresh your memory, here is what I added :

(I know it was a joke, Noen. But you know, a joke should be funny. Ideally it should also be original, but let’s not try to run before we can walk, hey?)

#210-
“I’m saying that those who are making noises about ‘inoffensive Catholics’ are full of it. Did these ‘inoffensive Catholics’ put pressure on church authorities to officially condemn, or sanction, or otherwise rebuke”

It’s my understanding that the church authorities aren’t answerable to the congregation, demands or no. That’s in theory, in ideal form.
As a political institution of course they’re all about keeping up with the times and flexibly responding to the expressed desires of their customer base. Fortunately for them most of that customer base wants to be told what to do.
That seems to make them expendable to you. Collateral damage.

As a political institution the church is one thing. What about the hapless members of the congregation who for a wide variety of reasons are still attached to what they mostly perceive as a positive thing in their lives, without which they would be somewhat bereft?
Too bad, right? You don’t care about that, or them, because Donohue’s an asshole and the church hierarchy is pompous and hypocritical, and their dogma is illogical.
It is the fact of your not caring that disturbs me, not the substance of your disagreement.

You’re coming on like some anti-drug crusader who’s just gonna stomp in and jerk all the junkies into cold-turkey reality cause that’s how it should be because opiates are illegal unless prescribed by a doctor, and too bad for them and their stupid withdrawals.
Underneath that is the assumption that only character flaws could be at work.
What else could it be? No recognition of other experiences of life leading to other ways of coping. No compassion.

Or like animal rights activists before they collectively figured out that releasing labs-full of unprepared and unfit subjects into the wild inevitably condemns them to death, though with the tang of freedom in the air around them as they go. No mercy.

#217-
“The barrage of attacks he got was a sign that his former religious group was pretty sick…”
In that the group, like a cell spilling viruses, vectored the barrage, yes it was sick.
Think Donohue’s gotten any hate mail? Death threats?
Probably not nearly as many and not nearly so virulent, so you win.

Except being less mentally unsound than groupC does not make groupB anything other than that, just as my not being an actively raving lunatic does not make me automatically sane.

Considering their actions these last few years both the UK and the US are socially pathological in heinous and violent ways.
Are you a citizen of one or the other?
Carrying the full weight of responsibility for the actions of the group to which you belong, however you got there?
Or just muddling through as best you can?

The crucifix in urine looks too pretty to be sacrilege, if you ask me.

I think that the rush to condemn Myers comes from undue deference to religion, which is in turn is due to fear.

No, as people have said many times, condemnations of PZM come from a desire to form practical, useful alliances with religious people to solve real issues like global warming and poverty. The only fear motivating the people “rushing” to condemn him is fear of real consequences like environmental degradation and financial ruin due to a health problem. Definitely not fear of what some theists think about us. Saying we’re afraid doesn’t make it so.

Neither The Market, nor God, nor Science, nor your mother is going to come in and clean things up if another Republican gets elected and/or we drop a bomb on Iran and/or global warming gets even more out of control, just because some smartass decided their self-righteous crusade against Theism was more important than the votes of some “deluded” Christians.

noen

ScentofViolets
Did these ‘inoffensive Catholics’ put pressure on church authorities to officially condemn, or sanction, or otherwise rebuke this crowd?

Actions do not exist in a vacuum. The actions by PZ Myers only made it more difficult for moderate elements to speak out. In what ways have your actions made it more possible for those who might object to what Bill Donohoe is doing to voice their disagreement? Or have you instead simply inflamed the issue and by doing so caused those moderate elements to react against you?

Oh, I get it: legions of Catholics were just about to speak out against Donohue and were just about to put pressure on the church hierarchy to officially condemn his actions. But now they’re not going to do any such thing. And it’s all Myers fault of course.

Do you think for one second anyone believes that pap? Do you have any proof? If so, let’s see it. If not, no, these ‘inoffensive Catholics’ had no intention of doing so in the first place. And so your characterization is, shall we say, not in accord with reality.

