An organization of the Catholic leadership has now condemned my actions. This is sad news: it’s clear that at least this tier of the Catholic hierarchy is as deranged as the wackaloons flooding my mailbox.
We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech.
Hmmm. Who is the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to decide the limits of freedom? Flagrant irreverence towards a cracker ought to be fair game, I should think…and that’s all this action was: irreverence. You cannot demand that all members of a pluralist society be reverent towards any random humdrum article that a guy in a dress declares holy.
The same Bill of Rights which protect freedom of speech also protect freedom of religion. The Founding Fathers did not envision a freedom FROM religion, rather a freedom OF religion. In other words, our nation’s constitution protects the rights of ALL religions, not one and not just a few.
Man, that is a tired old argument — usually you see that fine-grained parsing of the words of the bill of rights from right-wing sources, trying to distort the meaning. Do they really think a bunch of high-minded Enlightenment dudes dedicated to the principle of liberty were thinking, “We need a clause here that could be used to compel people to be a member of a church—we’ll just give them the freedom to choose which church they’ll be forced to join”? That’s insane. I am free of religion. I am free to make that choice, just as everyone is free to choose to be Catholic.
And my personal choice not to believe in the silliness of religion is not an infringement on the rights of any religion.
The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance.
This is the funniest statement in the whole declaration.
Freedom of speech means I do have the right to malign and make fun of any religion I want. I can’t interfere with your right to practice your religion, but that hasn’t happened — all I’ve done is laugh at you.
That last clause, though…do they seriously believe that only Catholics are allowed to criticize Catholics, and that this restriction is enshrined in the constitution? That’s a fine catch, that catch-22. So only Catholics can malign the faith, but if they do, then they can be kicked out of the faith, which means they can’t criticize it anymore. That sounds like a ripe piece of theological logic to me.
The Chancellor of the University refused to reprimand or censure the teacher, who ironically is a Biology Professor. One fails to see the relevance of the desecration of a Catholic sacrament to the science of Biology. Were Myers a Professor of Theology, there would have been at least a presumption of competency to express religious opinions in a classroom. Yet, for a scientist to ridicule and show utter contempt for the most sacred and precious article of a major world religion, is inappropriate, unprofessional, unconstitutional and disingenuous.
Ummm, I don’t discuss religion in the classroom. I teach biology. My ‘desecration’ was performed at home, on my own time. There’s nothing ironic about the fact that I’m a biologist, nor did I claim my profession gave me special qualifications to see through the foolishness of faith. Go ahead, any of you can do it — you don’t need to be a theologian to see that it is just a cracker.
A biologist has no business ‘dissing’ any religion, rather, they should be busy teaching the scientific discipline they were hired to teach. Tolerating such behavior by university officials is equally repugnant as it lends credibility to the act of religious hatred. We also pray that Professor Myers contritely repent and apologize.
Wait, what? This is another attempt to shield a ridiculous religion, by declaring that members of certain professions are not allowed to criticize — that only Catholic theologians are permitted to rebuke the absurdities in their faith.
As for the idea that I’m supposed to be teaching biology 24-7…what, I can’t have a hobby? I can tell you that when I try to tell my wife late evening on Wednesday night that I can’t take out the trash because I’m too busy teaching biology, well, that excuse won’t fly very far.
I am not contrite, I will not repent, and I’m certainly not going to apologize for tossing a cracker in the garbage. All the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy will get from me is laughter.
As far as I understand things, PZ has never been Catholic. I don’t believe you can be ex-communicated (that is, excluded from the Catholic community/communion) if you’ve never been a member of it in the first place. So, first he’d have to convert and go through RCIA (the “Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults”). Then he could be excommunicated.
Iunno what they do to heathens. Probably they could put his blog on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or whatever. Although technically the Index is no longer considered enforceable under canon law, just advisable to abide by, and since PZ’s writings contradict Catholic doctrine, they might well not even have bothered to put them on the Index anyway, but instead just have considered them ipso facto forbidden. So I guess I still don’t know what the usual thing to do would be. Publish angry, poorly reasoned, and semi-literate fulminations against him, apparently.
Also, I learned today that if you were baptized Catholic and somehow manage to get yourself excommunicated, they still consider the mark of baptism to be indelible. In other words, you’re still Catholic, you’re just being shunned on account of how you’re a bad Catholic. I’d really like to know how to get that mark off. I keep scrubbing and scrubbing and…
Anne,
When I was around 35, my mother had her marriage annulled (divorced like 18 years by then, she was considering marrying cheeses, as it were). I had to ask her if that would make me a bastard (well, more of a bastard).
Why did God cry?
Because his son had been a wafer so long.
Them host crackers is G-O-D good! (very funny #503!)
To mock GOD is absolute foolishness, one can never be so sure that at the moment of one’s death, one just might meet Jesus Christ! In fact, I know with certainty one will!
What a rude awakening that will be!
My suggestion to all you arrogant, prideful, and limited in intelligence atheists, is to get on your knees and bow to your GOD JESUS CHRIST begging forgiveness for your horrible abominations! May GOD convert you! He always has the last laugh!
Albert Einstein, the greatest mind of the last century was more amazed by the Created design of the Universe at the time of his death. Yet, you bozos somehow think it just occurred by chance. That’s no more intelligent then believing a computer created itself by chance. Wake up boys! There’s a designer behind every design.
The study of science by men is merely the study of disassembling what GOD designed and created. That’s what most of you do for a living. Amazing what HE created!
Finite minds can never understand an infinite GOD!
I know for certain that you will be reborn as an earthworm, jose. Troll.
@ #505.
No, I’ll spit in his eye and call him a bastard son of a bitch. The prince of pain, the morbid offspring of a self-obsessed, sexually repressed, attention deficit, tyrannical and pathetic excuse of a deity.
Except that I won’t. ‘Cos I’ll be dead and hence have no further interest in the proceedings. Your life is a process supported by the machinery of your body moron, once it stops, it stops. End of line.
That’s the one regret I have about being an atheist, the sad realisation that jerks like you will never know they don’t do to heaven. You just die.
Oh, and Albert Einstein rejected any notion of a supernatural god. His “god” was an orderly universe. Which is the reason he didn’t like Quantum Mechanics at all.
If there is a supernatural creator he’s a damn lousy workman.
Paul Myers, the Minnesota professor who desecrated the Holy Eucharist with a rusty nail, is unknowingly an instrument of God. He has illustrated and confirmed what Catholic believe about the Holy Eucharist.
At Mass the boundaries of space and time do not exist, we enter into the room of the Last Supper and into the moment of the crucifixion. The Desecration of the Holy Eucharist is a great tangible illustration of what occurs every time at Mass.
Christ transforms a piece of bread into his body, blood, soul, and divinity during the Last Supper and at Mass. Judas betrays Christ, the person who gave the professor the sacred Eucharist also betrayed Christ. The professor could have desecrated the Holy Eucharist in many ways, but he used the same method as the Roman soldiers, a nail. Paul Myers entered into the crucifixion with his actions in the same supernatural way Catholic enter into the moment of Christ’s final days before the resurrection.
At the crucifixion and at Mass many people are ignorant of the amazing events that unfold before their eyes. Throwing Christ into the trash is an excellent demonstration of the lack of reverence that occupies in many hearts.
Paul Myers is an instrument of God in the same way Pontius Pilate is an instrument of God. He has shown how everyone at Mass enters into the Last Supper and into the crucifixion.
Anne # 501
Not only fallen Catlick, but former altar Boy as well.
PZ interview:
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/inner187.mp3
Funnily enough, Newt Gingrich’s latest trophy wife, Calista Bisek, is herself Catholic, so much so that she got a bishop to “annul” Newt’s first and second marriages — even though neither Newt nor his first two wives were Catholics when they got married and divorced — apparently so she could claim that she really wasn’t a little old homewrecking tart-o-matic: “See, see, see?!? I wasn’t a homewrecker, his marriage wasn’t REAL!!!”.
It is just a cracker Janet.
Erm. Whatever Janet. It’s all a part of gods plan… too funny.
What kind of past experience or personalty disorder would make someone insult other peoples beliefs and, more extraordinarily, be surprised that people would be offended? Myers doesn’t have to believe in hell, what he is living right now is bad enough.
Scooter, I believe PZ was a Lutheran altar boy, not a Catholic one. That’s what it says on his wikipedia page too.
# 510 Janet
That’s pretty good.
I assume that you mean that the moment of the last supper has been recreated ritualistically for centuries by the Catholics, which keeps that moment alive, so to speak, not that the Church is a literal time machine, and that PZ was not actually transmogrified into Pilot, and that the wafer is not REALLY transubstantiated into flesh.
What you have written above is a well constructed, somewhat internally consistent metaphor.
To many Catholics and ALL outsiders, that is what Mass is.
But you can’t murder, kidnap or torture a metaphor, or specifically, a symbol from within a metaphor. Well actually you CAN but it is not a crime.
If we are in agreement this far, then it follows that PZ’s act was an insulting attack on an idea, not an act of violence.
As far as being insulted, that happens to me every time I turn on the TV, or when my kids come home from public schools and can quote all the major Bible Stories.
What kind of past experience or personalty disorder would make someone insult other peoples beliefs and, more extraordinarily, be surprised that people would be offended? – Liam
What kind of brainwashing would lead to this degree of stupidity? PZ was not in the least surprised, because he took the action he did in response to the ludicrous and intolerant reaction of some Catholics to a student failing to swallow a cracker he’d been given.
I stand corrected.
I didn’t even know Lutherans had altar boys.
Do they Altar them the same way the Catholics do, I wonderz.
I was forced into Baptist, then Presbyterian Churches where instead of recreating the Last Supper, they recreate Hell for 90 minutes
George Shollenberger, is that you?
I love a good cheap bad joke.
“PZ was not in the least surprised, because he took the action he did in response to the ludicrous and intolerant reaction of some Catholics to a student failing to swallow a cracker he’d been given.”
He should’ve known. If you’re offered Jesus, you MUST eat him or you’ll offend the savages.
Oh, and I have a question for any theist trolls lurking about: If I DO meet Jesus on my death bed, am I supposed to eat him then, too? Would it offend him if I didn’t? It’s hard to keep up with all these wacky, arbitrary rules.
So Science is an autopsy?
Yall are forever morbid, I’ll give you that.
So when do we get to eat Mary? She looks pretty hot in those statues.
And immaculate, too.
Yummmm
From the CCC:
Spelling “offense” with an s is presumably a US thing. In the UK it would be “offence” (a noun) and the definition amusingly and revealingly includes (early on): “occasion of unbelief”! :-D
They’d actually have something approaching a cunning plan there if what they achieved, by their otherwise wholly useless praying, was an understanding of how ridiculous their beliefs really are and hence resolved not to react so absurdly and disproportionately in the future. Then they might manage: (a) not to be offended by other people noticing any of their remaining stupid beliefs; (b) to ditch that belief altogether so that there can be no further individual occasions of unbelief connected with it; or (c) to become rational beings themselves and thus stop giving themselves cause to react over-emotionally about stupid trivia.
@ Liam #515:
I think that might make you a Cathar – ie honorary member of the splitter sect/cult accused of being Satanists for their belief that Hell was the real world which had been created by the bad god and that reaching Heaven required escape from both life and reincarnation via being declared perfect and getting a holy spirit ascension boost like Jesus.
OK then, what does “PRIEST” stand for?
Pædophile Resident In Every Small Town.
You may not be allowed to talk about religion, but pastors still seem to be allowed to talk about science. In this case spouting tired old climate skeptic statements that are unfounded, or misconstrued partial truths at best.
http://www.virginiamn.com/articles/2008/07/26/your_views/doc488be86013bb2800583136.txt
That guy who shot up the Unitarian church was an atheist who hated Christians. Like it or not he was one of you. He just happened to be a conservative atheist. Atheists are violent and filled with hatred.
What cute, tiny little brains God has endowed you with…poor, poor, pitiful PZistas!
Cross-threaded (no pun intended) @Sam
he was muttering about how the Bible contradicted itself while he shot those people. He hated religion. This is what hatred does and what atheists do.
Commenting about contradictions in the Bible does not an atheist make; Christians do it as well (or are they No True Christians?). You need far more than that to identify him as an atheist.
By the way, that guy who shot up the Unitarian church was a conservative who hated atheists, liberals and gays. Like it or not he was one of you. He just happened to be a conservative atheist. Conservatives are violent and filled with hatred.
Also, that guy who blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building was a Christian who hated atheists and Jews. Like it or not he was one of you. Christians are violent and filled with hatred.
And that guy who bombed the Olympic Center in Georgia was a Christian who hated liberals and atheists and women. Like it or not he was one of you. He just happened to also be a Southern redneck. Christians are violent and filled with hatred.
And the guy who shot up Virginia Tech was a Christian who hated liberals and the “debauchery” of “rich kids”. Like it or not he was one of you. He just happened to also be of Korean descent. Christians are violent and filled with hatred.
And those guys who bomb abortion clinics, shoot the employees and stalk their family members are Christians who hate atheists, liberals, women and doctors. Like it or not they are part of you. They just happen to be willing to act out the sick fantasies that you only masturbate to. Christians are violent and filled with hatred.
We can play this game all day long, Sam, and it will never get old.
Patricia at # 443:
The Catholic Church, through then pope JP II, did apologize for improprieties during the Inquisition and I believe, the Crusades also. I’ll give them some credit for that, albeit rather belated in coming around. My big beef with them now is still about population control. Just think, the lower commodity prices, better environment, and better wages if ZPG had really taken off in the 70s. (And the plutocrats combine with the religious right because the former want a bigger labor supply to reduce wages, and they’re aided by a kooky cornucopian wing of the libertarians (e.g. Julian Simon) that I just don’t get.)
PS: I think that, given the resurgence of global warming skepticism etc., you folks are wasting too much effort making fun of religious stuff and UFOs. You should be concentrating more fire on the politically motivated antiscience crowd.
For Spike at 489
Re the Banana
First go have a chuckle at a You Tube by Comfort and company called “the atheists worst nightmare”. They think that the design of the banana proves god.
It’s an amazing piece, a real classic.
Next ponder the old Polynesian Creation myth, Seems the gods created a woman first. Well, she was bored and lonesome. Until, the story goes, she found a magic banana. Soon she had a fine strapping son. A few more magic bananas and she had a whole family to keep her busy and populate the islands. I think we should teach this one right along Adam and Eve. Teach the controversy!
After all, it’s just a theory, right?
Thank you kindly
Hand in hand.
Here’s an interesting presumption:
That’s the one regret I have about being an atheist, the sad realisation that jerks like you will never know they don’t do to heaven. You just die.
Posted by: Ponder | July 31, 2008 11:43 AM
But what if platonic realism is true, and every possible program is run in the multiverse? Then wouldn’t your mind be recreated, since “which machine” is not important in AI?
Hey, I don’t know, it’s just food for thought.
Chimp, you’ve got a point but in this era the political types are killing us. They have their own venues and interest groups, and heavy fire needs to be directed right at them.
Oh I agree. Targeted fire for each specified threat is necessary. But every threat deserves it’s ration of artillery. How knows, maybe you kill two birds with one “shell”.
Ok enough of my mangled sayings.
This is nonsense. First, the shooter’s ex-wife was a member of the congregation he shot up. Therefor it’s likely that he would know that the congregation included many non-Christians, and probably some atheists. Second, there is no report of the shooter being an atheist. There is one report of him ‘hating Christians’, but it contradicts every other piece of information we have about the shooter, and even that report stops short of calling him an ‘atheist’.
SEK,
That’s a good one — I didn’t know that.
Is offence used in the UK only as a noun? In US English, it can be used in a number of ways, so for example I can say that my football team’s offense is not playing very well (I guess that would be a noun). I would also say that they are playing lousy offense (which would be a verb). I could further add that it’s an offense for the offense to play such lousy offense, where in this case the first offense is actually also a noun, I guess.
Off topic post, but the little difference between the Englishes are interesting.
Thank you Phoenix Woman. Now I will be laughing all day at the thought of Newt Gingrich trying to have sex with a machine that manufactures pop-tarts.
It looks just like a telefunken U-47
/Zappa
It’s not JUST The Catholic Confraternity of CAtholiuc Clergy that doesn’t like you.
NO ONE likes you.
That’s the result of your juvenile acting-out. Your overwhelming need to be noticed stemming from your feelings of inadequacy likely due to a feeling that you received less attention than a sibling. (Are you a 2nd born son?)
NO ONE actually likes you. You do have “fans” pandering to your blog persona, but it’s your shared ideology that they have affection for, not you.
By the way, NO ONE likes you.
Not even my mommy? Awwwww.
Hold NOTHING Sacred.
PZ Myers
Did she teach you that, or did you come up with it on your own?
Is that what passes for an argument these days? Or even an insult?
You are definitely Dumb BigChimp. It is neither an argument nor an insult. Look up what defines those things, and you might be able to discern that.
It is a simple statement of fact. No more, no less.
Oh this is rich! Jack’s understanding of a statement of fact goes a long way toward explaining the rationale of the religious that visit here.
Ooh, ooh, I know { waves hand in air furiously }, pick me, pick me!
{ meaningful pause }
What, not even a god who allegedly loves everyone and so loved the world that … { blah blah blah }?
;-)
Well Mr Myers you have global attention…
Even here in the Land Down Under your notoriety has spread like a virus.
I find your perpective on your actions interesting and at the same time disturbing…
You say… “Flagrant irreverence towards a cracker ought to be fair game, I should think…and that’s all this action was: irreverence. You cannot demand that all members of a pluralist society be reverent towards any random humdrum article that a guy in a dress declares holy.”
This is all very true…
But then you didn’t do this to just any ‘cracker’ now did you?
1. You visited our Ccommunity of Faith
2. Pretended to be one of the Faithful of that community in order to aquire something given to you in good faith
3. Took that thing away and desecrated it
4. Struggling with your ‘personal victory’ over the thing you don’t understand and I hazard fear (because thtas what we do when we dont understand something)
5. Elected to blog about it in the hope that others might agree with your actions and thus salve your guilt not over the descration of the host or vicious attack on the beliefs of Catholics but rather your other crimes… deceit, betrayal etc etc.
But lets face it Mr Myers… feel any better really???
I pity you Mr Myers. It must be terrible being so public an atheist… it makes it very hard to admit when you are wrong or to seek answers when you fear the questions!
I hope you never experience the pain you have put people through in this vicious attack on their fervant beliefs. As an atheist where would you be if somebody were to strike at the very heart of what you think you know to be true.
You are a sad sad man!
I pity you Mr Myers. It must be terrible being so public an atheist… it makes it very hard to admit when you are wrong or to seek answers when you fear the questions!
blah blah blah blah blah
And in other news, the bigoted asswipes in Rome continue their war on gay people.
No, he didn’t.
Still no.
See how religious retardation continually contributes to the inability of the faithful to actually seek out, read and comprehend the basic facts – which they would need as an absolute minimum before even attempting to construct a coherent argument. Instead they habitually pick the lazy route of believing whatever their fellow religious liars (last) told them. And that is why they fail.
To be honest, the thing that I find the funniest, is that the Catholics, instead of the Muslims, are the ones having a collective childish temper tantrum over something so mundane.
Actually, I think that the Muslims would have reacted a bit differently.
Perhaps that is why the good professor desecrated a host, rather than a copy of the Koran?
Perhaps that is why the good professor desecrated a host, rather than a copy of the Koran?
And yet another liar.
Karen LH wrote:
Now you haven’t been following, have you? PZ desecrated a copy of the Koran also — ripped it up, threw coffee grounds on it, and tossed it in the trash. Along with the first few pages of The God Delusion.
New people, please read the original posts, in order. They’re not hard to find, I think. It will help you understand, even if it doesn’t convince you. And your arguments would be more to the point.
Not to quick on the uptake huh Karen LH?
Well it happens every day. You are doing it right now.
And frankly. I feel pretty good.
“I can’t interfere with your right to practice your religion, but that hasn’t happened — all I’ve done is laugh at you.”
Sir, but you have, in fact, interferred. Yes, you have the freedom of speech, but speaking against a sacramental article of faith is something quite different from physically abusing that same article. As a Catholic, I find your actions repulsive and crude, something which chills my blood, but at the same time I must respect your inherent right to verbally express your dissagreement. However, you transgress certain barriers.
You asked that people provide you Hosts. With their compliance, they made this desecration possible, as such, they will hold that mortal sin on their consciences until the end. However, yours is the greater flaw as you initiated the interferrence. By taking that which is held most sacred by the world’s largest, unified faith, you cross a legal barrier. You are no longer practicing speech, but rather an unsanctioned action which is directly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, and indirectly to all of Christendom.
That is not your right. Feel free to poke fun at us, but donot physically assualt our Sacraments. That is something that infringed upon our religious freedom, something which we are legally protected against.
Pax tecum,
Jeremiah
Jeremiah
It is just a cracker. Get over it.
Teh stupid! It burns!
Warden and Karen LH, do you understand why it is hard to take you seriously when you are so obviously ignorant about what happened? Well, do you?
You might think, though, that a man who was old enough to be a grandfather, and who had the brains and discipline to have earned a doctorate in the hard sciences, could somehow muster a more intelligent and mature critique of religion than an act of mindless vandalism worthy of a twelve-year-old boy.
You’d think.
OK, liar Karen, being caught in an untruth, just decides to lash out.
over a cracker.
Now you haven’t been following, have you? PZ desecrated a copy of the Koran also — ripped it up, threw coffee grounds on it, and tossed it in the trash. Along with the first few pages of The God Delusion.
