The flesh of our savior—
A wafer, or host—
Is a part of the Eucharist rites
And a miracle happens
Or so goes the boast
With each of the sav(i)ory bites
No longer a cracker,
It’s turned into flesh
(and the wine’s turned to blood, as you know)
Not rotted and nasty
But perfectly fresh
And we gobble it down, even so!
Some call it symbolic,
But we know it’s real—
It’s a truth that cannot be ignored
And once in a while
The blood will congeal
So we’re sure we’re consuming our Lord!
Via Doubtful News, a miracle! A communion wafer is apparently bleeding. I forget–is it believers or atheists who insist on literal interpretations of scripture, and of transubstantiation, and such?
I expect PZ to face charges, now that the wafer has so definitively been shown to be Jesus Himself.
OK Let”s get a sample and extract the DNA. We can then clone it and voila! the second coming of Christ, brought to you by modern science! */snark*
If I were to suggest that we get a blood sample from the person who was holding that cracker and compare them, would you claim that the devil made me do it?
*Sigh* The basis of nearly all the major Roman philosophies was the distinction between forma and substantia. The early Christian apologists all had Roman educations, and so used the language of Roman thought in defining the details of their religion. Transubstantiation is not, and never has been, the same thing as transformation.
There is plenty to mock about the sacraments and associated theology without resorting to straw men.
So, Gregory, the throngs of believers excited to witness a miracle of a bleeding cracker are, what, illusory? Whether or not the official position of scholarly apologists is that this is literally blood, the understanding of the people in the pews appears to be a bit more concrete.
Relax folks – it’s just some kind of bacteria or something that gets on these things and grows. Several reported cases in the last few years. They won’t find human blood or DNA if they test it.
A miracle would be if that cheap muscatel they use at communion turned into a 1947 clos de Vougeot.
Consider poor Jesus, resurrected in the flesh, and immortal.
His body daily vivisected, each morsel eagerly gnawed upon in thousands of churches. His blood magically sucked out and consumed, sip by sip, by pious vampires. The agony of having spikes pounded through his extremities and being hung out in the dry Palestinian sun pales to a minor discomfort in comparison.
He will only know peace once his cult and its cannibalistic core rituals have been abandoned and forgotten. Please, do whatever you can to ease his otherwise ceaseless suffering – for Jesus’s sake.