Life is not a simplistic thing. It is not “everyone who does not agree with me is against me”. Taking that path will only lead to sorrow. The world comes in shades of gray, most especially people. By seeing your opponents in terms of black or white, what the recovery community calls stinkin’ thinkin’, you are in effect rejecting their humanity. And that is an act of violence.

What are you talking about? This looks like a great deal of emoting that’s supposed to be some sort of indictment. But I can’t make heads nor tails of it.

OK, you promise me that if I don’t desecrate any hosts, the environment will be cleaned up? Because that’s a deal I’ll take.

See, there it is again, all-or-nothing black-and-white quick fix answers.

Or were you being facetious? In that case, how about if the chances of any of those things happening is smaller because you don’t desecrate… whatever it is you’re thinking about desecrating? I guess it’s understandable if desecrating Catholic symbols is that important to atheists that they would want to do it, I appreciate that symbols are important to people and atheists have as much right to be attached to desecrating people’s symbols as Catholics have to be attached to their symbols. But yes, it does hurt causes like environmentalism when atheists do this. Rationality doesn’t help much if you don’t observe and listen and take in data from the world.

I suppose people can have reasonable disagreements over strategies for getting to a society where science is more respected, but it’s hard to see how you can have any reasonable disagreement with people who see everything in Manichean black and white, even if you mostly agree with them on the desired result.

(And, I’m not saying there aren’t real ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ in the world, just that most things are a mix of both, and this strategy against fanaticism is more the latter.)

Kaveh, yes, I was being facetious. But frankly, I don’t think that desecrating a host, or not, has much of anything to do with achieving big social goals, except for the assertion of the right to be impious. But you seem to think that it does.

back in the days of whenever it was and Bush was rising and whatever it was behind him rising and all around the fundamentalists and their demagogues and packed mega-churches were smug and gloating with the exercise of power, people here and on other erstwhile

http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://crookedtimber.org/

Go through a religious education – a real one, not some lukewarm pats on the head – before you say that anyone’s hatred of it is disproportionate.

This thread has deteriorated. To revivify it, I offer this: August is pray for P.Z. Myers month. They certainly have their work cut out for them.

August is pray for P.Z. Myers month

Maybe this’ll work and he’ll figure out something funny to do with the cracker.

This is great, when you click through to
http://catholic-teaching.org/2008/07/august-2008-is-officially-pray-for-pz-myers-month/
Masses, and who knows, sanctification. Memo to PZ: don’t try to out-ritual these folks.

I hope Daniel’s conversation with the moppet went well.

because a they very visibly took very unpopular positions, and they were proven right, dead right , a lot of people have had a bellyfull of these types

But *what* unpopular positions made a difference? Disagreeing with Bushite positions on *issues of substance*, on the war in Iraq, on their assault on civil liberties, those made a difference. Ridiculing his gut/faith-based decision making made a difference (decisions should be made on facts, silly!) Ridiculing Christianity in general is completely irrelevant as far as I can tell, unless somebody wants to explain how it’s relevant?

First a poem

Shorter Haiku

Be aware of all
internet traditions
understand “shorter”

OK now a comment.

I’m actually part of the “o noes! You lie! To a child!” Posse and I have two daughters age 11 and 19. Actually, I am not absolutely opposed to lying (not that I like to lie). ” How on earth does one get through a typical day without lying to a child.” well one is now an adult. Yesterday the 11 year old asked me what pornography is so I told her. I honestly don’t recall lying to them often — certainly not once a day.

I guess I am second generation. My parents never told me that Santa Claus existed (they also never suggested that there was any chance that any God exists).

I do recall one time I tried to uhm simplify things for my younger daughter who was then 3 and one half. I am translating from Italian below.