I stand corrected. No, I haven’t been following.
You might think Christians would think people are more important than a cracker.
Strange world.
Jeremiah Lennox #559 wrote:
There is a small, technical issue on whether the person who originally accepted the conditional gift of the cracker (and then gave it to PZ) is guilty of violating the terms of the condition, but I think that this is a moral question, not a legal one. It’s more along the line of being bad manners. And one can argue (and many have, passionately), that the importance of the larger point which PZ was making far outweighs any relatively small infraction involved.
Everything else you say on “unsanctioned actions” and “violations of the sacred” is internal to your church. It’s not a crime outside your church. Which is, in fact, the larger point PZ was making.
Now, if I were Catholic, I would certainly say that PZ is NOT allowed to take communion or become a member of the Catholic faith unless he repents. But I’d really need to stop there. So should you.
I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave it to God. Which, I suspect you already know at some level, means nothing happens. Which is why you came here, to complain in case God doesn’t show up and do His part after all.
O ye of little faith…
Well first, it is not a statement of fact It is your misinformed opinion. Maybe you need to look that up.
And secondly
CHECK
CHECK
I’m sorry what was that?
Guys… we don’t think that the consecrated host is “just a cracker”. That’s sort of a relevant point.
You might think Christians would think people are more important than a cracker.
I would have thought so before this whole episode.
What got me were folks actually saying, “I would rather take a bullet than watch the cracker get it.”
Guys… we don’t think that the consecrated host is “just a cracker”. That’s sort of a relevant point.
whoooooooooooooosh!
“we don’t think that the consecrated host is “just a cracker”.”
I don’t care what you think.
I do care that a cracker is apparently more important than just about anything.
I believe anyone who truly believes that is dangerous and should be avoided.
Exactly how?
And what I still fail to grasp is why do you care? Why?
It’s him risking the eternal damnation, not you. You can go on your merry little blissfully ignorant way praying as often as you feel the urge to grasp those beads and what difference to you does this make?
Oh no you’re offended? Do you think the god I hear described so often as a caring god really cares? And if he does it’s not you.
Ahh but the point is it’s not the following of the teachings that matter, its the ceremony.
Guys… we don’t think that the consecrated host is “just a cracker”. That’s sort of a relevant point. – Proven liar Karen LH.
It is indeed – in that it proves you’re completely irrational.
Well what is more relevant is that it isn’t more than a cracker other than some irrational emotional tie you have to said cracker because someone has told you it is more than a cracker but can not show you.
Still a cracker.
What is your feeling about the death threats?
It came as quite a surprise to me too.
All the Catholics I know are quite sane.
Who knew their was a significant contingent of absolute nutters?
Karen LH,
We don’t consider it more than a cracker, we don’t think you should consider it more than a cracker (plenty of other christians, catholics included don’t, for example) and we certainly don’t consider it worth making threats of physical violence or trying to ruin careers over.
I can guarantee nearly everything you probably wish to say has been said – and responded to – before. In order to save everyone time and energy, please go back to the very beginning and read this post: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php
Another bigot stereotyping muslims.
So, if we should honour the rights of all religions…..
… I wonder when we can see the Pro MooLife Campaign?
Here’s an example of Catholic respect for others:
Condemn homosexuality, Vatican official tells Lambeth conference
Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour that must be condemned, a Vatican official said yesterday.
Walter Cardinal Kasper made the remarks during an address at the Lambeth conference, the once-a-decade gathering of the world’s Anglican bishops in Canterbury.
Kasper, who is president of the pontifical council for promoting christian unity, reminded delegates of the catechism of the Roman Catholic church on homosexuality: “This teaching is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute.”
Teh Gay is bad because the god of infinite love put in the Good Book.
Note to Catholics: this IS bigotry, because sexual orientation is innate and not a belief.
Well I haven’t had one answer the do you eat beef question and “get it” yet.
As we know, it’s only a problem when it is their sacred cow.
I mean cracker.
Karen LH, you seem like a nice person. I have family that is Catholic and I’m sure they see this like you do. My question to you is this. Assuming you believe it is silly to think that cows are sacred, is it OK if I eat a hamburger? Please don’t conflate this with whether or not I owned the cow or whether someone gave me the hamburger. The point is, how would you respond to finding yourself harassed for eating a hamburger?
Karen! Your meds!
I must have missed the part in the Constitution which says it is unconstitutional to malign a cracker.
I knew the religious right were a bit, well, “funny in the head”, but for the wafer to be the “most sacred and precious article” of their religion is a bit further “out there”.
And as for someone not respecting the wafer being disingenuous. Huh? Are they using the same English language the rest of us use?
Apart from anything else, the cracker issue has shown that catholicism is a faith divided – we’ve seen that there are plenty of catholics who don’t believe in literal transubstiation, and couldn’t give a crap about what happened to the cracker because it’s meaningless to them.
Then there are the frothing idiot fringe claiming it’s worse than having their children raped and murdered, or themselves shot in the head.
Could be another schism in the making. Excuse me while I go and register Catholic Church of the Literal Eucharist™.com somewhere on teh internets.
What has happened to this world? Hate, ridicule, derision, all carried out by the so-called “enlightened.” Not until this past generation would any of this have occurred….people might not have believed, but they at least showed a respect for those who did.
Hope you all enjoy the fires of hell….repent while you still can.
Wow, that Myers and his worshipers sure are a sick lot.
Desecration of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself followed up with gleeful cheers from PZ’s mindless fan club…how enlightened.
Ray, what are your feelings on the DEATH THREATS made against the student who innocently carried the cracker back to his pew and to PZ for suggesting he might do something to a cracker?
Humm?
Hey PZ (and all his mindless worshipers)…you want to cause hurt and pain, then why don’t you go kick the dog or beat the wife; but try leaving my religion alone.
Ray, answer the question.
I met Madalyn O’Hair in 1972 in Austin, Texas. She founded the Society of Separationists. As an atheist, I saw her as a heroine in the fight for human reason over superstition and ignorance. I was surprised to find a woman who was filled with anger and hatred. Her arrogance and general contempt for other human beings in general caught me off guard. I spoke to other atheists in Austin and they shared the same experience. They found her to be painfully narcissistic; everything was about her; he could not hear others; she could not carry on a civil dialogue; she spoke in monologues, lectures, with sarcasm and ridicule, shaming anyone, who disagreed with her.
When I read your posts, and read about your actions to provoke others whom you disagree, I wonder what gives with you? You sound like an angry self-centered adolescent. You want atheists to be taken seriously and then you act up like an out of control teenage…..
Is this an example of the triumph of reason over primitive instincts?
Michael Peter
Why should we leave your religion alone? Your religion doesn’t like to leave anyone else alone?
And shouldn’t your religion be able to weather the storm? I mean it is the one true religion right?
The unfortunate part here is that the literal Eucharist thing is the actual official position of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Pope and suchlike. If there’s a schism, it’s gonna be the sane people who end up needing a new name, not the cracker-lovers.
Michael Peter wrote:
He wanted to show that the reaction was disproportionate to the action. In this he succeeded – probably far better than he had anticipated.
A wafer is the most precious thing in these loons’ life. Not as a symbol, but the wafer itself.
Kind of…twisted…isn’t it?
Michael Peter. I’m not sure but I think when I looked up concern troll in the dictionary, I saw your picture.
Anne Nonymous, #594
Fair enough; I’ll go for Catholic Church of the Symbolic Eucharist instead.
Bloody splitters!
Wow. I am really feeling horrible for what I see here. I guess I just find the hatred for Catholicism incomprehensible. As a Catholic (and yes, I revere the Blessed Sacrament), I am just seriously confused as to why Catholic religious beliefs are not at the VERY LEAST respected. You all seem to get that we revere the Eucharist — since we believe that it truly IS the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord. So, why bother to be up in a tizzy and seek to desecrate it? The ole Prof clearly knew what he was doing, I just wonder why. Because he could??? Because he really does believe that it is more than just a cracker?? Because he wanted to upset Catholics??? I just don’t understand the animosity. The Catholic Church does not limit in any way your desire to be atheist — so why lash out as such? Can someone explain this to me, because I am sincerely trying to understand the blatant disrespect, when no disrespect or lack of freedom is shown to you. I would sincerely like to discuss this issue in a spirit of rational dialogue.
Michael Peter:
As you haven’t made an argument, there is very little to address in your post. However, I would advise you to listen to this: An evil atheist and a Catholic priest have a conversation…, before commenting any further.
Your anecdote about Madalyn O’Hair is entirely irrelevant.
When you have listened to the conversation between PZ and a Catholic Priest, do come back and provide some sort of argument against PZ’s actions. I would hate to think that you are simply projecting your own personality and values on to the situation. It’s terribly selfish and arrogant, in my opinion.
Why on earth should your lack of comfort with a situation be a rational reason for somebody else not to act?
Do you know the full story of the incident? it’s apparent that many come here to make comments without realizing that members of your church gave death threats to the kid that originally innocently took the cracker back to his pew to show a curious friend. After a physical assault by members of the church and the following death threats against the kid, PZ reacted by threatening he might do something to a Eucharist cracker. The point was to show that the reaction of the people who attacked the kid was insanity.
Which is worse? Death threats or cracker threats?
The Great Cracker Crisis had seemed to be behind us … until sometime this afternoon when an influx of Troo Believerz came zooming into this thread, giving every sign of not having read any of the background to this situation and tending to recite a similar (ahem) litany about stupid atheists in thrall to a hateful cult leader.
It’s possible to imagine this represents a shock (& awe?) wave sent by the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (all 600 thereof), but that somehow doesn’t seem very probable. On the other tentacle, that this wave should have splashed on Pharyngula’s shore on a Thursday may have some connection to the observed habit of many of the highly devout of attending Wednesday night services.
Or perhaps Bill Donohue or Andrew Sullivan or Judie Brown or Tom Euteneur or some other exalted online figure among the Roman legions has summoned fresh reserves with a digital communique to join the battle for the multiply-martyred wafer.
Is there anyone among those charging this particular set of the Gates of Hell™ willing to inform us unenlightened sinners on whose behalf you have come to share your loving message?
Hey ummm Angela, It’s just a cracker.
You have no right to not be offended.
We’re atheists, in general, we don’t respect any religion.
Talk to the student in Florida who the Catholic league is trying to expel… that might give you a hint why PZ threw out the cracker.
Angela, #599, wrote:
Angela, don’t make the mistake of assuming that mockery and lack of respect equals hatred. And there is a context here which you need to understand.
Your best best is to start at the very start – you’ll find most of what you want to say has already been said by others who share you interpretation of your faith.
Please read this post and the comments:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php
Angela, I assume you never eat a hamburger in the vicinity of a Hindu. Or doesn’t that religion deserve your respect?
No no. Only their sacred cows count.
Rev, do they have a special brand on them?
Hi Michael Peter,
I am not sure you were replying to my post, though I assume that you were. I was not really trying to make an argument, I was just trying to understand as I said, since the lack of respect toward something that Catholics find so sacred is so obvious. No one doubts that a person can do such a thing, no one really even restrains another’s actions. I concede that anyone can freely choose to do as they wish. But I guess I just don’t see the ought. And I am also not sure of what you mean when you say that my lack of comfort with a situation is a rational reason for somebody else not to act. It strikes me as terribly selfish and arrogant.
I am not sure about Madalyn O’Hair, or even who that is, so I don’t know what to say about that. I am sincerely not trying to be terribly selfish and arrogant, in anyone’s opinion.
But I also think that your insistence that I should simply accept a person’s ability to be disrespectful toward my faith or ANYONE’S faith or lack thereof is merely a manifestation of you simply projecting your own personality and values on to the situation. Do you see a double standard at all? Or am I simply being illogical?
I will be happy to listen to the debate, but only if you return the favor and enter into a legitimate dialogue. So, if you would take a look at this Apostolic Letter on the Eucharist: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20070222_sacramentum-caritatis_en.html
And these papal encyclicals:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0222/_INDEX.HTM
I would just be delighted to listen to your mp3s and start up a dialogue with you!!
Ok, Dr. Myers, you got your 15 minutes of media attention. What else have you gained?
You got a whole lot of people really pissed off at you! You probably riled up some really crazy types!
Have you changed any minds?
This silly adolescent act of destruction of a Catholic sacrament–makes no sense! A completely illogical act!
So, it makes me wonder, what really motivates you? What do you get out of stirring up so much resentment, anger and rage? What motivate your irrational behavior?
Who are you REALLY angry at, Dr. Myers?
Your father? Your mother? A sibling?
A bully that beat you up as a elementary school kid?
Do you represent the ‘best’ atheists have to offer us?
I can’t see how angry self-righteous bigots, albeit atheist bigots, are any improvement to the world scene.
In case you haven’t noticed, Dr. Myers, I think we have enough people cranking up the intolerance and violence level already. The violence level is getting pretty high!
Nah, I don’t think i’m interested in your brand of intolerance–“same ole same ole.”
Angela:
Though it isn’t necessarily relevant in this particular situation, are you really suggesting that Catholics respect Homosexuals, Africans [or anyone else that is at risk of contracting AIDS], women, children, etc?
Do you even have any idea how much suffering your church has caused, and continues to, in the world?
Honestly, it’s as if most Catholics are completely oblivious to the real destruction that the church has wreaked throughout the world. And, yes, the Catholic church also does good, but you cannot lay claim to that, while attempting to disown the other. It doesn’t work like that.
The current Pope, let me remind you, was at the forefront of the disgraceful attempt to cover up the priest rape scandal. And you wonder why people are hostile?
As far as this situation is concerned, it is simply a matter of, (1) expressing solidarity with Webster Cook who faces ruin for behaving, at worst, disrespectfully, and (2) as a protest to the absurd reaction of many Catholics which include, but are not limited to, death threats, attempts to destroy careers, claims that the host is as important as human life, members of ones family, etc.
Whether you believe that the host transforms in to the body of Jesus Christ or not, it is irrelevant. There is no evidence that it does, and to compare the desecration of the host to a hate crime, hostage taking, and physically harming a member of ones family, is abhorrent in the extreme and it devalues real suffering and harm in the world.
You’re being illogical. If you don’t want to be offended, don’t read PZ’s blog or get the latest freak out from The Catholic League. No one is attacking you or your religion, other than calling it nonsense.
As we’ve said time and time again, respect is earned, it’s not a right.
Well, I think the latest posts after mine proved the point. And yes, I do think Hindus deserve respect, and actually, I do not disrespect their faith. You may be right that it is just a cracker, but what if it’s not? And how are we to know?
You are right, mockery is not hatred — how do they call it, I think they say it is a form of envy. That’s interesting.
peter B. What is your answer to the eat a hamburger in front of a Hindu dilemma? Would you be upset if PZ drew a cartoon that included the face of Mohamed(sp?). I suspect it is only the act of a self righteous bigot when Catholicism is the target.
Lampooning ridiculous beliefs is an activity that we should all partake in.
No beef?
We can crack the cracker open and study it. Have you ever seen evidence that the wafer is anything but that? If we can’t know that it’s MORE than just a cracker what’s the friggin point? It’s all so goofy.
So you don’t eat meat Angela?
If you think we envy theists, you haven’t been paying attention.
Peter B, #609,
You’ll look like less of an ignorant idiot if you have the context.
Go herehttp://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php
Read the posts. Maybe then you’ll understand what the hell’s going on, instead of coming across like a child who’s wandered in at the end of a movie and wants to know what’s going on.
Sorry rmp, i was using sacred cow referring to the Catholics.
As in
No one is attacking you or your religion, other than calling it nonsense
Not true. Someone directly attacked what I believe to be my Lord. That is a blatant attack on my religion. I don’t care if you think my religion is nonsense. That is your free choice, and I respect that. I read the blog to sincerely try to understand why someone would do that — not because I don’t want to be offended. I don’t get offended.
The current Pope, let me remind you, was at the forefront of the disgraceful attempt to cover up the priest rape scandal. And you wonder why people are hostile?
Not true. Please check out the latest news from World Youth Day in Sydney.
And yes, I am really suggesting that Catholics respect Homosexuals, Africans [or anyone else that is at risk of contracting AIDS], women, children, etc? Please refer to this document:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html
No one is attacking you or your religion, other than calling it nonsense
Not true. Someone directly attacked what I believe to be my Lord. That is a blatant attack on my religion. I don’t care if you think my religion is nonsense. That is your free choice, and I respect that. I read the blog to sincerely try to understand why someone would do that — not because I don’t want to be offended. I don’t get offended.
The current Pope, let me remind you, was at the forefront of the disgraceful attempt to cover up the priest rape scandal. And you wonder why people are hostile?
Not true. Please check out the latest news from World Youth Day in Sydney.
And yes, I am really suggesting that Catholics respect Homosexuals, Africans [or anyone else that is at risk of contracting AIDS], women, children, etc? Please refer to this document:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html
Angela, you stop short of telling us if you eat hamburgers. Interesting. I’m sure it just slipped your mind.
I don’t believe you because we’ve given you the context and you seem to be conveniently ignoring it.
Do you think that actual physical assaults and death threats against a human are worse than threats against a Eucharist cracker?
Hi Peter B! Thanks so much for your kind words!! So much appreciated. I did indeed try your link, but it looks like the link has expired! Just a heads up!
Phhhhht. Hahaha. Seriously your “lord” manifests itself into the “host” so you can eat it and then poop it out?
Why doesn’t the lord manifest itself into a kickass monster that can defend itself from a mild mannered professor with a nail?
PZ says why he did it in a very concise and eloquent manner. Try reading it rather then posting links to the pope’s speeches.
Angela:
That was my post at #600. It was a reply to Michael Peter.
However, I will read the links that you have provided. Thank you.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t support the desecration because I couldn’t think of an ethical way to get hold of a Eucharist. It is hardly the crime of the century, to be sure, but I do at least try to be consistent.
As far as the actual desecration is concerned, as a protest against the death threats and attempts to ruin the careers of both PZ Myers and Webster Cook, it will be worth it if even a few Catholics have been encouraged to think about any number of issues concerning their faith.
I am sorry that you have been hurt by this action. If it motivates you to work towards eliminating the real and tangible harm that the Catholic church causes throughout the world, we may finally be getting somewhere.
Angela unless you answer our questions you are not here in good faith to find out why this whole thing went down.
1. did you read up on the entire incident? Please do if you have not, it should give you some perspective.
2. do you think physical assault and death threats are of less significance than threatening to do something to a Eucharist cracker
3. Do you eat beef?
Rev, I owe you a beer if Angela answers your questions.
Angela said:
And if you’d be so kind as to check out the secret document which sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church:
And Angela, have you even read that link that you provided? It says:
“Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not.”
It’s disgusting, and I will not respect the Catholic Church [or any other, for that matter] until they stop talking about homosexuality as a sin, a moral evil, and accept it as biologically natural, which is something that science has shown to be true.
Honestly, if you see that as caring about homosexuals, I have nothing else to say to you. I’m fed up of this nonsense, and I’m fed up of religious pseudo-morality based on nothing more than fantasy. These are real lives that you are playing with, you know?
I am really suggesting that Catholics respect Homosexuals
Such grand respect, trying to make sure that we don’t have civil rights and saying that placing children in our homes is doing violence to them. The Roman Catholic Church is an anti-gay hate organization.
And shove your cracker up your ass until I get equal civil rights.
Hey MAJeff, I’m so glad that the Catholic church only believes that you are engaging in an “intrinsic moral evil”, and not, well, I can’t really think of anything worse…
I do hope that you recover from your “condition” and find a more “morally acceptable option.”
Of course, the Catholic church loves you. Don’t ever forget that.
MAJeff, I didn’t realize that your gay. I should read the comments more completely/religiously (too easy). Anyway, I guess that your opinion no longer matters to the ‘saved’.
Wowbagger-
My point: Bigotry against Catholics is no better than bigotry against atheists. Bigotry is irrational and counterproductive. Mud fights are juvenile.
I reviewed the story. Here is my understanding of what happened: A young man walks out of a Catholic church with a communion wafer in his hand. Whether he realized this or not, this act violated the faith practice of Catholics.
My Catholics friends tell me that the practice for recieving communion is to immediately consume the communion wafer.
To carry the communion wafer out or to pocket the communion is to treat the sacrament with disrespect.
My Catholic friends tell me that individuals who hate the Catholic Church have walked out of a church with the expressed purpose of profaning the sacrament. (Indeed, Dr. Myers actions reinforce this concern.)
Those who distribute communion at a Catholic church are aware that some might recieve the communion with the intention of profaning it, and will watch and see if the individual who recieves the wafer promptly consumes the wafer or not. If not, they will ask for the communion back. They will insist on this! It is sacred to them!
This would explain the strong reaction to the young man. However, death threats and threats of physical violence towards the young man are reprehensible. My Catholic friends acknowledge that, and do not support this, but profaning the sacrament to them is a gross act of disrespect.
Dr. Myers by his own act of publicly profaning a communion wafer has only added fuel to the fire of outrage by Catholics. It is viewed by them as an act of great disrespect.
Whether you or the young man who walked out with the communion wafer view the communion wafer as sacred or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that such an act offends Catholics.
Those who practice the Catholic faith do see the wafer as sacred and for them it is not just a ‘cracker’ (an expression used historically by anti-Catholics.)
Those who do not understand that the significance of “walking out” of the Church with a communion wafer would not understand their outrage.
Provoking others to outrage just because we can is senseless. As others have said here, it is irrational. It is illogical; it is juvenile, adolescent.