I told her that lymphocytes make antibodies. She asked”what about the nasty t-lymphocytes who kill cells with the signal ?” I said huh about twice and the second time she said “you know the ones that kill virus infected cells.” Now you are adults here and I’m sure you know about killer T-lymphocytes which kill virus infected cells, but I was a bit spooked to hear that from a 3 and one half year old. I decided I better not try to uhm simplify things for her too much.

I assume your not going to do tell the rainbow story to a child.

unless he can attach to it a list of outrages committed by Buddhist, who, I heard, are the nicest people imaginable. Or maybe not, what do I know.

Clearly not enough to realize there are examples of Buddhist violence. Just for fun: http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2008/s08030071.htm

I wish I saw more in this comment thread that treated understanding religion as a human phenomenon and approaching it with a certain critical sympathy as a third alternative to the poles of dismissal and devotion. That lack of interest in comprehending the internal logic of a religion–rather than playing “gotcha” with it’s supposed inconsistencies–leads to a conversation in which folks make uninformed pronouncements about religious belief and religious people and particular religious traditions and their histories. And I don’t see how that’s helping anyone. I mean, if you really want to convey the problems associated with religion effectively, it seems like avoiding misinformation about the realities of religion might be a good strategy.

The example quoted at the head of this comment is not a bad one. Buddhism has never engendered violence? Try again. Moving away from the issue of violence, the bible forbids eating from the tree of knowledge? Well, that’s just wrong. Not even a matter of interpretation. The myth in question forbids eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and if you look closer, it is the combination of access the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life that is untenable. Which, ultimately, tell you more about the view the people who wrote and have adhered to this myth have of god than it does about Christian anti-intellectualism. I’m not going to say there isn’t a tendency to anti-intellectualism in certain forms of Christianity but when it comes down to it, that tendency is as much or more about class than it is about the book of genesis.

Which is to say any religious believer is going to stop listening to your point about anti-intellectualism, which I think is a good one, the minute you mistake something so basic. And at that point. you’re only intelligible and convincing to people who already agree with you. At which point this conversation amounts to mental masturbation.

If a person genuinely thinks religion is harmful, an informed critique might be a more powerful antidote than, well, anything else I can think of at the moment. This….well, I don’t think this is it.

I agree. I think that PZ Meyers and the student in question are taking themselves far too seriously. Of course the Catholic church does deserve more than a few thorns in its side. But, I was told as a child “Don’t argue with a fool, because a casual observer coming along might not be able to tell the difference!”

I think that both the Catholic church and all those who see everything in the light of “Jesus saves (or else)” are fools, as are militant atheists. Common sense when dealing with others whose belief systems differ from ours seems to be a rare commodity indeed.

Righteous Bubba (#254) seems to imply that the Knoxville shotgun killer was most likely a right-winger, possibly a conservative Christian, rather than “one of the militant atheist assholes” (#19) like himself.
Anyone who read Instapundit’s post of 9:04pm yesterday knows that he was far more likely the latter: “Accused shooter everyone’s friend, hated Christianity.” He’s not specifically known to be an atheist, but there’s no mention in the linked story of a positive attitude towards any other religion.

Righteous Bubba (#254) seems to imply that the Knoxville shotgun killer was most likely a right-winger

I didn’t mean to imply that; I posted the story because it might be of interest to the thread and not to score a point. The only other story I read that mentioned possible motives was speculation, but in any case the story told was that he got mad when Bible college was mentioned and he seemed to be an anti-religionist.

On the other hand.

Right-winger, Confederate. Apparently a fallen-away Christian with a lot of religious background.

I couldn’t resist.
I have a comment in moderation, when someone has the time.

#240-
It’s not the hatred, which my own experience of would evidently surprise you, it’s where that hatred goes, how it’s expressed and when and on who.

RigBub#238:
Are the large gaping holes in the archives what you wanted to point to? Any chance the Knoxville ugliness lends some weight to the idea that this is a volatile moment, fraught with tension, where chaotic violence festers just below the surface? So that increasing the already violent polarity is not in anyone’s best interest? No matter how cathartic it is.

ScentOfViolets:
Lying.About.What?
It’s like you’ve just started throwing everything you’re anxious about in your own performance onto me, or what you’re convincing yourself is me.
Most clearly with your tumpty-tum-tum-you
I’m-talkin-to-you
YOU-ARE-A-LYING-LIAR.
But then you don’t say what it is I’m lying about.
Which makes it much less intimidating, to me.
Which is the only reason I can think of as to why you would say that, that way.

Again when you accuse me of hypocrisy you don’t illustrate it.
I’ve called Donohue an egregious fool, in so many words, in a public place where it’s certain his feeds run. Adding my voice to the hundreds, nay thousands.
The hypocrisy is…wait, is it that I’m calling him names and not being all compassionate on him?
Or that I’m not stalking him with an all-plastic rifle in my backpack?
If not I’m clueless what hypocrisy you’re up on.

You’ve obviously read the paragraphs I’ve put here, and you’re obviously perceptive and smart. So you should have a pretty strong idea what my intelligence can handle.
So either you’re way overestimating my ability to unpack your stuff, or it’s as empty as it seems to be.

Only an idiot would set forth personal examples to rebut the accusation of hypocrisy. Pride lurks so close. But you said it with great emphasis and I looked real hard and I don’t see it. And I don’t feel it.
But of course any true hypocrite would say exactly that.

“Troll” in this context is someone who misrepresents or aggressively emphasizes contrary ideas and attitudes, in order to piss off other commenters and generate negative response, which is the dynamic trolls thrive on.
But I hate being insulted the way you have done me here. It makes me cringe and want to stop writing anything online.
The ideas and the attitudes I’ve represented, while set forth under pseudonyms, are genuinely things that I think and feel, and if I’ve been inappropriately aggressive here I’ll be very surprised to hear it.
“Troll” as generally understood is not that.
So, unless you have your own personal version of what the word means, “troll” won’t stick either.

So. Liar, no. Hypocrite, no. Troll, no.

Myself however have said repeatedly and with variation specifically what it is about your presentation that I find objectionable. And here I am doing it again.
That you support an act whose repercussions in my view and many others’ can too easily enable the undoing of us all, unnecessarily, for reasons of personal gratification.
Simply because it gets you off, it gets your approval.

And you do that with no recognition of the threat in it, the violence in it and the threat of further violence that’s implied in it, and the harm in it to others besides the intended target.
It’s dangerous and harmful, and you’re not doing it out of valor, but because it’s gratifying.

I love how pathetic some of the screeds against “militant atheists” get.

Let me help you guys out, and tell you what you really think.

You think its ok to not be religious. You think its ok to say that a religion, or a particular religion, or a particular religious belief, is not true.

But you think its unfair to, metaphorically speaking, shoot the civilians in the world of religious discourse.

Its ok to think that! Militant atheists think that too! We just don’t have as broad a definition of civilian as you do. And we CERTAINLY don’t have as broad a definition as this moron: http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/16/crackergate/

who apparently believes that anything posted to the internet counts as civilian-shooting.

But Israel was founded as a secular country and defended by nobel prize winning physicists. How can they be wrong?

So what, Seth? Newton was a physicist too. I know a few brilliant mathematicians and software developers who are complete idiots in everything else. There’s a special word for that – ‘nerd’, they are nerds. It’s quite common.

Again and again, I post links, but no one responds to them.

It is indeed mysterious.

Then Bubba, I’ll just have to assume that I’ve been right: you’re a good old boy lapsed Catholic.
Louisiana maybe?
There’s no such thing as a lapsed Catholic. Once the cross goes in…

God, and the Host, are synecdoches for community.

This kind of remark is actually far more naive and uninformed than anything Dawkins has written. I commend to you Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained. Boyer makes a strong case that there’s much more- and in another sense, much less- to it than this. The very idea of attributing a “function” to religion- eg. social cohesion, as in the above quote- turns out to be highly questionable. It’s more like a byproduct of the way our minds, and culture, work.