I do not care who does it–atheist, religious, scientists, no matter–we do not need to provoke others in our world. Our world is violent enough in case no one has noticed.
You start out wrong. The mass in question took place in a public UCF building owned by Florida state taxpayers.
Peter B,
Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful post on your opinion.
I, and most of the posters here, will (and have) argue that the mocking of the catholic belief in the eucharist is not bigotry per se – since bigotry does not attack beliefs; rather, it is an attack on an aspect of the person over which they have no control – e.g. race, gender or sexual orientation.
The young man is (or was) a catholic – so he knew what was happening. That he did wrong according to the church is not in dispute; the problem started when he was assaulted by someone who disliked what he did.
Perceived sacredness of one’s beliefs does not warrant physcial assault.
News of the event hit the media and as a result, angry catholics called to have the young man punished by his college. The young man received threats of violence against his person.
Perceived sacredness of one’s beliefs does not justify this kind of overreaction.
This is why PZ did what he did. To highlight that there is a small subset of frenzied, extremist catholics who possess, by today’s supposedly enlightened standards, the irrational view that a cracker that represent jesus is, in fact, more valuable than the life and well-being of an actual human being.
Further posts illustrated this even further. We were told the threats against the cracker were as bad as (if not worse than) vandalism, rape, murder, kidnapping, the Holocaust and the KKK – just to list a few.
It will take a while, but if you read through all the posts on this topic you’ll find the arguments to support what PZ did – many of them far better than anything I can come up with at this time.
And you’ll also see how the irrational belief in something allows people to completely lose perspective.
I agree there is far too much violence in the world. But to defer to those whose can claim their religion justifies it (as is the case with many of the catholics who’ve come here) is not the answer.
One thing you’ll notice, though – no atheist posted a threat of violence against a catholic on any of the many thousands of posts; stark contrast with the so-called adherents of a religion which claims to be the result of a man referred to as ‘The Prince of Peace’.
Uh…yes, quite certainly. (Was that a trick question?)
Peter B, you can see here that the Catholic Campus Ministry says on its web page they hold their mass in the UCF student union building – not a church, a tax-payer owned public building – every Sunday. It was at a mass of this series that Webster Cook was given a consecrated communion wafer. This was not reported in all of the news accounts, but some did report it, and the fact that the mass did not take place in a church has been mentioned many times in these cracker threads. Most of the people who claim he went into a church do so out of ignorance – but given that the above facts have been widely reported, it is a statistical certainty some do so out of dishonesty.
No, Angela, I still don’t get it. I mean, I have to believe you if you tell me that’s what you believe, but the belief itself, in the 21st century, is extraordinary. Every time I see it written out explicitly like that, my brow furrows as I struggle to comprehend how any otherwise intelligent person could believe such a thing in this day and age. Do you also believe that statues weep?
Hail Eris!
To #59, here is what you’re after:
http://www.principiadiscordia.com
Snarky
P.S. #26, I have it on good authority that it is all Aratzio’s fault (see news:alt.usenet.kooks).
P.P.S. To PZ: Come back, all is forgiven — as long as you bring your sense of humour…;-{P}
What have they done to merit respect rather than merely demand it undeservedly? Catholicism is one of the most vile religions, in words and deeds (both historically and in the present), ever to plague the planet. Any Catholic who is even a halfway decent person is that way despite their religion and not because of it.
Religious people are mentally, educationally, morally and emotionally retarded – and they can just keep on demonstrating it. Catholics very much included.
Eg #599 is either extraordinarily ignorant or outrageously dishonest of you:
Violent persecution by Catholics over history has very much limited “desire” and ability to admit to atheism. They still show official disrespect to women and homosexuals and everyone who isn’t Catholic. The Pope regularly makes speeches about it. Catholics are responsible for the deaths and suffering of many people even today, eg from HIV because of their lies about condoms.
In case I missed it, I notice that Angela, who was all concerned with getting to the bottom of this so she can understand it decided to bolt when we really engaged her.
typical.
Just a couple of questions for the Catholics here
Firstly how did you find this place ?
What prompted you to post here without apparently having read the full story ?
Most importantly if ,as you say ,you beleive that the eucharist is literally the body of Christ then how is it more sacreligious to pierce it with a nail and throw it away, than say eating the thing and excreting it later ?
The communion wafer is a SYMBOL that’s all !!
Transubtantiation is a myth even the church itself cannot adequately explain it,they eventually get to a point of saying that the “proof” of the miracle is that even when it is transformed into the literal living flesh of Christ it looks exactly as if it hasn’t changed at all.
Ask your parish priest about this (if you dare ) and I doubt you will get a satisfactory answer.
Lucretius (very much Ex -Catholic and almost Jesuit priest.)
Lucretius, I’d have thought that, normally, priests do provide satisfactory answers to their parishioners, else how do they maintain their status?
I have a cousin who went on the be a priest and my best friend from primary school is a priest as well and neither of them can give a satisfactory answer on transubstantiation their answers, when pushed, boil down “It’s one of the mysteries of the Church”
99% of Catholic priests don’t really know how to respond other than to say “Well it just is OK ?”
Take away all the theological terms form the Church literature on the subject and it agian comes down to “Well it just is OK ?”
Here’s a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia
http://newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm#section3
It is pure and unadulterated gibberish dressed up in quasi philosophical language that NO-ONE really understands
Lucretius, I’m not saying satisfactory to you or me, but to their parishioners.
Hail Eris!
Don Imus revealed himself to be, in public, a lame, stupid, ignorant, odious, unfunny, idiotic Neanderthal, and his bosses decided they didn’t want him speaking for them anymore, because he was making them look bad. He committed no “crime”, as such, at least not IMO, but making one’s bosses look bad in public has never been an advisable manner of career advancement, and he was spewing like a busted urinal. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Snarky
Some priests will go so far as to threaten hell just for asking such questions.
That shuts people up pretty efficiently.
fnord
Actually the Confraternity was absolutely correct in stating that PZ’s actions were the equivalent of vandalizing a synagogue. Given that consecrated wafers are the wholly owned property of the One Holy Roman Catholic Church and PZ violated the terms of use for said property, he is fully liable for the full monetary value of said wafer
I stand corrected:
The young man left a public building at a Catholic Mass where communion wafers were distributed. He left the building with a communion wafer in hand. This action for Catholics is an act of disrespect. If the young man was Catholic, he should have known this, but it is possible he did not. If he was Catholic, he should have known that followers of his faith believe the communion wafer is sacred, but it is possible he did not. It is possible, he did not care. It is possible he simply wanted to provoke others, only the young man knows his motivation.
Death threats and attacks against the person of this man are wrong, period. No excuses for that violence, period. Those who yell and scream at abortionists or those who escort women who are seeking abortion or who threaten with death those who insult the Catholic faith committ acts of violence. No excuses for those who in the name of a deity justify violence against this man or Dr. Meyers, period. That is wrong, period, exclamation point, no excuses, period.
Defending the sacredness of the communion wafer does not justify evil means, period. Most Catholics understand that and would respect that–judging from my Catholic friends reactions.
Dr. Myers (or someone at his bidding) went to a Catholic Mass and represented himself as a faithful Catholic and recieved a communion wafer with the express purpose of descrating it.
This was an act of violence, too. Period.
An act of violence done in the name of reason, in the name of exposing the hatred of others, or in the name of “fill in the blank,” remains an act of violence, period.
American atheists do not make their arguments any stronger by denigrating the faith of other Americans or by mocking or by name calling in these posts. Violence like this is not new, it is an old established pattern of violence.
Calling a communion wafer a ‘cracker’ and making ‘jokes’ about what is sacred to other Americans is an act of violence, period.
Catholics who attack others and threaten others who desecrate their communion wafer are similarly committing acts of violence, period.
Calling a communion wafer a ‘cracker’ is an act of verbal violence.
Yes, it is free speech protected by the First Amendment by it is nevertheless, remains an act of violence.
Threatening atheists who desecrate a communion wafer is an act of violence.
Name calling is an act of violence.
Cursing atheists is an act of violence.
Yes, verbal violence is protected speech but it nevertheless remains violence.
Such violence plagues our human relationships and communities; and the violence is escalating; it is getting scarier by the day; shootings at churchs, at schools, at shopping malls, at universities, at day nurseries, highways and public streets.
Individuals in the name of ‘fill in the blank’ cause are justifying their brand of violence openly, publicly, and unapolegetically. Violence is praised as an act of courage, heroism and a victory for the cause, etc.
Atheists in these posts purport to be against violence committed by Christians in the distant past, recent past or even in the present, yet I see them condone violence against others in name of freedom of expression. Not one atheist challenged the atheists here to stop using profanity against those whom disagreed with their posts.
Is this what atheist have to offer us?
Atheists in this forum are not showing Americans anything new.
Violence is a big part of our culture already.
Violence is violence no matter who does it!
Human beings can always justify their acts of violence.
In the end, those who post here are fellow human beings.
I may disagree strongly with what others write here, but I do not have to use violence against them.
Justifying violence in the name of a deity or in the name of reason or in the name of anything or anyone does not change our lives for the better.
It just makes our world more violent and fearful.
I killed a bagel this morning. Arrest me.
Peter B., I’d welcome you to the party… but it’s over.
But congratulations for making exactly the same points that were made weeks ago and more than thoroughly discussed.
Far be it for me to suggest you go to the original post and get all your argumentation from those who have already (clever people!) responded to each and every one of your contentions.
But, if you did, you might actually come up with something, um, NEW.
Sigh.
Peter B. wrote:
As a woman who has both had an abortion and who regularly volunteers by escorting other women past your screaming, abusive co-religionists, I have this to say to you, pal: FUCK YOU. YOUR side is doing the violence here. When not bombing clinics, they are verbally abusing women or trying to deny them their rights.
Newsflash, asshole: Atheists here used nasty names and they insulted your religious beliefs. Nobody threatened violence to any Catholics, however. YOUR side is the side doing violence, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And again, FUCK YOU.
“Calling a communion wafer a ‘cracker’ and making ‘jokes’ about what is sacred to other Americans is an act of violence, period.”
Peter, are you saying what PZ did was illegal?
I don’t think you’ll find many here who’ll say what he did wasn’t disrespectful but I think most will say that was the point.
Peter B. Fuck you. Your religion is a joke and a waste of time. You are upset over a cracker. No one has been hurt or threatened by this, only offended. You’ll survive to bitch and moan another day. Ya big baby.
I think it might have been in his pocket by then – and he reportedly only left with it at all because the violent Catholics had already assaulted him over his attempt to merely take it back to his seat and quietly show his friend who was waiting there. In some services the host is consumed back in one’s place. So it was entirely understandable that he thought it would be OK.
Liar! You show gross disrespect for the real victims of violence by your dishonest misuse of the term. Religious people are so mentally, educationally, morally and emotionally retarded by their religion though that many of them see nothing wrong in doing what you just did. You are an excellent example of why religion is such an evil thing even in “moderate” or “mild” forms of the affliction.
I wonder what Dr. Myers has taught his students with this stunt? After all, we are referring to Dr. Myers as that, Doctor. With this academic rank comes responsibility. The responsibility is to teach, instruct, and convince based on reason and facts as they are understood — then to objectively measure the performance of the students.
To be insensitive to the faith traditions of Catholics for that sole purpose does not set a good example — and all parts of your life are fair game. Do you think that getting a DWI would sit well with the administration? Absolutley not. Why then are we to consider this whole episode as a private matter — it was posted in an open forum.
As for the CCC, what did Dr. Myers expect? He is not the first, nor will be the last to seek attention by inflaming and insulting a group.
I guess I’m embarrassed for him.
JMH
He hasn’t. It wasn’t a class exercise. It was something he did on his own time.
Meanwhile, it’s a lot better than being a science professor who teaches the students about reality in class time and then, sneaks off to practise ill-disguised magic in his spare time as religious fantasists do.
Oops – stray comma remained after removing a clause.
They sure aren’t getting any smarter, are they?
“Calling a communion wafer a ‘cracker’ and making ‘jokes’ about what is sacred to other Americans is an act of violence, period.”
This is, perhaps, the most retarded thing I have heard all week considering I blocked baba and heddle.
heard=read.
I don’t have a computer that reads these things to me. It would kill itself if I did.
PeterB, #648
Communication requires people to be using the same language. You must use words in ways other people can understand. I don’t know what you think “violence” means, but you need to learn to use a dictionary. If you want to be understood, you have to use words correctly.
Um no. You are wrong.
You should be embarrassed for yourself for not doing your homework before coming and commenting on a subject you so obviously don’t know anything about.
If they’re actually doing “violence”.
OK, I know others have said this before on the neverending “Crackergate” threads, but if you really believe you are EATING Jesus’s body, blood, soul and divinit, then you have to truly believe you are doing violence to Jesus each time you eat his body/drink his blood. Maybe it’s violence that Jesus supposedly Himself sanctioned by his actions at the Last Supper, but it seems to me that if you’re going to define the term “violence” so loosely, you would have to count “Eating Jesus” as violence too.
Adrienne:
In Christianity, the it is the suffering of Christ on the cross (or in the garden for Mormons) which enables the redemption of sins. Without violence there can be no forgiveness. That’s the founding principle of Christianity, and thus, doing violence to Jesus at every communion is consistent. It is not an accident that some of us (even you, I think) have called Christianity a death cult.
Actually, no they weren’t. As a building, a synagogue is unarguably real property (realty), whilst a cracker is personal property. Anti-vandalism statutes protect only real property. For your equivalence of cracker destruction to synagogue vandalism to hold, you have to convince a judge that a cracker should be legally regarded as realty.
Good luck with that.
In the immortal words of Pastor Deacon Fred of Landover Baptist Church…
“As True Christians™, we are called upon to marginalize other faiths, or people with no faith, and to scream persecution when they rudely return the favor.”
Suck it, Fundies!
Violence is found in words and action that strip the other person of their personhood as a human being. Violence de-humanizes other human beings. Once one goes down that road, violence tends to escalate.
Violence objectifies “the other” into the ‘an enemy’. Once we have labeled another huma being as the “other” as the “enemy”, we can begin to justify anything.
Human beings can take any ’cause’ and do this! Once the ‘other’ is labeled as ‘evil’ by whatever terms that group uses, then violence in some form or another becomes justified. We have to begin to view our opponent as some how less than us, inferior to us or even sub-human to justify our increasing levels of violence.
If pro-choice is our cause, we will see “the other” (pro-life advocates) as the enemy of a woman’s choice to control her body, and see all pro-life demonstrators as ‘evil. This label justifies writing ‘fuck you’ over and over to those who espouse a Christian faith and disagree with abortion. True, it is not the same violence as threatenign harm to someone; certainly not the same as killing a healthcare workers by bombing abortion clinics, but is violence.
If the pro-life is our cause we can see the “the other” (pro-choice individuals) as the “evil” or “murderers” then we can bomb clinics and shoot healthcare workers.
We are addicted to violence in America.
Many revel in it, but we all perpetuate it at all levels of our society. Other countries have far mor guns than we do per capita, but we have murder rates 100 times greater.
Can you see that violence at any level of intensity, from verbal violence all the way to the extreme killing others can always be justified by making the other person sub-human, “concern trolls”? The only difference is the degree of violence. And violence at all levels only serves to create a climate and culture of violence that justifies more and more atrocious acts of violence.
Ultimately, what begins to happen when we begin to de-humanize each other? What happens when we lock in the viewpoint that anyone who disagrees with our cherished cause is an implacable enemies?
What I see is that we want to drive them from our midst; some who are less put together emotionally and psychologically, may see the dehumanization of our ‘enemies’ as justification for beating them, tortuing them, killing them.
The Catholic Church had its Inquistion in the Middle Ages which in the name of an diety tortured and killed other human beings. The ends justified the means.
The leaders of the French Revolution enshrined the “goddess of Reason” in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in place of the altar. They justified mass executions and kangaroo court trials as the necessary means to a nation state of liberty, equality and reason. Certainly, there were despicable nobles, but there were also many innocents. They even executed the servants of nobles. In the name of liberty and reason, they justified mass murder.
We in America need to consider our increasing climate of violence. How are we adding fuel to fires of hatred and violence in the name of (fill in the blank cause)?
What can we do to ratchet down the level of violence.
Can we re-consider whether any “cause” we cherish is ever worth dehumanizing others–be it atheism or christianity, etc.
Peter B wrote:
In other words, killing someone. How else do you “strip the other person of their [sic] personhood?
By your own definition, then, what PZ did to define the Eucharistic wafer was not violence. Similarly, all of the insults hurled at you and other Catholics on here are not violence either.
How about not attacking people physically who’ve offended you.
Talk to the Cahtolic League. Fucking hypocrite.
Peter B wrote:
This is what Carl Sagan called “The fallacy of the excluded middle”, otherwise known as the “slippery slope” logical fallacy. Calling Catholics cracker-worshippers and assholes on a blog leads to forming lynch mobs to drag Catholics out of their churches and hang them from trees. Sorry, Peter B, does not compute.
Peter B., #668:
That’s explained here , here , and here .
(Thanks to SEF, who provided those three links in a diffent thread.)
Peter B.,
Then calling Hitler a lunatic is an act of violence?
And pacifist Quakers “speaking truth to power” are violent?
Dude, you’ve done some serious violence to the term “violence.”
It’s simply not true that criticizing people’s cherished ideas, or calling them names, is violent. There’s a reason why verbal “violence” in speech is generally legal and actual physical violence is generally not.
I’m going to commit an act of verbal violence against you… ready?
Here goes:
You’re a moron.
BTW, I was one of the first and most persistent critics of PZ’s crackerjacking shtik. I think PZ did cross a line that arguably we ought not to cross.
On the other hand, people like you—sorry for the dehumanizing “violence” of “people like you”—really make me wonder. You have some truly crazy ideas about where the lines are, and the pros and cons of crossing them.
If this event gets people to come out and say such astonishingly stupid things, so that stupid ideas can be rightly criticized, there’s some serious benefit to it.
Wow, a correct attribution for once! I mostly get the impression I’m being ignored entirely (perhaps I’m on a generic killfile somewhere), or people get the TLA wrong (SEK is a bizarrely common mis-reading and improbable typo) or misattribute the content of my posts to completely different people in the thread. I’m used to having an SEP field in real life but it’s interesting how much it extends to the online situation.
Peter B.,
I object strenuously to your calling us violent bigots.
If you persist in that sort of verbal violence, I will retaliate.
By the way, a couple of friends of mine are progressive mainline Christian ministers. They criticize the more orthodox wings of their own denominations, calling them “fundamentalists” and (in some cases) “bigots,” and criticizing their cherished ideas of sacred objects and magical rituals.
Does that make my progressive, inclusive, ecumenical, reformist, nonviolence-preaching Christian minister friends violent bigots? By your stated standards, I think it does.
Hyeesh.
Just checking you all know that’s a parody website …
Let me play God’s advocate here a minute.
You’re probably right that it’s not covered under the same law, but it might arguably be covered under a different hate crime law, like the bias clause of the Minnesota property crime statute. For the latter, it doesn’t have to be real property or religious property you’re damaging, and there’s no lower bound on the objective cost of the damage (except that presumably it must be greater than zero). It covers any property damaged “because of” the owner’s race, religion, etc.
Which just goes to show that hate crime laws are often scarily vague and broad. (Hate speech laws are usually worse; it’s like somebody let Peter B. write legislation.)
We in America need to consider our increasing climate of violence. – Peter B.
US rates of violent crime have come down significantly since the early ’90s:http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm . Still, why let mere facts get in the way of a good rant, eh?
Yes, and the main reason for the big drop at that particular time is very interesting and very, very loaded.
It’s something the Roman Catholic Church is very much against.
Arbitrarily redefining the word “violence” to suit ones transient rhetorical needs is an act of dictional violence.
Paul W.
Perhaps, this might help in understanding my point:
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg wrote extensively on violence from the perspective of human psychology.
In his recent book, (Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life) Dr. Rosenberg cites the work of a Professor O.J. Harvey (Conceptual Systems and Personality Organization).
Professor Harvey conducted research at the University of Colorado on the roots of violence in societies. Dr. Harvey analyzed literature from around the world and found a high correlation between the frequency of the use of ‘words’ that ‘classify’ and ‘judge’ people and the incidence of violence.
In other words, in cultures where humans think of others in terms of “good” and “bad” and believe that the ‘bad’ ones deserve to be punished, violence level is high.
Dr. Rosenberg sees the roots of violence in the way we think of others. (Dr. Rosenberg defines violence as including verbal, psychological, or physical.)
Thus, Dr. Rosenberg argues that ‘classifying and judging’ people promotes violence. He argues that when we do this, we see the ’cause of conflict’ to ‘wrongness’ in ‘our adversaries.’ With this emotionally charged negative attitude, we become unable to see our adversaries as human beings like ourselves, subject to the same struggles and conflicts of living like us. This justifies the use of violence against the ‘enemy.’
By classfying and judging other human beings as the enemy, the source of conflict, we become unable to see them (and ourselves) as vulnerable human beings, struggling together with our own fears and vulnerabilities in the world.
Thus, instead of acknowledging our common humanity and understanding our mutual fears of each other, we just label each other as the enemy. This he argues, promotes violence.
Do you see his observation replicated here in these posts?
Hitler is an extreme human example of what happens when we classify and judge other humans in conflict with us.
Reading Hitler’s speeches about Churchill’s warlike intentions prior to the outbreak of World War II, one can see how Hitler projected all his fears on Churchill. It is amazing. He could state with complete conviction that Churchill was the cause of conflict in the world and Germany was the innocent victim that needed to protect itself.