There were many on the confirmed skeptical rational atheistical side back in 02-03 who acted as if intellectually defeating then ridiculing the deists should have been all it took to turn back whatever social forces were mustering behind that banner.

Who were these many and what effect did they have that you can demonstrate?

“I commend to you Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained. Boyer makes a strong case that there’s much more- and in another sense, much less- to it than this. The very idea of attributing a “function” to religion- eg. social cohesion, as in the above quote- turns out to be highly questionable. It’s more like a byproduct of the way our minds, and culture, work.”

As if Pascal Boyer weren’t himself peddling an elaborated piece of scientistic superstition, as if he knew all that much definitively about our “minds”, culture, and the dynamics of social cohension, as if he weren’t constructing a pseudo-biological reductionist account to buttress his own prejudices toward a reductionist-functionalist “cognitivism”. (I once asked on a P.Z. Myers thread, whether animals had religion. I was responded to with a set of specious syllogisms, inspite of it being essentially an evidentiary question).

I’ve actually seen commenters claim, yes, even here at CT, to the effect that all my beliefs are warranted. That would generally be some young recent grad in Analytic philosophy, full of enthusiasm. It doesn’t occur to that like, that if all my beliefs were warranted, then none would be, because there wouldn’t be any “place” from which such “warranting” could get started, since fully warranting a claim is an elaborate, laborious process, often involving much technical training, and, in fact, very few of anyone’s beliefs are warranted, to the fullest possible extent. But that doesn’t prevent one’s beliefs from being reasonably held and more-or-less rationally constrained in the world. If that weren’t the case, then reasonable agreements and attributions of “rational” agency would be scarcely possible. But the such “social science” stuff is too messy, and “soft” and lacking in sufficient explanatory “rigor” for the likes of Boyer and his ilk, so he invents a piece of pseudo-science, purportedly reducing “mind”, “culture”, “experience”, and the like to an “adaptive” automatism, to support an eliminativism that doesn’t just flatter its own prejudices, but hides its own inability to frame and think through the requirements for an adequate account. It’s not just religionists who bang their heads against walls of their own devising.

Further reports on my possible lying to my 11 year old daughter Katharine Waldmann. So I asked her

R: Kathy can you remember me lying to you ?
K: Daa-aaaad if you got away with it I wouldn’t know.
R: Yeah I mean of you catching me in a lie.
K: sure once you said “where are my glasses. I can’t find my glasses” and they were on your nose.
R: That wasn’t a lie that was an honest mistake (they were on my nose and I was honestly looking for them really).

Hmm not much there. How about Katharine Waldmann MD my 80 year old mother ?

Weeeeeelll I do recall that my little sister (then in her 30s) called and said

“Mom have you ever noticed that the Webster’s dictionary doesn’t have an entry for the word ‘gullible'” and my mother looked it up to check.

So some years later, I told her that there is no Italian translation for the word “gullible” (or in Italian “credulone”) and she believed me.

I think we can guess that I was largely raised by a person who does’t really understand the concept of “lying.” Considering how I turned out D^2 might argue that one damn well better lie to children at least once a day, but I think he will concede that not everyone actually does it.

What’s with being righteous about this ‘lying to children’ thing? You’re lying to children not to deceive them, but to answer their questions using concepts they can understand.

What is a rainbow – is your answer going to begin with describing the wave properties of light? If not, you’re not telling the whole truth. Is it lying? In a sense – yes.

You can build one thing out of crooked timber and that is a rickety pulpit. Anathema sit ye winding scantlings.

As to DD’s timid proposal, it reminds me of the ancient graffiti: Islington hush puppies rule here, is that O.K.? Behind all this is perhaps the false dichotomy between ‘unweaving the rainbow’ and ‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky’. Is it a product of Flatland analytic philosophy, a waste of facts?

abb1, I don’t know what to say…
I am sorry though that you cannot see the difference between making up a totally false explanation and trying to give a comprehensible approximation of the reality. (Explaining science to children is actually not that difficult in most cases. That’s what science museums all over the world do, sometimes from a very early age.)
As for me, I see no real difference between “God did it!” and “Shut the fuck up already, I can’t be bother to explain what happens!”