You are not doing this mind you. You are not Hitler. I use Hitler only as a way of illustrating Dr. Rosenberg’s insights. Sometimes, extreme examples make the point clearer.
But, Paul W. you have read my post as calling you a bigot and have threatened retaliation.
I have become ‘the enemy”.
Paul, I do not see you as my “enemy”!
Paul, I am simply arguing the insights of Dr. Rosenberg on roots of violence (defined to include all forms of violence). As I understood this whole forum was originally about a reaction to others violence in the name of a deity.
I am simply arguing that the use of verbal violence to promote a cause no matter how noble is irrational and counterproductive. Its use is illogical. It destroys human dialogue and provokes and contributes to a culture of violence.
Atheists in my view would want to promote understanding and genuine human dialogue based on the use of human reason and compassionate dialogue.
Peter B.
Is there no room for comedy in dialogue? Shouldn’t Catholics be grownup enough to accept that some people find the idea of the transubstantiation silly? It seems to me that the folks who simply CAN’T have a sense of humor about certain things are the folks who most likely foster a culture of violence.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.
Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Peter B.
I really, really, don’t see you as my enemy. I do see you as being on the other side in a conflict, and I think that’s fine.
My background is largely in cognitive science, including schema theory, categories, etc. I’m conversant in multilevel game theory, the evolution of conflict and cooperation, etc.
I think what you’re saying about Rosenberg and the roots of violence is simplistic and (as you present it) absurd. I was pointing up the absurdity, which I think is a valuable move in a legitimate verbal conflict.
Your simplistic analysis overlooks the underlying roots of conflict. The way you present Rosenberg, it sounds like you think the root problem is verbal, and that it’s usually fighting words that cause fights. It also sounds like you’re an uber-pacifist who think the appropriate response to verbal contentiousness is never verbal contentiousness.
(I say “contentiousness” because your use of “violence” is incorrect and pejorative. “Aggressiveness” would be too strong, too, if used the way you use “violence.”)
I think that you are sadly mistaken on several counts.
Sometimes violence must be countered with violence.
Sometimes verbal contentiousness must be countered with verbal contentiousness.
Often verbal conflict—discussion of ideas—prevents actual physical violence. That’s largely what free speech is about. We privilege verbal conflict over physical conflict, in hopes that our ideas die in our stead, with no blood being shed.
Sometimes name-calling is the right thing to do. It sends a signal that people doing the name-calling are passionate about their views, and likely willing to back them up. It sometimes forces an issue, and makes peope back up their views.
For example, the word “bigot” is a useful one, despite evoking a negative stereotype in “hostile” way. It can also be abused.
Name-calling should not be a substitute for argument that clarifies and justifies the name-calling. And sometimes a publicity stunt is a worthy way of drawing attention to a serious issue.
In the present case, I think that maybe PZ did in fact cross a line he “shouldn’t” have crossed, tactically speaking. The blowback and retrenching may not be outweighed by the benefits of PZ publically airing his views of a bigoted institution.
But that doesn’t make your analysis anywhere near right. If PZ is doing the wrong thing, it’s for vastly more subtle reasons than “name calling is violence,” which is simply false.
You’re not doing yourself any favors with the Churchill/Hitler example. You’re essentially casting the Pope as Hitler and PZ Myers as Winston Churchill.
On a superficial analysis, PZ wins hands down, no contest.
On a less superficial analysis, I think PZ still wins bigtime.
You seem to be implying that Churchill’s fighting words gave Hitler ammunition for his fighting words on the other side. So maybe Churchill contributed to the short-term success of Hitler and Naziism.
I think that’s likely right, in a weak sense, but it doesn’t support your eventual point.
Hitler was a charismatic antisemitic psychopath. Churchill did not make him one. If Churchill hadn’t handed him ammunition, he’d have found it elsewhere, or just made it up. Hitler was like that, and he was very, very good at it.
Likewise, PZ is not making Bill Donohue or the Pope up. Bill Donohue really is a bigoted blowhard of an intellectual lightweight who projects bigoted blowhardism onto people with more brains and sense than him. The Pope really is a dangerous dogmatic leader of a corrupt international institution. (He was instrumental in the fostering and coverup of widespread child-fucking for a long time. Not, presumably, because he’s in favor of child-fucking, but because he’s a frighteningly commited “company man” who thinks the ends justify the means.)
If PZ didn’t exist as a target of their paranoia, they’d likely find or invent somebody more or less like him. Not necessarily—PZ may in fact be giving them easier-than-usual ammunition for their paranoid ravings, and creating more heat than light. I do worry about that, as my postings over the last few weeks show.
But your analysis is just superficial, shoddy, and wrong. It’s way, way more complicated than you make it out to be.
You are shooting the messenger, and providing a bullshit rationale for doing so.
I think that PZ may in fact be a bad messenger in this case, but you’re a worse one for grotesquely oversimplifying some very interesting and critically important dynamics.
Wow Jack, you have no idea how silly you sound.
Calling religion and your cracker silly is not any form of violence. Debate doesn’t have to be nice.
Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
All the more proof that Christianity is institutionalized masochism. Give up control, give up money, give up free thought…
Maybe we ought to send some experienced Leather Daddies into churches?
Peter B wrote:
This concept is certainly nothing new. It’s called “othering” (or it was when I was in college).
Again, I think you’re committing the “excluded middle” fallacy. “Othering” CAN promote violence, but it does not necessarily promote violence against the group being opposed/othered. I do view you as an enemy on certain things (I’m fairly certain we are on opposite sides of the voting spectrum on the abortion issue, for instance), but that doesn’t mean I want to physically harm you. I will argue with you, attempt to change your mind, maybe even insult your beliefs, and I will certainly do all I can minimize your political influence (assuming you live and vote in the US), but I have no personal wish to see you come to harm or ruin.
“Therefore, I am content with crappy bosses, bad cable reception, a leaky roof, Web pages that take too long to load, a boring sex life, and chronic halitosis, for the sake of Bob the Rain God; for when I am mediocre and habitually unsatisfied, then I have my belief in an imaginary Someone Who Seriously Gives A Shit About My Crappy Life to make me feel better about all of it.”
Maybe we ought to send some experienced Leather Daddies into churches?
I was thinking of recommending The Vault in New York to some of them last week, but I googled it and it’s closed.
Um, not that I went there when it was open. I just knew it by reputation.
Um, not that I went there when it was open. I just knew it by reputation.
Sure. Uh-huh :-)
I haven’t seen a single person point out the irony inherent in PZ’s act. For all of the atheists reading this blog, Christ died on a cross after having nails hammered into his hands and feet. It makes me wonder if PZ intended this irony.
Either way, I think his actions will not raise any converts to atheism–since after all he is preaching to the choir (sorry to use a religious metaphor…but I assume you all are competent enough to understand). To the contrary, I think it will do the exact opposite. PZ made Christ’s sacrifice a very present reality for Catholics. Actions, like PZ’s desecration of a “cracker,” will invigorate Catholics in the world to be more outspoken about their faith as it comes under physical attack.
Let me clarify the point of view of Catholics to help you understand my point…To Catholics, the “cracker” is NOT just a symbol, as a few of you have incorrectly noted, but the actual presence of God coupled with the powerful notion that the greatest being was willing to endure the worst punishment, simply to save his loved creation…very powerful stuff for those who believe in the faith. I can understand how it may seem idiotic, backward, naive, etc. for us to hold such a view…but it doesn’t take away from the fact that we hold it to be as true as you hold your concepts of “proven science.” If someone were to tell you today that the earth is flat (a poor example given the church’s previous view, but nonetheless), you would vehemently argue that they were wrong. Catholics will do the same for what they believe in. Therefore, no Catholic is going to take such an action as PZ’s lightly.
It’s funny…if you look throughout history, the Church thrived and endured when there were attacks against it. (Try coming up with a substantial list of institutions that survived the middle ages intact) If anything, you are fueling our fire and vigor as well as our love for God, not making us doubt. Religion gets most of its power and draw from dissension…if all the outspoken critics of religion in the world simply stopped attacking religion…well, you do the math. If anyone’s seen the newest Batman, I think you know where I’m going with this.
My point is…actions like PZ’s are counterproductive- trying to unveil the stupidity of a religion only gives fuel to the believers.
Figured that out on your own did you?
Are you sufficiently familiar with the whole story behind this?
would you care to explain the “whole story”? I’ve only read what the “child molesting group” put out and around 100 of the posts.
if he did intend irony…it definitely backfired as I pointed out
Of course he hasn’t read the whole story Rev!
Why would he wish to be informed before he gives us an opinion?
My killfile is getting bigger and bigger, does anyone know if it will ever get too full ?
Thank you to whomever suggested it, I am forever grateful.
The posts here or just the mis-info from the Donohue?
Do a search for cracker up top and read the posts. If you have then good. If not then it would be beneficial to know the whole story.
I don’t see that it backfired. If anything it showed exactly how irrational a group of people can get over a cracker. Which was the point of PZs threat in teh first place. To show that the response to the kid who took the cracker first to his seat was not a measured response. Then once he was assaulted by members of the church and left the building, he was given death threats. Again not a equally measured response. The Catholics who responsed blew a gasket. PZ threw a cracker and nail in a trashcan along with a few other things.
Now which is worse. Physical assault and death threats or desecration of a cracker?
What child molesting group is putting out information that we are the badguys?
That makes no sense what so ever!
I wish you all the best!
the catholic,
Let me see if I have you right: You’re warning us that ridiculing your magic rituals will instigate a greater public conversation, and atheists should be afraid of this because the Catholic church has a blood-soaked history of preserving its power? What’s your warning exactly? That if the “mystery” of cracker magic comes under closer public scrutiny, the majority of fence-sitters are bound to see the logic behind it? Or that Catholics will be whipped up into such a frenzy that we should fear another crusade?
“Of course he hasn’t read the whole story Rev!”
You act like my comments don’t pertain in context of whatever story there might be beyond some professor sticking a nail in a consecrated host.
If anything they are even more relevant, how many Catholics are really going to get the whole story before they get on their soapboxes in disgust…again reaffirming my point.
Are you trying to make the argument that we shouldn’t ridicule your religion because the members of your religion ignore the facts and get upset anyway?
And the point is, the context of the nail in the cracker is VERY important to the reason behind it. Ridicule was brought on by the actions of members of your religion. This was not unprovoked.
Yeah. Read the post Catholic. It’s very well explained. Even though I’m sure you won’t like it, it wasn’t done for the reasons you assume.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_great_desecration.php
“Now which is worse. Physical assault and death threats or desecration of a cracker?”
Thank you “Rev. BigDumbChimp” for explaining that there actually was a motivation. I had heard of that story before (not knowing it pertained) and it had saddened me–the death threats that is. It’s people like that who give Catholics such a bad name. Just like suicide bombers give Islam a bad rep.
Any Catholic should know that they should not have given the death threats. One of Christ’s messages was to “let he who was without sin throw the first stone”. Clearly, you cannot say that this minority (the ones who gave the death threats) represents the majority of Catholic belief considering that retaliation is contradictory to what our faith actually says.
Don’t ever ridicule beliefs, if the holders of the beliefs will be offended. Really? That’s your argument. It’s lame.
“Don’t ever ridicule beliefs, if the holders of the beliefs will be offended. Really? That’s your argument. It’s lame.”
No steve….my argument is that by ridiculing our faith, many actually will be strengthened in their belief in God. After all, our religion tells us that we should stand strong in the face of persecution because he have eternal happiness to gain.
I am merely trying to illustrate the Catholic mindset. Telling us we are fools isn’t persuasive…I mean come on…I’ve had communion hundreds if not thousands of times…you actually think that I don’t realize it tastes like a “cracker”? You aren’t telling us anything we don’t already know…
@679:
the catholic @#692:
Then clearly you haven’t read the many, many threads, containing many, many posts, on this whole desecration issue. It’s there. Repeatedly.
You might want to catch up with the required reading.
Destroying a cracker isn’t persecution. Despite the mindset.
You KNOW it’s a cracker and yet you get offended by someone saying it’s just a cracker.
cicely – “to what is this drop in violent crime attributed? And by whom?”
I assume the poster was referring to the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis. They attribute the drop in crime to Roe vs Wade – in other words, those who were likely to be criminals today were aborted back then.
cicely,
Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand across the country. 15 to 25 years later, there was a big drop in the crime rate because many of the likely criminals were never born.
The idea is most closely associated with the economist Steven Leavitt, author of Freakonomics. His chapter on the subject is pretty interesting.
The basic idea is that abortion on demand disproportionately affected young, poor, single, uneducated and unwilling would(n’t)-be mothers. They are the demographic group most likely to have children who grow up to be criminals—or at least, people who are criminals when they’re in their late teens or early twenties.
There are several lines of evidence that it was Roe v. Wade (in the 1970’s) that was mainly responsible for the big drop in the (previously-increasing) crime rate in the 1990’s.
One is just the timing. Probably not just coincidence.
Another is that the crime rate dropped sooner in the four states that legalized abortion on demand prior to Roe v. Wade. (Including New York, where the crime rate drop was popularly attributed to innovative policing strategies, but the same strategies applied in LA, later, by the same police chief failed to have much effect.)
Another piece of evidence is that overall, the states with the highest proportion young/poor/uneducated women having abortions in the 1970’s also generally had the largest proportional crime rate drop in the 1990’s.
The clincher, as I understand it, is that the 6 leading alternative theories just don’t cut it. For example, the general aging of the population and slow decline in the number of young people 15-25 wouldn’t cut explain the sudden substantial drop in the 1990’s… it’d have been a smaller effect and much more spread out.
I’m not an economist or sociologist, though, so take the above with a grain of salt.
the catholic, #705, wrote:
I believe some – perhaps even many – will have had their belief in god weakened by this; others, perhaps, will view the extremism in their co-religionists as a good reason to leave the catholic church, even if they don’t free themselves from religion altogether.
to what is this drop in violent crime attributed? And by whom? – cicely
I think what’s being referred to is the easier availability of abortion in the 80s – hence fewer children born into very bad circumstances, hence fewer screwed-up young men now. Dubner and Levitt’s Freakonomics suggests this I believe, but I don’t know whether there is solid research behind it. Anyone? I just happened to know that the statistics (and of course one must be cautious about them) suggest a significant drop, and it pisses me off when people make sweeping statements about social/demographic/political issues on the basis of complete ignorance of readily available and non-technical information.
Some issues people wanted sorted out. I believe the question was posted as such: “Angela, I assume you never eat a hamburger in the vicinity of a Hindu.” Indeed, I have not or would not. Neither would I eat pork in the presence of a Jewish person, nor would I drink alcohol in front of a Muslim. But, as much as this may wound your apparent egalitarian sensibilities, the eating of the Blessed Sacrament is qualitatively different than abstaining from beef, pork, or alcohol. First of all, we actually eat the Eucharist, rather than abstain from a substance. And the reasons and significance are different. I said I would be interested in rational discourse — in a real exchange of ideas in an open and respectful nature. However, when I am slandered for my beliefs and called an idiot FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL, I have no desire to continue engaging. Your arguments are emotionally charged, personal rants, and I see no willingness to actually DISCUSS what the Church teaches. Rather, I see pulling quotes out of context, pointing a finger and yelling “SEE, the Catholic Church REALLY is evil.” Well that makes no sense. I am willing to engage in a discussion based on mutual respect, a willingness to listen, and willingness to respond with due dignity. If not, then I really have no desire to engage in an overly-emotional (and quite frankly ridiculous) rant. God bless.
Some issues people wanted sorted out. I believe the question was posted as such: “Angela, I assume you never eat a hamburger in the vicinity of a Hindu.” Indeed, I have not or would not. Neither would I eat pork in the presence of a Jewish person, nor would I drink alcohol in front of a Muslim. But, as much as this may wound your apparent egalitarian sensibilities, the eating of the Blessed Sacrament is qualitatively different than abstaining from beef, pork, or alcohol. First of all, we actually eat the Eucharist, rather than abstain from a substance. And the reasons and significance are different. I said I would be interested in rational discourse — in a real exchange of ideas in an open and respectful nature. However, when I am slandered for my beliefs and called an idiot FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL, I have no desire to continue engaging. Your arguments are emotionally charged, personal rants, and I see no willingness to actually DISCUSS what the Church teaches. Rather, I see pulling quotes out of context, pointing a finger and yelling “SEE, the Catholic Church REALLY is evil.” Well that makes no sense. I am willing to engage in a discussion based on mutual respect, a willingness to listen, and willingness to respond with due dignity. If not, then I really have no desire to engage in an overly-emotional (and quite frankly ridiculous) rant. God bless.
Some issues people wanted sorted out. I believe the question was posted as such: “Angela, I assume you never eat a hamburger in the vicinity of a Hindu.” Indeed, I have not or would not. Neither would I eat pork in the presence of a Jewish person, nor would I drink alcohol in front of a Muslim. But, as much as this may wound your apparent egalitarian sensibilities, the eating of the Blessed Sacrament is qualitatively different than abstaining from beef, pork, or alcohol. First of all, we actually eat the Eucharist, rather than abstain from a substance. And the reasons and significance are different. I said I would be interested in rational discourse — in a real exchange of ideas in an open and respectful nature. However, when I am slandered for my beliefs and called an idiot FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL, I have no desire to continue engaging. Your arguments are emotionally charged, personal rants, and I see no willingness to actually DISCUSS what the Church teaches. Rather, I see pulling quotes out of context, pointing a finger and yelling “SEE, the Catholic Church REALLY is evil.” Well that makes no sense. I am willing to engage in a discussion based on mutual respect, a willingness to listen, and willingness to respond with due dignity. If not, then I really have no desire to engage in an overly-emotional (and quite frankly ridiculous) rant. God bless.
Adrienne (#688) FTW!
called an idiot FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL
You’re called an idiot because cracker worship is, at best, idiotic.
Angela, posting a Holy Trinity of comment(s) isn’t really necessary. One will do.
They are One. Heretic!
Nick,
Leavitt and Dubner (in Freakonomics) go into a moderate amount of detail (for a popular book) supporting their explanation and debunking the major alternatives, with citations to peer-reviewed papers about both.
That doesn’t make them right, of course, but tentatively I find it reasonably persuasive, and certainly interesting and plausible.
One citation is Steven D. Leavitt “Understanding why Crime Fell in the 1990’s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2004), pp. 163-90.
There are a bunch of citations to papers quantifying the likely effects of particular alternative theories, are used to support that paper’s thesis. (Some are by Leavitt and/or John J. Donohue III et al., his sometime collaborator, et al.)
I’m sure their conclusion is controversial, in the sense that it’s a hot potato. I don’t know how controversial it is in terms of the actual evidence & reasoning.
Wowbagger…
Were you ever religious? If not, how can you understand the mind of the religious?
And, if you really think many will have their faith “weakened” by this…I’m sorry to inform you, but history is on my side of the argument. Think about all of the martyrs of the early church, for instance, (or did you not even know they existed?) who in the face of death by gruesome means refused to change their beliefs. If the threat of losing our lives didn’t cause the majority to reject our beliefs, you actually think telling Catholics that in all physical appearances the host is just a cracker is SOOO earth shattering that Catholics will leave the Church in swarms? I think you are sadly mistaken.
By the way, you should read my earlier post (I addressed the extremism).
Before attacking a set of beliefs that you do not fully comprehend, I merely suggest that you pick up a copy of the Catholic Catechism (you probably can even access it online–it is very organized so that if you want to see the Church’s view on an issue, it should be very easy to locate). If you want to pull direct quotes from that and criticize those…go ahead. But, please don’t assume that everything each Catholic person says and does is sanctioned by the Pope/the Church.
You’re not slandered for your beliefs. You’re made fun of. There’s a difference. There’s no need to understand the Catholic ritual because at its core it starts with the belief that there is a personal god. Whatever dance, prayer, candle burning, sacrifice, offering, hand motions, genuflecting or singing you do, based on that belief, is irrelevant.
It’s silly. Sorry. But it is.
“the catholic”, I used to be a Catholic once myself. And you know what weakened my faith? Simply the discovery that it was possible to be something other than religious. Hearing about the other religions never impressed me, because I “knew” Catholicism was the one true way, but one day I met a fellow student who was a confident, outspoken atheist. I’d never realized you could do that, but once I thought about it I realized that there really was no way to tell the difference between talking to the Catholic god and talking to myself. And once I discovered that, my sense of intellectual honesty just wouldn’t let me maintain my belief any more.
So if you think outspoken atheism never converted anybody away from Catholicism, you’re just plain wrong. It wasn’t so much my friend’s arguments that made an impression, mind you, but just the possibility he introduced me to. A number of other people on this blog have mentioned being forced to reconsider their religious beliefs after hearing those beliefs ridiculed by friends. Sometimes it takes a bit of a kick in the seat of the pants to give people a new perspective.
Granted some people have (through years of failing to exercise their minds) built up a fairly thick padding of rationalization and denial on their metaphorical buttocks, which makes it pretty hard to kick-start their brains that way, but that doesn’t mean a few of the more mentally fit among the religious might not be affected by it. And that’s a goal worth striving for.
Steve..
The Catholic Catechism has little to nothing to do with the rituals. It simply explains what we believe. You could even read things like: rape of children is the worst form of rape imaginable and use that as ammunition against the priests if you want. But, at least you know that what the priests did is in no way sanctioned by what we believe.
I think its a good idea to understand fully the other sides position before jumping to conclusions. Hence, why I asked earlier for the context of the incident, so I could understand where the professor was coming from.
Yes, we do have rituals, but that is not the core of the faith. It’s merely for consistency throughout the world. If you’ve ever been to different protestant services and then to multiple catholic services…you would understand why there is a desire to maintain some semblance of consistency. Think about how scientists all use Latin roots and the scientific method. Those are rituals too. Yet, I don’t call them problematic. It’s simply a way to keep things consistent.
Like Angela said, I’m trying to show the utmost respect for your positions. All we ask in return is that you give us a little respect in your responses and not merely write off what we say as extremist babble (because despite what you might think…I’ve never bombed an abortion clinic, I never sent death threats, I never made a Jew wear different clothing, etc.)
If the threat of losing our lives didn’t cause the majority to reject our beliefs, you actually think telling Catholics that in all physical appearances the host is just a cracker is SOOO earth shattering that Catholics will leave the Church in swarms?
Well first, they already are leaving in swarms, at least in Europe and I suspect in the US (although immigration is keeping numbers up there) – hence the shortage of priests. Second, you are very naive about human psychology. Bravely holding to your convictions in the face of threats, torture and death may be easier than maintaining them in the face of mockery – particularly of a belief that, at some level, the mocked person themselves knows is absurd. (And you do. Oh, yes, you do!) The extreme reaction of many Catholics in the current case suggests that at some level, they know this psychological truth.
Like Angela said, I’m trying to show the utmost respect for your positions. – the catholic
Frankly, I’m not interested in your respect. The respect of an educated person who nonetheless believes utter absurdities, and belongs to an organisation that has a long history of persecuting others whenever it has the power to do so, and is currently responsible for suffering and avoidable premature death on an immense scale, is of no value to me.
The Catholic,
I’ve never been religious – which puts me in the minority amongst the regular posters here.
But I’ve heard deconversion stories, and many of them feature anecdotes about how the mockery of the beliefs the person considered sacred played a part in getting them to think (often for the first time) about what it was they were choosing to believe in. Having done so they came to abandon those beliefs.
It’s the 21st century. We know there’s no such thing as magic – yet you believe that Christ somehow enters the cracker because of a ritual? It’s the socially acceptable equivalent of doing a rain dance or reading the entrails of a dead animal to predict the future.
There are catholics who don’t believe in literal transubstantiation; several of them posted on the earlier threads. These are the people to whom I referred in my post – the fence-sitters, the doubters; those who are only going to please their elderly grandmother or because it’s what their ethnic group does. Those who no more genuinely believe it than I.
What makes you think I didn’t read your earlier post? Your call of No True Catholic™ has zero value here – they identified as catholics, acting to defend catholics and catholicism.
As for ‘fully comprehend’ – what do I need to comprehend? Do I need to know the name of every Hindu deity to know I don’t believe in them? Am I required to learn Old Norse so I may confidently ignore the Edda?
All I need to know is this: you believe in a number of supernatural premises – each without evidence – and support a church whose teachings and practices are so flawed that the morally contemptible aspects far outweigh the good.
Wading through acres of self-indulgent sophistry isn’t going to change that.
By the way. I was confirmed a Catholic when I was 15. The process weakened my faith, luckily. Actually learning the dogma made me realize what nonsense it was. I held onto a belief in some sort of god for a few more years, then considered myself agnostic and finally matured, to atheism, like a fine Bordeaux.
“the catholic”, a further comment, if I may. People here have said a lot of casually dismissive stuff about the Catholic Church, some of which is probably rather hyperbolic and some of which shows a great deal of ignorance about the specific details of the tenets and rituals of Catholicism. But, honestly, nobody here really cares about the specific tenets and rituals of Catholicism, because as we see it, they’re all based on a belief in supernatural nonsense (the existence of this rather nebulous and unbelievable “God” character, the magical deeds of himself/his son “Jesus”, and so forth). And as far as we’re concerned, the fact that the basis of all this is nonsense means the specific details of how you celebrate your nonsense-based belief system are uninteresting and irrelevant.
Seeing as how pretty much all the atheists here are in general opposed to nonsense-based beliefs (on the ground that evidence-based beliefs tend to provide more useful guidance in figuring out how to accomplish one’s goals and running a society and so forth), we don’t generally worry too much about the specific nonsense a particular group of nonsense-believers adhere to. Most of us also put our former nonsense-based beliefs behind us a long time ago (those who had such beliefs to begin with), and have long since become extremely frustrated with having to deal with the nasty consequences of other people’s nonsense-based beliefs for the world we live in. So if commenters here tend to become rather impatient with those who come spouting nonsense-based beliefs and to be more interested in disposing of them than in patiently coddling them out of their nonsense, this is why.
In conclusion, all I’ve got to say is that if you intend to be a nonsense-peddler here, you better keep your asbestos longjohns handy. Whining about how the fireplace is hot will get you exactly nowhere if you’re the one who stepped into the damn thing in the first place.
Paul W,
I hadn’t seen your #710 when I wrote #712. The points you make look fairly convincing to me, although like you I’m not an expert in these areas, and I’d like to hear the opposition’s arguments, if they have any!
I’ve been way more insulting to Scientologists. This is nothing.
anne—i like the name, lol
I understand your position. And, I most definitely am not naive enough to believe that NO ONE will change their mind. But, I think the the majority will not waver in their faith and that at least quite a few will be strengthened. Because if everyone did have “epiphanies” like you, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now because the Catholic church would have dissipated to nonexistence by now.
Interesting you bring up the point about how talking to yourself is no different than talking to God. I’ve had a few conversations with my Catholic friends about that. We tended to come to the same conclusion that it was somewhat indistinguishable but that it nonetheless was prayer. Just because you can’t prove for sure that it is, doesn’t mean it isn’t. (did i just tell you that you still prayed haha?…didn’t mean to insult you if you take insult to that)
Just curious…why is it a goal to convince people that there is no God? I mean, have you ever heard of Pascal’s wager? He decided that he’d believe in God because either a) God existed and he’d have eternal happiness or b) God didn’t exist but at least he lived a life he could say he was proud of. Whats so wrong with allowing us to live in our “un-enlightened fantasy world in which there is a God” especially if it keeps most (i do stress most…because there are always exceptions to rules) of us decent human beings? A world without religion means that all morality would be governed by governments. I assume you live in the US. Do you really want OUR government to dictate morality? maybe you do…
anne–
I don’t know if you’ve read all my posts. I merely posted originally to say that despite what happened to you and what you think might happen to other Catholics, the Church is never going to disappear–in fact–I’m pretty sure it’s going to continue growing (and yes, I’ll put money on that bet). The Church has endured many scandals, made some mistakes, been persecuted, etc etc…and never wavered. It stands strong and will continue through the end of time.
So, all I mean to say is that your complaining about the Church won’t win over enough hearts to make Her go away.
Also, I forget if I said it before or not..but simply because you can’t prove an almighty being exists, does not mean that you can prove he does not exist.
Our government does dictate morality to a certain extent. That’s what laws do. Also, societies determined their behavioral limitations and expectations of it’s members long before any formal religion existed. There’s evolutionary explanations for why humans have empathy and an altruistic tendency. They would remain if religion went extinct.
No one is not allowing you to practice your religion. No one is advocating that.
Also I would argue that, if you gave up your belief in a sky daddy it would have no real negative effect on your behavior. You may look at the world differently, and it could even have a positive effect on you in many ways. If you live for today, and enjoy everything the world has to offer, rather than worrying about a final judgement, you might even be a happier person.
But maybe not.
The Catholic,
I think you’ll find the reasons why people remain affiliated with a church is far more complex than the beliefs involved; hence why something like this – which both challenges the beliefs and illustrates other issues (in this case extremism) – is far more likely to have an impact than if PZ had written a blog titled ‘I don’t believe it’s anything more than a cracker’.
Which is reason Dawkins’ book is called The God Delusion and not The God Belief I Don’t Agree With.
You shouldn’t conflate speaking to one’s self in a hopeful manner with praying, since it’s very different – but on the plus side at least the atheist doesn’t delude his or herself that anything’s going to come of it.
There aren’t many atheists who are familiar with – and dismissive of – Pascal’s wager. Most of us believe he should have stuck to geometry.
A world without religion would mean morality determined by people who are alive today – i.e. not one where antiquated notions of things like sexuality and contraception are allowed (even encouraged) to ruin the lives of many and end the prematurely end the lives of many more.
sorry about the typos in my last post – the caffeine (it’s morning where i am) hasn’t kicked in yet.
the catholic, here’s the thing about your god, or anybody else’s god, for that matter — there’s just no damn evidence for any of them. Not a scrap of substantive argument in favor of them actually existing. There are plenty of begged questions and handwaving, there’s all kinds of “well, you can’t disprove it!”, there’s a substantial collection of varied and contradictory storytelling, but no evidence. And, I’m a scientist. I want to know how the universe actually works, so that I can interact with said universe in the most advantageous way possible (and also because learning stuff is fun!).
Step one in figuring out how the universe actually works is to ruthlessly discard any beliefs that don’t have evidentiary support, or at best to be massively skeptical about them. If you go around believing things without evidence, it can get in the way of you being able to accept things that do have evidence (as witness the creationist nonsense). I’m trying to keep my basic beliefscape neat and clean here, and stuff like god belief without evidence would just clutter things up.
You can Pascal’s wager me all you want, but even if Pascal’s wager weren’t nonsense (Which god do I pick? A lot of them say I’ll go to hell if I pick wrong! And, geez, would a decent god really want to be worshipped just because somebody thinks it’s the safe bet? As if I could change what I believe just by wanting it anyway!) I’d still say that the risk is worth taking just for the sake of being able to keep the god-shaped logs out of my eyes so that I can see the universe clearly.
And of course the notion that one needs a God or a government to dictate morality is just plain silly. The only role the government needs to have is to provide basic services in a more effective fashion than the marketplace, and to keep people from interfering with each other’s autonomy too much. The government doesn’t so much enforce morality as provide a framework for us to interact reasonably sanely together as a social species, and to accomplish things together that we can’t easily accomplish as individuals.
And, besides, it’s not exactly clear to me why you think a religious hierarchy is a better enforcer of morality than a government. In either case, it’s made of humans, who can be selfish or stupid or misguided or any other number of bad things which can mess everything up pretty good. The only saving grace is to have some kind of mechanism for the rest of us to stop them when they get out of hand, also known as democracy. A religious hierarchy (of the Catholic kind at least) doesn’t have anything like that, which is why the hierarchy these days is so out of sync with the majority of American and European Catholics. I’m not exactly a fan of much of what our government does these days, but bad as they are I’d sure rather have them in charge than the Pope or anybody else of that flavor. At least these assholes we may be able to get rid of this fall. The only way to be rid of a Pope would be violent insurrection. Which seems to me like a poor way to run things.
The idea of a religious-based morality (for Christians) is pointless anyway, since a key aspect is the human preponderance to sin and the subsequent forgiveness of those sins.
It’s like posting a speed limit of 20mph at the track where the Bugatti Veyron owner’s club meets and letting them off each time you pull them over.
Well, I’m going to peace out.
All I can say is that right now I am the most religious I’ve ever been in my life…and I couldn’t be happier. I haven’t limited my intellectual potential because of my beliefs. So, I can’t imagine a happier/more fruitful life for myself than what I’m living. If I am suffering from a “delusion,” so be it. At least I’m at peace and happy. I can’t argue with that.
I wish you all well and I leave you with a loving heart,
the catholic
I never really get this thing where people decide to prize peace of mind (however illusory) over clear thinking. “the catholic” is not the only person I’ve seen bow out of a discussion on such a note. I mean, accepting the universe as being most-probably god-free was one of the most wrenching events of my life, and it’s taken me years to do anything like fully working out the consequences of that acceptance, but it never once crossed my mind that I should give up my hard-won truth for a comforting fable. I spent a lot of time hoping to discover that that truth was false, and a lot more time trying to determine whether I could stomach and benefit from religious ritual without religious belief, but idea of abdicating knowledge horrifies me. I might as well put an icepick through my frontal lobes while I’m at it.
If you’re still here “the catholic” what gives? How can you live with that?
Goodbye and good riddance, the catholic.
It’s fitting that your final point was:
heh.
I haven’t limited my intellectual potential because of my beliefs.
More likely your limited intellect is implicated in your believing what you do.
You know, truth machine, I’ve struggled for a long time to come up with an alternate explanation for why people cling to religion, because I really don’t want to believe that so many people are so stupid. But I have yet to come up with something that’s a better fit than just basic failure to reason well about certain issues. It makes me very sad.
That you can consider that you haven’t limited your intellectual potential because of your beliefs is very good evidence that you’ve done just that. Religion is intellectual limitation because it allows you to stop asking questions at the point where those beliefs tell you the answer is ‘god’. All you can do then is run around in circles as you ruminate on what god’s motivations might be.
Plus you sound like a junkie who, while high, is trying to justify the substance abuse despite the crippling side-effects of the addiction.
Anne
I guess I’ll make a brief encore, but I’ve said what I came to say and you made it obvious earlier that you were not interested in my opinion.
I think you misunderstand my position. I am very intellectual, I enjoy studying philosophy, and I am open to all points of view. I have long contemplated whether or not I actually believe in God. Don’t think for one second that I blindly accepted the faith of my parents. I have pondered over the same issues you have problems with and then some. I take each part of Catholic belief, dissect it and determine if I agree with it. Believe me, no one on this post has said anything “new”…ie all of these thoughts have crossed my mind once if not many times (of my own accord-not because I was “enlightened” by an atheist).
I just see all of the good in the world and humanity and the perfection of creation and I just can’t fathom that some randomness set all of this into motion. It makes more sense for me that an all-loving and knowing being existed from the beginning that put things into motion.
I also know that I have prayed before and had my prayers answered–times when science couldn’t solve the problem.
So, go ahead and think that I am naive or what have you. But, I am one of the most contemplative people you will ever encounter. So, please don’t just assume that since I’m religious that I can’t have a unique thought of my own.
Catholic #692 wrote:
I think PZ’s original point is getting lost. He did not desecrate the cracker in order to weaken the faith of Catholics. He desecrated the cracker in order to persuade them to keep their beliefs on desecration and blasphemy INSIDE their churches and religion.
If they are going to demand that Cook’s act of taking the cracker home be treated by the university and secular society as if it was a genuine kidnapping or act of violence, then they should expect more such “desecrations” in protest. It is similar to the concept of burning an American flag to protest laws that “protect” the flag by criminalizing such actions. The idea of sacred symbols — of beliefs that must not be challenged, mocked, disparaged, or insulted — belongs within closed communities, not open societies.
I think the arguments against the truth of the Eucharist — and the existence of God — which are now being made are just byproducts of the original point. PZ’s act was not intended to convert anyone to atheism. It was to keep religious believers from assuming their beliefs had a special right to be respected as true in the public square, or protected with reverence. There is no such obligation, any more than we both have an obligation to refrain from criticizing Islam — or than you have an obligation to refrain from telling atheists we are going to hell.
“Hurt feelings” does not trump freedom.
Mark Sutton wrote previously:
I know you do not believe, but what if it truly is Jesus that you are attempting to hurt?
Let me add:
Leave Jesus alone! How fucking dare anyone make fun of Jesus! After all he’s been through! All you fucking people care about is readers, and making money off of him! He’s a human!
The Catholic wrote:
The problem with what I perceive of your approach is that I suspect that when you find something in the dogma you disagree with, you are obliged to feel that it is you who are in the wrong – not it.
Is there anything you’ve disagreed with? What did you do about it? How big a disagreement would it take for you to leave catholicism – even if it was for another christian faith?
“I’ve struggled for a long time to come up with an alternate explanation for why people cling to religion”
people cling to religion because:
-it gives them hope
-it’s something beyond themselves to live for: w/o religion everything would solely be about self-aggrandizements..some people can’t cope with that
-helps them appease fear of death
just to name a few
me:
More likely your limited intellect is implicated in your believing what you do.
tC:
I just can’t fathom
Ayup.
it’s something beyond themselves to live for: w/o religion everything would solely be about self-aggrandizements
This is demonstrably not true.
Angela if you eat beef at all you are desecrating a sacred thing for Hindus. Not eating pork or drinking alcohol are completely different as they are considered unclean or unholy. The cow is considered sacred. So the question is not whether or not you eat it in front of a Hindu its whether you eat it at all. Would it change anything if we were secretly driving nails through crackers and you didn’t know about it?
So its obvious that only your sacred cows are really sacred.
Hypocritical.
I take each part of Catholic belief, dissect it and determine if I agree with it.
Have you done the same thing with the tenets of every other religion, and treated them all to equal scrutiny?
Here’s a couple of statements about you: you’re quite intellectually dishonest, and not particularly bright. Try taking those apart and determining whether you agree with them — honestly.
So, go ahead and think that I am naive or what have you. But, I am one of the most contemplative people you will ever encounter. So, please don’t just assume that since I’m religious that I can’t have a unique thought of my own.
This bundle of false dichotomies and strawmen is evidence of both intellectual dishonesty and dimwittedness.
Sastra, I beg (humbly; I’m always impressed by your posts) to differ – on the point of how PZ’s actions were intended to affect catholics.
I believe any atheist making a public spectacle of any kind is, to some extent, aiming to diminish beliefs. This was something Dawkins made a point of in TGD – that he was letting people know that it’s okay to do without religion.
As I said to The Catholic, I am not a deconvert, so I’m not that familiar with what it might take to inspire someone to free themselves from religion. But as several posters have reminded us – and other deconversion stories have attested – the revelation (for want of a better word) that atheists exist, that not everyone holds sacred beliefs to be sacred, and that god has not struck an atheist down (directly or indirectly) for his/her so-called blasphemy have all helped in the shedding process.
I can’t imagine why PZ wouldn’t want to be considered someone actively working to convert people to atheism. I’ve written in many of the cracker-related posts that if he’s managed to drag even one fence-sitter away from their irrational belief system then his efforts have been worthwhile.
Otherwise all he’s doing is providing a way for atheists to gather together and engage in self-congratulation. While I’m aware that that’s how it often is, I have to believe there’s more to it.
I know there is for me.
Wowbagger #748 wrote:
I think this is a variation of a more basic question: if God does not exist — and never has existed — and the world came to be the way it is without any intention behind it: THEN what would cause you to realize this, and change your mind? Put more simply, what would have to happen for you to no longer believe in God?
The answers I’ve heard from believers are revealing. Many duck the question — or grossly misinterpret it — but those who do respond usually talk about some life-shattering experience making them lose hope or joy. “I suppose I might lose faith if I was faced with a crisis like my children all dying in a fire.” “I would have to get very, very depressed.” Or, rather pointlessly, “if the universe came to an end.”
A fair number proudly and unabashedly announce that NOTHING would cause them to stop believing there is a God — as if I will be impressed by their strength of character.
It suggests to me that their belief is not a conclusion which has been based on a consideration and analysis of the evidence. It can’t change given a new finding — any new finding. It is instead a faith commitment to interpret the evidence in a particular way which shouldn’t be — can’t be — falsified. An objective claim that a certain fact is true about the way things are is given form and substance, and treated like a beloved friend towards whom one must be loyal.
The methods of science were developed to force us to constantly ask ourselves “if we are wrong, HOW will we know we are wrong?” Religion — which purports to make one more humble — never makes the believer ask that question. It has the believer ask themselves other questions — and some of them are good questions (“how can I be a better person?”)– but not that question. The commitment to spin results has been itself spun into being a form of loyalty, optimism, and hope.
They only hear us asking them to give up loyalty, optimism, and hope. Unless they start to dwell on the question they can’t answer.
Wowbagger #754 wrote:
Oh, I agree that he was also hoping that people on the fence would see that atheism is a living option. As Mencken put it, “the liberation of the human mind … has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe.” He was heaving a dead cat.
My point was that this was not WHY he chose to heave the cat — to desecrate the cracker. That purpose is a byproduct — maybe a happy byproduct. But Catholic was I think asking why PZ would have chosen such an action, if he wanted to weaken the faith of the Catholics. That wasn’t his purpose.
It wasn’t even about Catholics. It was to protest instituting a cultural (or legal) form of a “blasphemy law.”
Sastra,
I added the ‘even if it was for another christian faith’ because he specified his analysis was of catholic belief – which, if he’d stuck around, I was intending to lead into a discussion on the churches condemnation of contraception and homosexuality.
That there are christians is, to me, one kind of delusion; that there are christians who remain associated with the catholic church (after thinking about the impact of their beliefs on a modern society, or being faced with the truth about their egregious practices) is a whole other issue entirely.
But as someone who can only speculate as to the deconversion process, i would imagine that for someone as indoctrinated as TC sounds it would more likely be a gradual process of moving from the hardcore to the middle-ground (whichever that describes – Episcopalians, perhaps?) to the very nebulous (UU?) before giving it away entirely.
It’s also why I asked him what he did when/if he disagreed with dogma; I expected that he would reply that it would indicate a flaw in him or his understanding, rather than the dogma itself – illustrating the inbuilt protection mechanism.
As you say, ‘how would you know if you were wrong?’ is an excellent question to ask believers.
“the catholic”, I don’t think you’re naive, I think you’re falling prey to confirmation bias. If you want enough things and pray for them all, yes, you will probably get some of those things, but to assume that this means your prayers are being “answered” is not especially justifiable. I’ve gotten many things that I very much wanted and hoped for and worked for and dreamed about, and, interestingly enough, pretty much none of them had anything to do with prayer. People get things they want sometimes when they pray to gods other than yours. Does that mean Vishnu answers the prayers of Hindus, and so forth? And what about the things that you prayed for that you didn’t get? Did you count those as evidence against the god hypothesis, or did you make excuses for your god instead? Do you have any evidence that people who pray to your god get what they want more than people who pray to other gods or who don’t pray? (So far, all reputable studies of the effectiveness of the prayer have shown no benefit.)