And “meaningful” changes nothing. A lie is a lie, whether it’s believed or not by those who hear it.

You may be right, Arnaud, but it’s also true that gods and fairies certainly help explaining things and cut down on the number of questions that are impossible to answer. Also, supernatural invisible beings that watch you all the time, punish bad behavior and reward good behavior are helpful, people discovered that long time ago. That’s the fact!

Shorter abb1: Religion is a good thing because it stops people asking difficult questions and helps to keep them in line.

I don’t see why a child shouldn’t go thru the normal basic stages of social development as well.

Nor do I, but perhaps you should do it somewhere else? This is a discussion forum, not a kindergarten class…

while I am perhaps the last person on earth who is well-placed to tell anyone else that winding people up for the sake of it is a really silly and childish thing to do … well, winding people up for the sake of it is a really silly and childish thing to do, and furthermore Dawkinsite militant atheists holier-than-thou “secular liberals” are as annoying as fundies in their own way and perhaps deserve a bit of winding up too

How are you going to do this? Make more death threats over a bit of doggerel? Have powerful, tax-exempt religious organizations use government money to prosletyze? Or maybe use their not-inconsiderable resources to pass legislation that obligates the rest of us to hew to their silly sectarian beliefs?

Yeah, that might wind up a few people.

Steve,
You picked two words out of an argument as a way to insert yourself into it, in pompous fashion. Do you agree that this “new” description of nonsimple, nonuniform religious form covers “Secular Platonists.” That’s my question now, as in essence it was before.

The issue is less religion than our continuing [animal] habit of relying on assumption and faith. “Faith Explained” would interest me more as a title. Though Boyer might even agree. The absurdities of grand faith are a byproduct of the biological function of an everyday variety we live by. We’re pattern-makers. “synecdoches for community” Our patterns are collective that’s all.
Still, my only question, for all concerned, is this:
Would you prefer the rule of reason or the rule of law?
History has shown the rule of reason to be a failure. Those that have claimed to represent it in the past have given us the rule of unmediated faith; and hell on earth.

I’m not sure about ‘platonism’ either, but isn’t it true that non-religious people don’t always act as wisely as one would expect from this kind of discussions? And also, isn’t it true that cracker-worshiping idiots can sometimes be quite intelligent in cracker-unrelated areas? That’s a valid point. I haven’t noticed any religious commenters in this thread; had they been here, they would’ve been making their standard points about Stalin, Hitler, etc., but they aren’t here, so ‘platonism’ it is…

I have no opinion one way or another at this level about the laws of the universe.

Gotta disagree with you there.

There aren’t any, there never were, I made it all up.

Oh dear. All the chess pieces are on the floor now.

Sigh.

There was no money. There was no robbery.

And there was no murder either.

Are there any early signs of terroristic tendencies?

I predict deep unease at rainbow sherbet.

Seth:
One obstacle may be the firm conviction inevitable to successful academics that having the right answer, in that lifelong setting logical rational conclusions drawn from provable evidence, is the only path forward.
Another might be a behind-the-scenes-ish urge toward self-censorship around that particular topic.

An easy calculation says the heat isn’t worth it to people with tenure issues and professional reputations at stake. Destroying your career to further some blog debate which won’t affect anything anyway sort of thing.

Not that it isn’t the most critically important topic in the contemporary landscape.
Not that its possible outcomes aren’t desperately crucial to all of us.

Just that the real power, in the US and UK at least, isn’t morally clear enough to be able to tolerate open debate. Nor is it morally clean enough to abstain from pressuring said academics in all kinds of unpleasant ways, should they provide a forum for that intolerable debate.
Bill Donohue’s not the only thuggish zealot at work these days.