I’m also not sure what you mean when you say that science couldn’t “solve” the problems in question. It almost makes me think you’re talking about so-called miraculous healings, or something similar, which would not speak very well of your capacity for skepticism. But perhaps you mean something else? Feel free to clarify.
You say you’ve critically examined all the aspects of Catholic belief. So perhaps you can tell me why there’s any reason to believe any of it at all? Not just to think, “Well, it’s nice if people are nice to each other,” but to actually believe all the supernatural stuff which is supposed to justify being nice to each other, like how there’s a god and that he came to earth as his own son and did miraculous things and etc.?
I can see all the good in the world and all the amazingness of the things we’ve discovered with science, and all the evil in the world and all the horribleness of the things we’ve discovered with science and I can’t fathom how you could see it as anything other than the result of glorious and terrible chaos. Everything that lives lives only because of a mixture of intertwined hackwork, a confusing tangle of bits borrowed from other bits and broken and remade into new shapes. The joy of the universe is discovering all the wonderful things that can come from randomness, and of looking forward to see what will happen next, knowing that there is no plan to things and that we have the power and the responsibility to shape our own futures.
And, let me be clear about one other thing here, it’s not so much that I’m uninterested in your viewpoint as that I’m uninterested in the details of your religion’s theology. On the contrary, I’m still sort of fascinated by the mindset that leads people to remain religious and am trying my best to understand it. But I’ve already determined that whatever that mindset is, I can’t get at it by reading theology, only by picking at the individual viewpoints of individual religious people and seeing how you all respond to questioning of your views. So to the degree that you’re willing to discuss things from this angle, I’m happy to hear what you have to say. I’ll argue, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it.
But I guess you’re probably gone and this is pointless anyway. Oh well. *shrug*
Sastra, you’ve got it there in a nutshell. “How would you know if you were wrong?” is the exact right question here. It’s the one that got me out of that whole Catholicism mess in the first place. Thanks for stating it so clearly.
Sastra, #756
I’m still in favour of it having played a slightly bigger part in his actions – though I will admit that, on reflection, my rationlisation for his actions being an active deconversion attempt might stem from my determination to counter the accusations that he’s an attention whore or an adolescent ass.
Someone (Ichthyic, I believe) explained the Overton Window a few weeks back – i think maybe i liked the concept a little too much.
I am saddened about how little thought is being put into these posts. Many of the comments here show that there is a lack of understanding of what Catholicism really is. It’s all about love.
For the Catholics:
Your faith is about love, show love to one another and to the non-Catholics. Understand that not everyone has the same point of view. Understand that even as a Catholic you do not have all the answers. As a Catholic, you know you are not perfect and you constantly be striving to be better.
For the non-Catholics:
If you are so concerned about what Catholics believe in, take some time to learn what is really behind the faith.
If you are trying to understand what the Eucharist really is, read something from the philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Yes, you are right that Catholics are not perfect. Who is? Understand that no matter where you go, you will always find imperfection. That is a fact about the world we live in.
I am saddened about how little thought is being put into these posts.
Mote. Beam. Eye.
Many of the comments here show that there is a lack of understanding of what Catholicism really is. It’s all about love.
True Scotsmen are all about porridge.
outsider, I am gladdened that you’re saddened.
Actually, the evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of Catholics posting here are hypocrites, so not even close to perfect.
Pathetic comes closer.
Outsider,
Please start from the start before posting things that aren’t any use to anyone. Trust me, there’s very little left about the Catholic faith that we haven’t heard in the last two weeks.
To save you time here are links to just some of the posts you need to read to know what’s going on:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/i_get_email_special_cracker_ed.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/an_evil_atheist_and_a_catholic.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/now_ive_got_bill_donohues_atte.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/rolls_eyes_its_a_cracker_peopl.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fresh_crackers.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/stop_it_now_please.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/can_this_possibly_get_more_ins.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_great_desecration.php
That’ll get you up to speed.
I won’t even bother to try and explain to you that your statement that catholicism is about love is arguably the stupidest thing I’ve read in several weeks of reading very stupid things.
Yes, you are right that Catholics are not perfect. Who is? Understand that no matter where you go, you will always find imperfection. That is a fact about the world we live in.
Is “imperfection” what we’re calling an international conspiracy to protect child rapists now? We’re supposed to accept this as just “a fact about the world we live in”?
It’s all about love.
I can’t even think of a more despicably dishonest thing for you to say.
Apologies for the forthcoming duplication; I forgot the holdup on multiple url links.
Outsider,
Please start from the start before posting things that aren’t any use to anyone. Trust me, there’s very little left about the Catholic faith that we haven’t heard in the last two weeks.
To save you time, here are links to two of the posts you need to read to know what’s going on; from that you should get the idea:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_great_desecration.php
That’ll get you up to speed. There are others – use the search function (type in ‘crackers’) in the top left corner to find the rest.
Oh, I won’t even bother to try and explain to you that your statement that catholicism is ‘about love’ is arguably the stupidest thing I’ve read in several weeks of reading very stupid things.
Yes, you are correct. Every single person in the world is imperfect. No more can be said on this matter.
I understand all of the history behind these posts. As Prof. Myers says, question everything. It is good to question everything. We will never find truth if we do not question.
I don’t see the problem with Catholicism being about love. Just because Catholics are imperfect does not mean that they cannot love or be loved. The same is true for all people.
Yes, the Catholic Church has a bad image. Once again, it is made up of human beings. Human beings are not perfect.
If you are really interested in thinking further on this matter, we should examine the entire premise behind your comments.
You are definitely making some judgments as to what actions are good and bad (especially in regard to sexual abuse by clergy, you rightly say this is bad). Where do these judgments come from? Are they relative judgments? What is the standard you use to measure good and bad?
I hope this doesn’t get too off topics, but it might be a good thought experiment.
Wowbagger #760:
In the “Karl Giberson strikes back!” thread, PZ is pissed that Giberson
“recounts the tale of the ‘Great Desecration’, but without any of the context, not bothering to mention the hideous history of the Catholic response to rumors of desecration, and not even mentioning Bill Donohue’s bullying tactics.”
The context matters. He didn’t just decide to pick on the Catholics because their beliefs are particularly stupid. Or because they are “weak.”
On the contrary — he picked the Catholics because that’s who the incident in question happened to involve. Not even all Catholics, but the Catholics who had a hissy fit. I also suspect he was in a bit of a snit because he happened to be reading a book detailing some of the less happy parts of the Church’s history (I forget which book, but he’s blogged on it a few times) — and their over-exaggerated sense of outrage was therefore particularly grating.
There’s one other reason, I think — and so far I don’t think anyone’s brought it up (not that I’ve read all the comments.) It’s funny that the Catholics kept saying “you wouldn’t dare do this to the Muslims, you wouldn’t go after Islam.” Actually, I think there is a religious group PZ would not have done this very public act of irreverence towards. Not the Muslims, he threw in the Koran — but the Southern Baptists. Or a similar Fundamentalist group.
Why? To keep evolution out of it. Desecrating something specifically related to conservative Christians — or maybe even Christians in general — would immediately be hailed and misinterpreted as his view on how Evolutionists should respond to Creationism. Even though he sees attacking religion as part of the overall strategy against pseudoscientific thinking, THAT would be a mistake.
But the Catholics, officially, accept evolution (I know, not all of them, but technically.) They couldn’t spin it. It wouldn’t automatically kick start that whole ghastly “framing” debate with other scientists.
And the Catholics think it’s because they’re so meek and easy, or so holy and good. No. Reasonableness was the final nail that condemned them. Heh.
Oh great, outsider is all ready to bring up the claim atheists have no basis for morality.
Sigh.
I have not considered making a claim yet. I am just interested in questioning everything in order to understand better. Yes, claims may come in the future, but what use are claims if they do not have solid logic behind them? Why make claims without solid backing?
Unless you are gay of course.
Sastra,
Fair enough. I’ll concede that that was his main point; I certainly agree that that’s what occurred – and was surprising to me since I had no idea it would provoke such a frenzied, extremist response.
We can just hope it’s had an effect on some of the waverers.
It did occur to me that one reason he ran with this was because he spent most of his time dealing with the fundy creationists rather than other sects – and he felt it appropriate to remind people he’s about equal-opportunity irreverence.
If homesexuality is being brought into this conversation, we should be careful to define the terms we use carefully and make sure we can have an intelligent, productive conversation.
However, in response to the comment, I would still suggest that one who is gay can still love and be loved.
Ultimately, every human has the capacity to love and be loved. Whether or not they choose to love and whether or not they choose to accept love is a different question. I would be inclined to think that only a person themself can know where they stand.
Just to repeat, the Roman Catholic Church is an anti-gay hate organization.
Yes, the RCC is a hate group.
outsider, we already understand what the Eucharist is — it’s a symbol that apparently a lot of y’all have a lot of emotional investment in. Nothing more, nothing less. As for what’s behind the Catholic faith, we already know that too — a Bronze Age literary anthology mixed with some Greek philosophy, and held together these days by people’s misguided reverence for the past and desperate need to have a framework on which to hang their lives.
Quite frankly, we are tired of this state of affairs where symbols are valued more highly than people’s lives and reverence for the past is more important than planning for our collective futures. The thing we’re concerned about is not so much what Catholics believe but what you don’t believe. You don’t seem to believe that the evidence of your senses is the final arbiter of what is and what isn’t; instead you trumpet the value of “faith”. You don’t seem to believe that taking care of real problems that exist in the real world is more important than dreaming of a perfect afterlife. You don’t seem to believe that other people’s freedom to live their lives is more important than their perfect adherence to your theologians’ fairy-castle vision of what a perfect family is. You don’t seem to believe that protecting existing, thinking humans is more important than protecting potential maybe future humans. In short, you don’t seem to believe in taking care of real things in the real world, you seem to believe only in taking care of dream things in a dream world. It’s time for that to change.
I’ll quote you from your own Bible on this one:
It’s time to put away the dream world and come join the rest of us here in the real world. It’s terrifying, but it’s also amazing. There are a lot of tough times ahead in the world, and we need every thinking adult we can to help with that. And you won’t be able to help if all you do is sit in your room and play pretend with your toys.
Well thank you for being so charitable. I feel better now.
However the RCC apparently doesn’t agree, unless of course you mean love on their terms.
Outsider wrote:
Let me guess – you’re going to say it’s okay for two people of the same gender to feel attraction to each other as long as they don’t act on it?
That tired old ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ dodge? Cram it in your jesus-hole. With crackers.
And how is this relevant to your church’s history as an advocate for brutality, murder and religious persecution – or its ongoing protection of inconvertible child-rapists?
outsider #766 wrote:
The only kind of standard that has any claims to objectivity — intersubjective standards common to humanity.
Religions make morality judgments too subjective, because equality is not a basic assumption, and the facts of the matter which frame judgments are based on untestable matters of faith. Religions often arrive at humanist standards anyway — but they don’t have to.
Wowbagger #771 wrote:
Heh. Good point.
We are moving quickly here, but that is fine. Your argument presupposes that what is real can be determined by sense experience alone. If reality is determined only by sense experience you are quite correct. However, is it? Can we really know for sure? I myself am not sure and will have to continue thinking about it. Philosophers Rene Descartes and David Hume also asked many of these questions and came up with different views.
Another presupposition that you made was that the Eucharist is a symbol. If you take it on sense experience alone, yes, all you see is bread. Then the bread is only a symbol. However, Catholicism does not say the Eucharist is a symbol.
I would not say that Catholics “dream of a perfect afterlife” either. Yes, they believe there is an afterlife. That is why they should strive to live their lives on earth in a way that would prepare them for the afterlife.
For those that think there is nothing after death, this is totally absurd.
Now that is some loaded rhetoric right there.
Whether or not “they choose” to love or to accept love.
Translation. Whether the choose to be gay or to renounce their “gay lifestyle”.
For those that think there is nothing after death, this is totally absurd.
Citation needed.
Outsider wrote:
Er, why is it absurd? What evidence do you have that there is anything after death.
It’s not an…NDE…is it?
Unfortunately I must be going for the evening. However, I’d like to thank all of you for this conversation. I think it has been really valuable. Keep questioning.
Peace!
For those that think there is nothing after death, this is totally absurd.
It’s always amusing when a dimwit declares that a tautology is “totally absurd”.
If one turns off a fan, what happens to its whirring?
shorter outsider:
blah blah blah blah blah
Yes it is. That is why I live my life being good to people without some carrot dangled in front of me for an afterlife or a whip behind me threatening me with eternal damnation.
Philosophers Rene Descartes and David Hume also asked many of these questions and came up with different views.
You may be shocked to learn that the thoughts of those philosophers have been examined, critiqued, elaborated on, and surpassed in more recent centuries.
Trolls these days. No stamina at all. Back in my day, we had to walk 6 miles to Usenet uphill both ways barefoot in the snow and broken glass, carrying our bits in a leaky bucket. And we were grateful for it!
He had me thinking he was our old friend Kenny for a second there.
Nope, just another cut’n’run papist.
Booring! Send more trolls!
*sigh* I guess I’ll just rip a few more chunks out of the corpse of this one:
If there is anything “real” that is completely inaccessible to our senses (even augmented by instrumentation), we’ll never know about it, so for our purposes it might as well not exist. All the reality that will ever matter to us is the reality we can, you know, actually detect. By measuring it. In what sense do you suggest that something could be meaningfully real if we can never measure it in any way with our senses? How could it possibly affect what we experience if we literally cannot experience it? What relevance would it have to our lives? Or, as Sastra asks, if you believed in such a thing, how could you tell if that belief was wrong? What method would you use to distinguish between A and not A?
Gah, this is pointless. I should go do something useful instead.
I’ll keep questioning how people continue to subscribe to such silly ideas and support such ghastly organizations like the RCC. Thanks!!
Way to bow out without addressing any difficult points.
Lame.
Anne Nonymous, #791:
Send us trolls that give us some mental exercise rather than epic stupidity. I’ve been wading through the ‘Horrible Story’ thread and apparently that Baba moron has shown up again.
God bless the Killfile.
Anyway, the ‘keep questioning’ thing just reminded me of why I hate the christian explanation of ‘free will’.
Apparently, god gives us free will – the ability to choose to do whatever we want. Except there are things he’d rather we didn’t do, so he’s told us that, if we do them, we’ll be punished for all eternity.
That doesn’t translate to ‘free will’. It’s like putting you in a room with four doors, telling you you can go anywhere; however, three of the doors are locked – so you’re really only ‘free’ to go through one.
Similarly the ‘question everything’ comment: question everything but keep in mind the answer can never be ‘there is no god’ – no matter what.
Ugh, Wowbagger, I’d managed to forget about the whole horrible story thing. I think it just sounded too much like a bad slasher flick to really sink into my consciousness. But I guess people really can be pretty damn hideous and crazy when they put their minds to it.
OK, I need a review. What exactly is the problems that some people have with PZ’s action?
Did he mock a religion? Yes. No one argues that.
Did he break the law? A few have tried to put some far fetched arguments that he did but I don’t think anyone thinks they hold water.
Is he going to hell? If the RCC is right, then yes. In fact if any of the mainstream religions are right then probably yes. Is PZ arguing that point? No.
Oh my FSM! I’ve just figured this out. It’s not about any of the simple statements I’ve just made. IT’s ABOUT FRAMING!!!
@ #740
They do it because it’s easy. It’s what attracts people to religion and keeps them there. Most humans are gullible, lazy and dishonest. So religions aren’t going to run out of sheeple any time soon.
NB Laziness is actually a driving force for the whole universe – in physics (spherical stars and soap bubbles), chemistry and biology as well as at the level of human inventions (eg washing machines). But that’s another story.
Meanwhile, religion has the colossal selective advantage among humans of causing, encouraging and maintaining mental, educational, moral and emotional retardation.
• Not having to think about things (or think about them properly, considering all the consequences) is very attractive and peaceful to many humans.
• Not having to take the trouble to genuinely know stuff and, crucially, know how and to what degree of accuracy you know it is also a boon to many who prefer to merely pretend to know or rely on their religion to “know” everything. Making up whatever you want to believe whenever you want and claiming it to be true (or just as true as anyone else’s “opinion”) is much easier than genuine learning.
• Not having to work through morality and personally own it internally, but instead having it pre-packaged in a self-contradictory form (which allows you or your religious leader to claim that whatever you wanted was right all along) is easier. Getting to be bad and get forgiven over and over again without ever making amends to the people you’ve actually wronged is much easier than being good or showing real contrition. Similarly religion’s fake respect is much easier than the real thing.
• Not having to grow up and gain control over your emotions to become a rational, self-restrained, civilised person is also easier.
See how religion plays to the very worst traits of humanity. It is tailor-made (evolved over millennia) to make the majority of them want it, even if social pressure wasn’t also force-feeding them with it. Only a few people have the intellectual honesty to reject it. Even fewer have both that and a lack of gullibility at a young enough age to never get snared by it and thus avoid the difficulty others have of giving up the addiction once their whole sense of self-worth is invested in the religion.
@ #745
Ha-ha. I’d say the latter admission contradicts the former claim. Philosophy is largely mental masturbation, indulging in fantasy without having to measure up to reality. Advanced sophistry for the intellectually dishonest. It’s the perfect sort of pretend thinking and pretend knowledge for the religious. See also:
:-D
@ outsider #761
You’re mistakenly assuming that we haven’t! On the contrary, his writings (and the way believers fall for them and recommend them and also those of C.S.Lewis etc etc) are one of the reasons we know for a fact that Catholics (and Christians and religionists in general) are intellectually dishonest. If you were capable of thinking straight you wouldn’t regard those writings as being convincing. :-D
For those of you who need physical proof that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ and not a symbol read the documentation about the times God has allowed people to see the flesh and blood contained in the Eucharist. These miracles have been scientifically proven.
Eucharistic Miracles – a list of miracles including the Eucharistic Miracle of 1998
http://indefenseofthecross.com/Eucharistic_miracles.htm
Eucharistic Miracle 2 – 1994 Hawaii
Eucharistic Miracle 1 – 1995 Massachusetts
The Eucharist is not a cracker.
You need to reassess what it means to be scientifically “proven”.
Those are not. By any stretch of the definition.
For those of you who need physical proof that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ and not a symbol read the documentation about the times God has allowed people to see the flesh and blood contained in the Eucharist. These miracles have been scientifically prov
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
That’s some serious crazy.
SERIOUS crazy. You’d think someone who’d “proven” the Eucharist Miracle was real could afford a better web designer…
/snark
The voice over on the Boston tape can’t even pronounce the name of the town right!!
Let me give you a clue Janet, compare DNA of the crackers blood spots to the DNA of the people with access to the box its kept in.
Then sell those pretty baubles and give the money to help the kids the priests abused here.
Doesn’t the whole idea of eating the flesh and blood of another human being just make you sick? I used to go to friends churches and take the grape juice and what not out of politeness when offered, I haven’t been able to do that in years. Just turns my stomach, the whole idea. Whats wrong with people who think cannibalism is ok?
IMHO, the reason that eating the flesh and blood is OK with catholics is because they don’t ‘really believe’ that it is the flesh and blood of Jesus. They just say it because they are supposed to. If I were to lay odds, 80% think of it as symbolism, 2% think it is the real flesh and blood and 18% don’t want to think about it.
SEF, I tend to agree that all those explanations you mention seem to be the most likely reasons people tend to stick with religion rather than escaping it. I guess what I mean when I say I don’t “get” it is, while I see the logic of the argument, it’s hard to believe that people are really like that, y’know? In part, I’m uncomfortable with an explanation that seems to set me up as being that much more perceptive/intellectually tough/whatever than the majority of the rest of the human race. It seems too satisfyingly flattering for me to trust my willingness to adhere to it. And the other part of the problem I see is that it doesn’t seem to provide guidance for how to fix the problem. If people are just plain too lazy and stupid to think about the problem it seems like there’s just nothing we can do to ever make things better.
The thing I really want from this I guess is not so much to understand what their viewpoint is, but to be able to recast this situation in a light that provides guidance for overcoming the problem of religion, and the “lazy and stupid” theory just doesn’t seem to cut it in this regard. It “explains” things, but it’s not a productive explanation because it doesn’t help change things, in much the same way that saying, “God made the universe” serves as an “explanation” but doesn’t help us build a transistor radio. The only thing “lazy and stupid” seems to do is provide an excuse to sit around bitterly congratulating oneself on how awesome one is. Not that I am accusing you of doing this.
I dunno. Maybe I’m missing the hidden potential in this theory, but at the moment I don’t find it very satisfactory, and I’d still like something better.
If it isn’t really fixable without significant further (and competently directed) human evolution (and I don’t believably see anything as intrinsic as laziness being removed from the whole universe any time soon!) then your reluctance to face reality is just misplaced optimism – itself easily as unhelpful!
Of course, with sufficient resources / people, it could be declared to be a premature judgment and some group or other could continue investigating for other excuses on the premise that the existing ones are false or inadequate rather than merely unpleasing. However, I think it’s a mistake to rule out the possibility of making creative use of the existing postulated reasons somehow.
Knowing that the primary driver is laziness might open up an opportunity for making a pitch or “framing” things in a suitable manner to play to that. Meanwhile, you slightly misrepresented my points with
since it’s not exactly about inherent stupidity as much as encouraged and enabled and magnified stupidity. One doesn’t actually have to be super-smart to see through religion – more super-honest to persuade oneself to think it through properly. Much of the necessary smarts can be provided by other people doing the prodding, eg with the “what would it take for you to stop believing” question. To bypass the difficulty of getting enough people to ask that and similar of every unthinking believer, what would it take (marketing campaign, viral advertising etc) for that to become the most well-known concern in the world. Mass deconversion would be a lot more efficient than the one-to-ones which already take place.
A separate possible line of attack would be finding a way to combat the all too prevalent anti-intellectualism in the world. Humans do come equipped with a certain amount of curiosity which religion seeks to suppress – and anti-intellectualism makes that easier to do because it’s not cool to think and have genuine knowledge. Remove that extra peer pressure and more people might risk thinking.
(cont.)
Getting specific types of education into all schools (none of the evil faith school opt-outs or home-school cop-outs where they aren’t independently tested on the material to be covered) would be another important move. NB The US is at a considerable disadvantage by not allowing discussion of religion at all, ie comparative religion (like the UK) but ideally including the many flaws of religion explicitly.
Some people want critical thinking to be taught. While it’s a noble idea to attempt, I suspect it won’t work in reality because anyone who isn’t a natural and already doing it anyway will either not manage it at all or will only do it when absolutely pressed into it and led by the nose in an exam situation (that laziness factor again).
The forewarned forearmed approach might work well against some religious indoctrination. Eg early information and experiments about how the brain can malfunction or misinterpret things in certain ways. These are things which some kids get to on their own but many more don’t – and not all of those in the latter group are necessarily too stupid to grasp these things if they’re pointed out. Then when someone religious claims X is a mystical experience only to be had in religion Y, they’ll already know better.
How one’s mind works is a very important part of learning how one’s body works and there have been various attempts to get kids to explore their physical potential rather than vegetating. The advantage of getting to know mental potential too (instead of pretending everyone is alike because it’s non-PC to admit IQs differ) is that it can help the child direct their own learning strategies (better at rote memorising or at exploring and comprehending and deducing) and do better academically too.
I think the current location for it in the UK primary school curriculum would be PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education). Though obviously there’s also a scientific angle on it. But some fatuous PSHE stuff might be much more easily dumped to fit in such crucial and widely applicable information early on, whereas the relevant science is more advanced.
I don’t really think it’s “laziness” so much as a tendency to trust intuitions and what feels like common sense. Surround it with reassurances that this is very deep, basic stuff, and it feels like surrendering to the wisdom which lies inherent in our nature.
Specific religious beliefs and superstitions have to be taught, but the underlying sense that mind is a different kind of “substance,” that all things happen for a (social, psychological) reason, and that you are being watched and monitored by some great power which knows your thoughts, and rewards and punishes you (ie mommy)all seem to be natural, normal byproducts of how the human brain learned to make sense of the world. Supernatural entities and magic bring the universe down to the comprehensible level of a personal narrative, which is where we are comfortable.
You have to struggle to think your way out of this, just the way you have to work hard to overcome mistaken “folk physics” notions. And there will always be people telling you that the hard work is really “the easy way out” of avoiding the deep wisdom of your heart, and it will close off important knowledge science and reason won’t get you.
After all, astronomy can tell you what the stars are, but only astrology can tell you what they mean.
By the way, I still don’t quite understand the point of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the miracle of the Eucharist really does change the bread and wine. It’s just as good as the real thing.
WHAT is eating human flesh supposed to do? Bring you “closer” to that person? Give you the strength or virtue or memories of that person? Is it like melding two people into one, like Dax in DS9?
When you drink someone’s blood, we know that does — what? Transfer their powers and characteristics to the drinker? If you drink the blood of a brave man, you become brave? Eat the flesh of a Frenchman, and the history and language of France are now part of your knowledge base? Or perhaps it’s just a matter of sentiment, like keeping a snippet of their hair in a locket. Only it’s a bit of their skin in your stomach. Same sort of thing.
Do they reason that one out at all? Does it strike any of them that this is not some deep “mystery” — when it get down to it, it’s a form of primitive contact magic they would consider silly and obsolete in any other context.
Which is why that needs to be explicitly taught to those who haven’t yet and probably aren’t going to work it out for themselves. A gentle intro of optical etc illusions, pattern seeking errors and the anthropomorphisation inherent in thinking, in traditional literature and embedded in the language itself (eg the lack of passive verbs).
There are lots of fun examples to use of that sort of faulty thinking, including some where it’s gone so badly wrong that even the most dense can see it as absurd. Eg Basil Fawlty vs the mini.
The majority of them are probably too ignorant to have that readily available as an example for comparison, even if they had the wherewithal to do the thinking. I knew it and evidently you knew it but I do doubt that it’s common knowledge in any explicit form (rather than merely being a buried influence in a cartoon or video game etc). Many people just don’t read the right books to find that stuff out. It’s not part of the typical school education and (according to US people on this blog) comparative religion isn’t even allowed in the US, unlike the UK (not that the UK curriculum is that good anyway).
Sorry, SEF, I did not mean to misrepresent what you said. I do tend to hope that the root of the problem can be attacked by improvements in early education, but it seems that implementation of such changes in the currently prevailing climate is very difficult. In order to even get to the point where such changes can be implemented, there’s a need to somehow convince a significant fraction of today’s adults (most of whom did not have the benefit of such education) that they should favor it for their children nonetheless. That seems to me to be the really hard problem here.
I’ve been a TA for several semesters for physics classes directed either at pre-meds or at engineers, and the thing I’ve noticed about the pre-meds is that even though many of them are pretty bright in some sense (and very hardworking), it’s very nearly impossible for them to learn how to adopt the methods of logical, systematic thinking that are necessary for them to solve physics problems on their own. Instead, many of them succeed by essentially getting every single problem type solved for them once (by somebody else), and then they just memorize the solution trees. (Even some of the engineers do this, much to my dismay.) It seems nearly impossible to get students like this to change their ways, and it’s made me very skeptical of the possibilities for convincing people of college age and older to adopt more critical and careful modes of thinking.
I guess probably the hope for actually changing the system is still many decades off. This next generation that’s coming along will have much more information about atheism and skepticism available to them in the public sphere during their formative years, and perhaps they will begin to provide the critical mass of sensible people needed to make changes in the way our schools operate. The big question here is whether these changes will happen fast enough. We’re in pretty dangerous times on a lot of fronts here, particularly in regard to resource issues and civil liberties, and it seems like we’re really running down the clock on ways to resolve some of these problems gracefully.
Heh, Sastra, this just reminded me… I’ve discovered lately that it’s often very helpful in teaching physics if I can anthropomorphize the objects involved in a problem. One example is talking about potential energy and work in terms of what particles “want” to do. “Did these two electrons want to go closer together, or did I have to drag them together with them kicking and screaming the whole way? Okay, well, dragging them kicking and screaming was hard and it sucked, so that means I had to do positive work to make it happen.” Hijacking the students’ social reasoning systems seems to make it much easier for many of them to remember this kind of concept. It makes me wonder whether there are other things one could do with this…
Aren’t you just the funniest,pseudo-intellectual, two-bit, third rate instructor from a mediocre institution. Desecration of the Holy Eucharist may have garnered the fifteen minutes you apparently craved. How pathetic. May God be merciful when you stand for your final reckoning.
They are just so damn cute when they get huffy.
Love the hypocrisy, the wish that god is merciful is really a veiled threat.
Fame? PZ has already been in a movie. The attention of offended Catholics isn’t fame, it’s annoying.
That’s part of the natural laziness I was talking about into which you’re tapping further. Humans are instinctively re-using their inbuilt analysis-of-other-mind engine to avoid having to do real thinking about things (eg the natural world) – and sometimes the pattern-matching works. However, the penalty is that it’s also misleading. The solution found isn’t necessarily the solution for the “reason” one “thought” it was and often the auto-guess will be completely wrong because the match-up was never actually true but merely a convenient shortcut to getting any answer at all.
Anne Nonymous #812 wrote:
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but at one of the skeptic conferences I went to a speaker performed an experiment to show just that. A problem using cards was much easier to figure out when it was put into social terms.
I forget the exact details, but it involved seeing several cards, all of which had numbers on one side, and one of two colors on the other. 2 cards show an odd or even number: two cards show red or green. “Which 2 cards would you turn over to find out if all the even cards were red?” Most people would get the answer wrong — they’d turn over the even card and the red card to confirm the theory, instead of the green card to disconfirm it. It doesn’t matter what the red card is.
But when the same problem was put into the form of a story about a bar, people got it right. 4 people: one over 21, one under 21 — you don’t know what they’re drinking. One with a beer, one with a soda — you don’t know their ages. Which 2 do you check to test the theory “all the people with beer are over 21?” Everyone gets it right — you check the underage kid, and the guy with a beer. The others don’t matter.
Speaking of skeptic conferences, I think a lot of people gradually become atheists after starting to investigate the paranormal, or other extraordinary claims. The types of errors you see people making in evaluating ESP studies or buying into perpetual motion machines are the same kinds of errors you see people making in religion.
That may be much easier to teach. Explaining how ordinary people can come to believe they’ve been abducted by space aliens without assuming the existence of space aliens is much less controversial than explaining why people can come to believe in God — without assuming the existence of God.
I give that one a 3. Purely on the insults. Total failure in both technical and content.
Rev. BigDumbChimp — what does the ‘KoT’ stand for?
King of Typos
It’s very weird to me to do this social reasoning thing with the physics, because I learned how to do physics the exact opposite way — I stuck rigidly to the math and the derivations in the beginning, and only after many years (and especially after starting to TA) did I begin to develop this kind of intuitive perspective on things.
For me, the intuitive approach has been a kind of reaction to the realization that most students seem to see the derivations as too abstract and are unable to actually do anything with the results. I don’t really know if they get bored and/or intimidated by the derivations and just zone out of any discussion of them or what, but generally if I try to explain physical ideas primarily via mathematical calculations I end up with a lot of confused and lost students who stare blankly at the problems with their jaws hanging open and drool running down their chins (figuratively speaking). They’re much better able to make use of more intuitive presentations.
The thing that worries me about this is that, as was mentioned above, while intuition enables them to make some simple uses of the ideas presented in class, it still leaves them woefully unprepared to deal with edge cases and unfamiliar situations where their intuitions may be wrong and careful, logical calculation and derivation (not to mention a search for new ideas) may be the only way forward. I always try to stress to them the need to solve the problem both ways, by intuition and by more systematic reasoning, and to make sure that their results agree, but I am not sure they listen to this advice.
It seems to me like we’re kind of circling around the notion here that this intuition/systematic reasoning gap may be the reason that many people seem unable to really effectively challenge their own religious beliefs. (Come to think, I just realized that I came to atheism the same way I learned physics — I initially derived it based on systematic reasoning, but it took me many years after that to develop an intuitive framework that made me comfortable with the notion of a godless universe.)
In any case, I don’t know if the solution to this is to have a stronger push to develop kids’ systematic reasoning skills at younger ages, or if it’s necessary to just simply accept that most people can’t or won’t really become strong systematic reasoners and settle for instilling the majority with the necessary intuitive framework early on. I mean, okay, the actual solution is probably “both”, but I do wonder what level of improvement is actually possible from teaching kids how to think, and to what degree we’ll be stuck with relying on indoctrination just like all the religions are. My experience these past few years causes me to fear that the latter may end up as the dominant factor, but the students I see are probably a little old for me to really have much shaping effect on them, so my perspective is undoubtedly skewed.
I don’t think you’re seeing anything much different than I saw at infant level. Most people really are too thick in the sense that their natural bent is towards rote memorisation – including the physical form of that which is sometimes mis-named as instinct when it’s really unconsciously acquired rote behaviour. Right up to high levels, exams favour the memorisers over the thinkers. Similarly, physical activities (whether as athletes or pianists) favour the instinct memorisers.
There are vanishingly few situations where the thinker and non-instinctual performer has the edge. As a rare example of that type I try to make the most of my unusual talents when the opportunity arises. It means I’m much much quicker on a learning curve for doing better at almost anything novel but, if there’s a longer period of time for other people to be trained, there will undoubtedly then be people coming along who can do it better than me by unthinking “instinct”. But, crucially, they will then be trapped into doing things that way while I still retain flexibility and adaptability to novel situations.
There are serious natural selection advantages for favouring the memorisers on the whole. By re-using pre-built instincts instead of thinking, they react much faster (certainly than they would as slow thinkers themselves but also usually faster even than the fastest thinkers). This can be especially important when taking any action or making any decision, even a wrong one, is better than hesitating. However, human technological civilisation has been going away from that environment for quite a long time; and there are plenty of occasions where what is needed is not a neurotypical but a me (or two or several).
the catholic says
“It’s funny…if you look throughout history, the Church thrived and endured when there were attacks against it. (Try coming up with a substantial list of institutions that survived the middle ages intact) ”
Learn some history before you start pontificating (pun very much intended), the reason the Catholic Church “survived” the Middle (Dark) Ages was that THEY were the ones in charge.
May God be merciful when you stand for your final reckoning.
blah blah blah blah blah
I guess the thing I wonder is if the two processes are necessarily mutually exclusive. Does one have to be only a thinker, or only a memorizer? Is it possible to train students to do both? It would seem like they ought to be complementary skills — thinking helps you figure out the things you need to know, and memorizing helps you store the important parts so you don’t have to think them out every time and can use them quickly at need.
I’ve always tended more towards the systematic end of the scale and less towards the intuitive end, but belatedly and slowly I’ve realized I need to develop the intuitive end too, and I think I’m doing an okay job of it now that I’ve started to deliberately work at it. An instructor for one of my undergraduate lab courses started asking me questions that forced me to begin to add intuitive approaches to my skill set, and I’ve since realized that mastery of both approaches is essential to the study of physics, so although it was frustrating at the time I’m very grateful for what he did.
So my question is, if I can begin to master intuition at this late age, is it possible for intuitive types to go the other direction (with proper prompting), either when they’re young or even later on?
Carl Sagan (whom I, as a radical feminist, of course despise, according to some) discusses precisely this parallel in The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Chapter 5 – “Extraterrestrial Folklore: Implications for the Evolution of Religion.”
Obviously they’re not fully mutually exclusive but people do tend to have a stronger affinity for and ability in one than the other. I’m naturally a thinker but, although I regard my memory as comparatively poor (particularly in that it’s very random access in the truest sense of that rather than the computer version), it turns out to be better than that of a lot of people for whom memory is their primary recourse (other than lying and making up any old rubbish without regard for whether or not it’s true, of course!). However, I tend not to trust just my memory and like to have a couple of different ways of double-checking things by derivation (or even looking them up when the resources are available).
One can definitely make some sort of attempt to teach critical thinking skills to people who don’t have them naturally. However, from what I’ve observed, they still only get used in limited contexts under extreme prompting (eg in exam contexts with leading questions). They don’t seem to become natural modes of brain activity. However, having been primed that such things do at least exist (if only in others), it might then be easier to make a non-user recognise the importance of them again later on and be more capable of seeing, when promted, the difference between a side which has been applying logic to evidence and a side which has just been making up any old rubbish which suited them.
Most people do improve with practice to some extent and thus definitely have some instinct-forming ability. I seem to have a lot less of that though. Practising X isn’t guaranteed to make me better at X at all. And even with normal people there can be considerable variation and limits on the effectiveness of practice. Learning mental memorising tricks can have a significant effect on the abilities of people who hadn’t already mostly been doing that sort of thing anyway. So there’s considerable scope there for the average memoriser type of person.
You wanna get people to understand the importance of critical thinking skills?
Show ’em situations in which such skills help avoid real personal problems, such as getting ripped off.
How many arguments could even “Fr. J.” produce against teaching kids how to spot the implicit traps in tv commercials?
(If the answer to the above is “>0”, expect Fr. J. to thrive in a future career as a school board lobbyist – assuming, of course, that a movement for CT classes somehow develops and grows…)
One of the speakers at the TAM conference, when asked “how do we get people who are into woo/pseudoscience/religion to start being more skeptical?” gave an interesting response. He said “ask them if there’s anything in that category they DON’T believe.” There almost always is. Then, lead them into discussing why they don’t believe it.
First, it puts you both on the same side. Second, the reasons they give for not believing in telephone psychics or whatever are often good reasons for not believing in whatever it is they do believe. It can be even more effective when you don’t point this out.
As they run on about how easy it is for other people to fool themselves, it can plant a little seed of self-recognition. As someone above mentioned, it’s not that people don’t know how to be critical thinkers. It’s that they’re inconsistent, and will set apart some area where they think the rules are different.
Sastra @ #828,
That sounds like a very effective tactic.
I can’t help but wonder if the situation was slightly changed…what would have been the result.
Imagine: PZ, instead of attacking religions, gathered up any articles symbolic of the gay rights movement and proceeded to burn and piss upon them and then encouraged his students to do likewise. Or what if he had done like the Conservatives at UT, who hosted a bake sale and sold cookies at a lower price to minorities in order to ridicule the stupidity of affirmative action (for those unfamiliar with this story…the Conservatives’ operation was QUICKLY shut down).
Why is PZ allowed to show such disrespect against religious groups in society which hold differing views from himself but it wouldn’t be OK if his actions had been directed towards as less “fair game” target. Why does political correctness only count for certain groups? Would the university still not have punished him if he had acted against minorities, gays,etc.?
All I advocate is equal treatment. If you are going to insist that homosexuals, minorities, etc. deserve respect, you better damn well ensure that all groups with differing beliefs are at least shown some common courtesy.
cynic it was in response to the actions of the Catholics involved. He didn’t just up and decide to desecrate a cracker one day.
If a gay rights group did something stupid and absolutely fucking ridiculous like the Catholics did in this instance then I’d have no problem with PZ doing something similar to show how out of measure their response was to an incident.
Seems to me you aren’t fully informed on the subject. Correct me if I am wrong.
Anne Nonymous #812 wrote:
By coincidence (synchronicity?) I just now read something interesting on this in the new issue of Scientific American Mind:
(From the magazine)
Word Problems: Traditional story setups might hinder math learning.
Jane has $3.05 in nickels and quarters. If she has 13 more nickels than quarters, how many coins does she have? According to the conventional thinking, real-world examples such as this one are the best way to teach mathematics. When researchers at Ohio State University tested this hypothesis, however, they found the opposite to be true. They showed college students a mathematical pattern using either a concrete example (in this case, measuring cups filled with water) or an abstract example involving symbols, then had them play a game that drew on their new skills. The subjects who saw the abstract example performed significantly better in the game than did those who learned the pattern with measuring cups. Jennifer Kasminsky, lead author of the study, hypothesizes that real world examples might distract students from the mathematics being represented. “We think what’s driving this is attentional focus,” she says. (And, by the way, Jane has 29 coins.) — Erica Westy
Rev BigDumbChimp #831 wrote:
I agree. And there already is an analogous situation in those places where there are laws against “hate speech,” and gay rights advocates actually seek to legally punish or publically squelch ministers who call homosexuality an “abomination against God.”
I know that most secular humanists/atheists think and argue that this is WRONG, and I’m pretty sure PZ would agree (I know Ed Brayton does.) Cynic’s example of the conservative bake sale at UT shouldn’t have been shut down. He’s right.
Christians should have the legal right to express unpopular, “dangerous” ideas in public without fear of getting kicked out of university or fired from their job. It’s simply not the same as advocating or committing violence, and that distinction is important.
I, too, can easily imagine situations where gay right advocates get so hysterical with this idea of suppressing anything that offends them, that sure, go for the symbolic smackdown.
I think cynic would be a bit surprised to find that we’re more consistent than he thinks.
“cynic it was in response to the actions of the Catholics involved. He didn’t just up and decide to desecrate a cracker one day.”
No. I am aware of the whole story. There was some person who got death threats because he took a consecrated host out of a Church.
The Conservatives that I mentioned earlier were acting against what they saw as an unjust law, which they FOUND TO BE RIDICULOUS (a MUCH larger incident then a few Catholics spurting death threats out of outrage more than actual substance), yet they were forced to cease their operations. Why the double standard? Why does this Conservative club get reprimanded and a well-known figure on a campus (which mind you, pledges to hold professors to “the highest ethical standards” and demands “respectful, fair, and civil” treatment to others) not even get a slap on the wrist? Why is it taboo to attack certain groups but not others?
Do you still think the UNIVERSITY would not have taken action against what PZ did…blatantly going beyond
and encouraging his students to show disrespect if it had been against a different group?
Maybe we don’t all agree with the Catholic church, but I sure know that I wouldn’t want to be beyond ridiculed for my differing beliefs especially in a society that preaches tolerance. We at least owe one another some respect.
Who will be the first to step up and be the BIGGER person and say enough is enough? Last time I checked two wrongs doesn’t make a right.
No, you’re asking for, nay demanding, unmerited respect. And the reason you do so is because you know full well you don’t deserve it. Otherwise you’d have no trouble coming up with decent arguments for your silly beliefs (ie if they weren’t silly).
They deserve respect not for being minorities but for being decent human beings (insofar as they are).
Absolutely not. The correct thing to do is to ensure they receive exactly the respect and common courtesy they and their beliefs merit – which isn’t much in the case of the Catholic church.
No-one on the atheist side (that I saw) was threatening the persons of the cracker people. That lowest common denominator of “respect” was preserved (which is more than can be said for the religious side). But their stupid beliefs were being treated with exactly the ridicule they deserve – for once! And that’s what you don’t like – getting what you’re genuinely due instead of the entirely unearned privileges you’ve become accustomed to expect.
Get over yourself. Your theocracy is no longer in charge of the world and the peasantry has gone way beyond being revolting. It’s gone and done something much worse – got itself an education! And, in the process, despite the best/worst efforts of the church, learned to recognise your lot for the vile conmen they are.
cynic, you seem to be indicating that even on their own time, college prof’s must not do anything insensitive.
“cynic, you seem to be indicating that even on their own time, college prof’s must not do anything insensitive.”
My point isn’t quite that. The fact that the blog was originally linked to the school website (this is what I’ve read…maybe it’s not true) and the fact that PZ is encouraging the utmost disrespect amongst his students is where I draw the line. If he had distanced himself from the university and done it, I wouldn’t think he should be reprimanded by it…but I see a problem since he actively involved his link with the university, which in turn was not true to it’s own policies.
Another problem I see with many of your statements…is that you view a few meaningless threats as ludicrous and base your reasoning for PZ’s actions off of this presupposition. But, not everyone will view the death threats as ludicrous (many might see the death threats simply as a hyperbolic outrage against a violation of Church policy). Also, hypothetical: there is a Gay Rights March…pretend I view that as highly ludicrous…maybe I say to myself “who do they think they are to try to corrupt my children with these absurdities” (mind you…I don’t hold this view…I’m simply using it for a point). I would tend to think that many of you would think the march was totally legitimate and not ludicrous. So, if I were to protest it, using comparable means to what PZ did…you would most likely condemn my actions (If you wouldn’t, I’m glad I don’t know you and there is no sense in arguing my point anymore because you are all relativists)
Except that he did no such thing.
Yet the Catholic church has a long history of ridiculing and disrespecting other beliefs, and does indeed still disparage non-Catholics to a certain extent.
Now, granted, they often surrounding that disparagement with rolling theological verbosity, and/or dressing it up a bit with pretty language. But does tacking on the equivalent of “Oh, I’m so sorry that…” to “You’re going to burn in hellfire forever and ever and ever” really make that much difference?
Maybe PZ should have done something like that. “Oh, I’m so sorry that you are under the insane delusion that a cracker is a powerful and transcendent God.”
I agree with Sastra the UT group should have been able to make their point, as offensive as it may be. However I do not think these two situations are analogous.
1. They happened at different Institutions
2. PZ was not acting as a representative member of his school when he did this. The UT club (and apparently other similar incidents at other universities) are university sponsored clubs if I am reading it correctly.
Are you suggesting that people who make death threats based on religion never carry them out?
I may have missed something. Can you point to where he encouraged his students to do anything? Or maybe I misunderstood you, are you making a hypothetical point?
“an you point to where he encouraged his students to do anything?”
according to all reports I have read, he has encouraged everyone to do as he has done (deceivingly procure a consecrated host and violate it)
I believe I read that he encouraged them to post youtube videos as well…
No, he did not.
His own home, and on his own time, isn’t distant enough from the university?
Again point me to where he did this.
cynic, one might also argue that there’s a distinction here between mocking the beliefs of the powerful and mocking those of the downtrodden. Catholics are hardly the downtrodden these days by any stretch of the imagination, although some of them still seem to have a bit of a leftover persecution complex from the brief intervals in history where they were picked on in some places. There’s a notion here that it’s more “fair” to enforce some level of restraint on a powerful majority than to enforce restraint on a powerless minority.
One might also ask in regard to those UT conservatives and their bake sale, were they threatened with death and/or expulsion, or were they simply told they weren’t permitted to hold such an activity on campus? It seems to me that a university might be well within its rights to prevent students (or professors) from doing something disruptive and offensive on campus, provided they do not tell students or professors what they’re permitted to do elsewhere. If Prof. Myers had held his cracker desecration in front of the student union, or in a classroom, his University might have good reason to be displeased with him, but he didn’t do that at all. And even given that the bake sale was held on campus, expelling students as a consequence would have been well out of bounds when their “crime” consists primarily of being assholes, and not of anything genuinely actionable.
I do tend to waver a bit on both of the above points, in the sense that I might be convinced that UT should not have prohibited the bake sale from going forward, no matter how obnoxious it was. But I’m definitely not going to be convinced in the other direction, that Prof. Myers should have gotten in trouble over Crackergate, or that Webster Cook and Benjamin Collard deserve what they’re getting.
——–
Sastra, that’s an interesting article you’ve got there. I guess the question I’d ask about the experiment, though, is did the game represent things in terms of the abstract symbols, or in terms of concrete objects? I would expect that if it represented things abstractly, the students forced to begin contemplating things in an abstract fashion would do better at continuing abstraction than students who had dealt only with concrete objects and were suddenly thrust into an abstract game.
I’m wondering if the problem the students had was not so much that the concrete objects distracted them, but instead that they were not able to apply a concept they’d learned in one context to a different context, which is yet another type of failure people tend to exhibit. My hypothesis would be that if the students who were taught abstractly were presented with a concrete game they would do just as poorly as the students who were taught concretely trying to play an abstract game.
Show me where he asked his students to do it.
So, in an attempt to find out what these death threats entailed, I stumbled across something of interest.
Cook, the young man you started this whole incident by removing the host from the Catholic service, was asked by a Church authority upon not consuming the host to hand it over. Cook refused, stuck it in a plastic bag, and left the premises. He had a HUGE agenda…he went on to accuse the Church of hazing and a few other things. Cook overstepped his boundaries (33/35 of his peers agreed). It was a Catholic service and Cook clearly understood that upon entering it. The bulletin specifically noted that if you were not Catholic you should not receive the host. So, the minister was rightfully within his power to demand it back especially while they were still in Church.
I would also like to add these death threats were more accusations of going to hell. For all these Catholics knew, the only intention he could have had for removing the host was that he planned to something disrespectful towards it. It seems well within the Catholic’s bounds to tell him he is going to hell if he is about to defile God.
I think Catholics at least should be given respect within their church service. Their Masses should not be forced into becoming a charade where atheists infiltrate and steal something precious to them. Please grant them at least that common courtesy.
Maybe Catholics should do as the Mormons and make everyone carry a card indicating that they are indeed Catholic. But, wait a second…the Catholic Church specifically DOESN’T do that because it wants to be open to all. I find it a callous act for individuals to take advantage of the Church’s position of openness and violate it so.
If you are going to ridicule Catholics, is it sooooo much to ask, that you at least grant them sanctuary in their place of worship? If your answer is no. WOW…that’s all I can say. No respect…no respect…
(emphasis mine)
Reports? You mean, hearsay?
Can you find such a thing among any of his own words, posted here, on his own personal blog?
Granted that some people might well do so on their own initiative, did PZ ask them to?
cynic, I don’t know about the death threats Cook got, but the death threats Prof. Myers got included people very explicitly telling him that they were going to kill him. Since both sets of threats were instigated by the Catholic League, I would guess they probably came from similar people and were of a similar nature. And, still, even if Cook was a jerk and did have some kind of hostile agenda, and even if the death threats he got were inconsequential, does him being a jerk really deserve expulsion, as the Catholic League has demanded? Do you think the UT bake sale assholes deserved to be expelled for what they did?
Ok cynic I’m sorry but you keep pointing to these things you say you have read but have yet to link to ANY of them.
Oh really? Says who? As PZ about the death threats he got.
Did you read that this did not take place in a Church, but in a building that was part of the (publicly-funded) UCF campus?
By what right does any church officiant have the right to invoke any non-ecclesiastical punishments on a student in a publicly-funded school?
“Steal” implies that it was not in fact being given away freely. Granted that from a religious perspective, it was given away with conditions. But from a secular perspective, those conditions aren’t relevant: Catholics do not have the right to force their religious perspectives on those who don’t share their religion.
PZ did not invade a Catholic place of worship.
Webster Cook entered a building on a publicly-funded college campus, and while it was rude of him to violate the ritual, the Church had and has no further claim on him than to chide him for his rudeness.
Catholics can continue to congregate freely in their churches and worship as they see fit.
I may be mistaken, and I’m looking to verify it, but I believe that Webster Cook was raised Roman Catholic.
cynic, #837:
You have a problem with what you see as PZ encouraging disrespect. But then you say:
So in your view, death threats to PZ are ‘meaningless’ , but PZ ‘encouraging disrespect’ is a serious problem.
And yet, you close by saying:
In short, for about 11,381st time, we are told that crackers are more important than human lives, that those who feel otherwise are moral ‘relativists’, and unreasonable as well.
Mr. cynic, if some malicious impostor, in an effort to make you appear stupid, had written these words and posted them in your name, you would have every justification to feel furious and offended. But seems you wrote these words yourself.
“And, still, even if Cook was a jerk and did have some kind of hostile agenda, and even if the death threats he got were inconsequential, does him being a jerk really deserve expulsion”
My point wasn’t really that Cook deserved expulsion. My point with the Cook story is that it WASN’T an innocent act in the first place, which when I read a lot of these posts was the underlying assumption.
Also, my point was that freedom of religion means that everyone should be able to practice their faith without disruption. I think atheists entering a Church or a Catholic service under false pretenses and stealing communion wafers definitely qualifies as a violation of Catholic’s freedom to practice their religion.
“My point with the Cook story is that it WASN’T an innocent act in the first place”
You keep claiming this but fail to provide any evidence.
“I think atheists entering a Church or a Catholic service under false pretenses and stealing communion wafers definitely qualifies as a violation of Catholic’s freedom to practice their religion.”
When did this even happen and how would someone doing it keep others from practicing their religion?
You still have not pointed to anything that supports this assertion. And even if it wasn’t “an innocent act” that has little to do with your original point that PZ isn’t being punished in concordance with what happened to the UT Conservative group. Which has little merit because of the completely different situations.
Can you please point me to where PZ specifically asked his students to do something?
Sorry, I royally screwed some formatting there. First Paragraph should be blockquoted.
in response to all of the arguments about PZ’s death threats:
I think there is a distinct difference between telling him he is going to hell and actually killing him.
NO ONE HAS KILLED HIM and NO ONE besides a lunatic actually would. If a person actually was Catholic in its truest present-day sense, he most definitely would not kill PZ or cause him any harm. The New Testament preaches to turn the other cheek and that is what the current Church preaches.
PZ also physically harmed something that Catholics believe actually has life. No one has physically harmed PZ (if they have please enlighten me). I consider all of these baseless threats that are merely exaggerations used to show the speaker’s displeasure. Don’t keep throwing this argument out there until someone actually pounds a nail into his hand (NOT TO GIVE ANYONE ANY IDEAS).
11,382.
cynic;
several points:
1.) PZ Myers’ actions were not connected to the university, but done as a private individual. Although there apparently was a link to Pharyngula on a university website before, it was subsequently removed. So it’s not true that the university took no action at all. They actively distanced their association with PZ Myers’ personal views.
2.) It does no good to complain to us that universities today are unfair and would have done more to PZ for doing something that bothered gay people than doing something that bothered the religious. Maybe, maybe not. But since the overwhelming majority of us are civil libertarians in favor of free speech — and against squelching genuine debate just because it might “offend” someone — we’re not being inconsistent. What, would you have us argue that the university ought to be unfair to PZ, because it might have been unfair to others? Better to argue for fairness all around, don’t you think?
3.) I think it’s important to point out that atheists do not view religious belief as a personal or group “identity.” It’s not — and should not be — an inviolable part of who someone is. We see religion as making truth claims. Therefore, we don’t classify religion as being like race or sexual orientation: we classify it as being similar to political belief, scientific belief, or social belief. None of those should be off limits for just criticism.
4.) The purpose of the desecration was not to cause hurt or insult to the Catholic community, nor was it to show that their beliefs are false: it was to make the argument that blasphemous acts of desecration of the “sacred” cannot be forbidden and punished as criminal acts in the secular arena. He did not just up and decide to mock the Catholics to show that their beliefs are false. It was a response to their political over-reaction. They’d taken what should have remained an internal quarrel and brought it out into the world at large, expecting that church and religious values should be taken as if they are true because people are sensitive about their religion.
PZ was mocking that sensitivity, and warning them that if religion demands public respect for the crime of blasphemy, then the TRUTH of blasphemy is brought out as fair game too. And it’s just a frackin’ cracker.
“I consider all of these baseless threats that are merely exaggerations used to show the speaker’s displeasure.”
And I consider a communion wafer to be just a cracker. So I guess we’re even, right?
“Also, my point was that freedom of religion means that everyone should be able to practice their faith without disruption.”
I could take a communion wafer out of church every week and no one would ever know. I could desecrate one every week and nothing would ever happen. Catholics are bringing all this on themselves.
“I think atheists entering a Church or a Catholic service under false pretenses and stealing communion wafers definitely qualifies as a violation of Catholic’s freedom to practice their religion.”
Then you’re an idiot.
cynic, am I obligated to believe that a communion wafer has life? If I come into possession of one, can I throw it into the garbage? You do seem dismissive of the threats against PZ.
Oh come on cynic. Seriously. PZ got ACTUAL death threats not just “you are going to hell”.
/headdesk
So because it hasn’t happened they aren’t real? So is PZ getting death threats just from some random person who doesn’t think the Eucharist is the body of Christ?
Yet this is exactly OPPOSITE of the reaction from the Church, Donohue and the thousands of emails that PZ recieved.
Rev:
I was going on to make a separate point that I can see a somewhat valid argument that Cook stealing the host and those who stole hosts for PZ went a little too far…beyond freedom of speech.
Also, someone said that since it didn’t take place in an actual Catholic Church, what Cook did was OK. That is NOT true. He entered the service KNOWING that it was CATHOLIC MASS.
If someone were to enter a store and take something that says buy one get one free, but they didn’t buy one…and, then tried to leave…the store owner would be well within his rights to confiscate the item since the store clearly states its policy on the item. According to the Church, the host does not rightfully belong to someone who is not going to use it for it’s intended purpose, thus it should not be allowed to leave the area of the service and/or Church…simple as that.
Are you seriously going to make the argument that they are in some way equal?
Catholics “believe” it has life. My little cousin believes there is a monster under his bed. He is convinced. So much so that he sleeps in the bed with his sister every single night. Try convincing him it isn’t there.
Belief does not hold the same weight as reality.
cynic, if for the sake of argument I concede the point that people shouldn’t take communion wafers unless they eat them, where does that leave us?
If someone gives me a communion wafer, can I throw it in the garbage?
Rev-
You CANNOT say that the Church’s position is to endorse death threats. Unless an official statement is issued from the Vatican…you simply can’t do that. A few people who are Catholic initiating a death threat DOES NOT MEAN that the Church endorses it in the slightest. Stop referring to it as THE CHURCH THE CHURCH THE CHURCH. It’s not. If you knew anything about the actual present day Catholic Church (beyond your belief that every priest is a child molester…which clearly couldn’t be true), you would know that it does not endorse violence whatsoever.
THINK ABOUT IT: the Church is the leading advocate for not using the death penalty, stopping abortion, stopping wars for profit, etc. etc. IT’S ALL ABOUT NON-VIOLENCE and not retaliating.
cynic #862 wrote:
Actually, quite a few of the Pharyngula regulars have also made that point, myself included. Technically, it was a moral breach to take something given under a condition and then not fulfill the condition. Cook probably shouldn’t have done what he did. Okay.
But PZ repeated the “crime” — called for someone to send him a cracker — in order to respond to the massive and dangerous over-reaction on the part of the Catholics. Not all wrongs are equivalent. Rudeness should not be equated with “kidnapping” or described as “an act of violence.” Not in a secular society outside of a church. If your religious beliefs entail that you can’t or won’t make the distinction, then you need to get a grip and accept that OTHER people CAN make the distinction between stealing a cracker and killing a person. The defense that the cracker IS a person is going to get taken apart and jumped on now.
Or, rather, tossed rudely aside, in the trash.
The story is this. Cook went into the mass and we had a friend who was not Catholic with him that wanted to see the cracker. He palmed the cracker to bring back to show his friend. The people performing the ceremony saw this and confronted him. During the confrontation Cook was assaulted in the legal sense. They put their hands on him. After the assault he decided to say, “Fuck this” essentially, and took the cracker with him. This is different than the story you continue to tell. If I am wrong I am happy to admit it. However that does not change any of my arguments above.
Please give me a better analogy. That one is just not even close.
rmp-
if someone gave you a communion wafer, knowing you were not catholic and knowing that you did not wish to eat it, I would suggest you just hand it back and say you don’t agree with it. If they refuse to take it back, I can’t see a problem with you throwing it away…it shouldn’t have been forced upon you in the first place (at that point it violated your rights). Does that answer your question?
There is a difference between being force-given something and slyly procuring it for the pleasure of destroying it.
cynic forgot to add dehumanizing homosexuals, protecting pedophiles and telling lies that help spread AIDS to his list.
Should read “and he had a friend”
Where did I say the church endorsed death threats? If I somehow came across saying it did , that’s not what I meant.
sastra-
I understand your point. I definitely agree the death threats went too far…definitely beyond the actual position of the Catholic Church (who for the thousandth time did not sanction the death threats…so stop saying that you are ridiculing the church for the death threats…ridicule the few Catholics that took the issue too far).
Also, keep in mind, the death threats never would have occurred if Cook had not committed the first wrong.
cynic, so it’s ok if I throw it away if I didn’t really want it. That seems odd to me. If I’m throwing the flesh of Jesus Christ in the trash, it would seem like it’s wrong no matter what.
cynic, “Also, keep in mind, the death threats never would have occurred if Cook had not committed the first wrong. ” That seems like dangerous territory. Do you really want to go there?
“Also, keep in mind, the death threats never would have occurred if Cook had not committed the first wrong. ”
So much for “turn the other cheek”
Which is exactly what I did. But the Catholic church didn’t “turn the other cheek” either.
Yikes. ok cynic. You may want to rethink that one.
Rmp-
I figured that’s where you were going with it. But, to be honest, it was the Catholic’s fault in the first place for forcing it upon you. They cannot be offended when you throw something away that you EVEN OFFERED TO RETURN. Do you understand my point? The offense comes by taking something and pretending you are going to use it for the intended purpose…but then actually performing a sacrilege. Do you see the distinction? In your case, you did not mean any harm, you simply didn’t want to partake in something you didn’t believe in.
In its truest sense, yes, it would be wrong to throw it away. But, you respectfully declined and still had it forced upon you. What other option do you have?
“They cannot be offended when you throw something away that you EVEN OFFERED TO RETURN.”
Want to bet?
cynic, a communion wafer has essentially zero monetary value. If one can compare Cook’s “theft” of the wafer to anything, it would be “theft” of somebody’s sentimentally-valued pocket lint. Or going to somebody’s house for dinner, and accepting their gift of leftovers under the assumption you’re going to eat those leftovers, and then instead feeding the leftovers to your dog. Maybe not super-polite, but not exactly a capital crime, either. Somebody who sent you death threats and/or tried to ruin your life over misuse of leftovers or pocket lint would be an insane nutbar.
so i’ll address all the comments about the first wrong and do i want to go there
I really wasn’t trying to get at anything besides the fact that this post wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Cook’s actions. Sorry if I was unclear with what I meant.
spurge-
That particular Catholic has no ground to be offended. And all the rest of the Catholics in the world should be offended by the Catholic who tried to force it upon a non-believer.
Catholics may be upset if they only hear that it was thrown in the trash…but, when they learn all of the facts, they should be ashamed that the Catholic could have prevented it being thrown away, but didn’t. Does that clarify it for you?
a communion wafer may not have monetary value, BUT…upon entering a Church or a place where a Mass is being said, you are agreeing to abide by it’s rules. It’s like entering any other form of establishment. If you enter a restaurant that clearly stipulates you must be in formal attire, yet you insist on wearing casual clothes, the owner should be allowed to make you leave and deny you food and drink. Likewise, if you enter a Catholic Church and refuse to follow it’s rules (consume the body and blood within the church), the Church is well within its rights to ask you to leave and refuse giving you the body and blood of Christ.
cynic, I think mocking a religious tenet, while offensive to some is perfectly legal behavior. I suspect that you feel the same. I’ll grant you that PZ’s actions were offensive to many. You’ll grant me that ‘some’ catholics over reacted. Given that, I’m thinking it’s time to move on.
@ spurge #875
Indeed. On seeing what Webster Cook was doing with his cracker (taking it back to show his friend) the Catholics (were they to be following their own alleged leader’s advice rather than that of their current corrupt leadership) should have offered a separate cracker to the friend, ie Jesus’ other “cheek”. ;-)
I understand what you are saying but there will still be a subset of people who are upset at throwing away the cracker and will react in a way that is not proportional.
I have yet to see ant official of the church decrying the death threats or the over reaction from The Catholic league.
In fact they seem to be doing just the opposite.
Trying to get a kid Kicked out of school.
“If you enter a restaurant that clearly stipulates you must be in formal attire, yet you insist on wearing casual clothes, the owner should be allowed to make you leave and deny you food and drink.”
But they would not try to get you expelled from school or fired from your job would they?
I doubt death threats would be involved either.
cynic, I notice the way you completely ignored my point “misuse” of leftovers, which was an essential part of the analogy. The object had no monetary value, Cook signed no contract when he received it, and so there is not much in the way of a crime in the fact that he chose to use it differently after it was freely given to him. Slight rudeness, maybe, in the same way that it would be rude to take the leftovers of somebody’s carefully prepared meal and feed it to your dog instead of enjoying it yourself, but that’s about it.
Furthermore, the “my house, my rules” stuff you’re trying to peddle would apply only if it was ACTUALLY THEIR GODDAMN HOUSE. This was not actually a Catholic church. It was a school building. So the people who have the right to set rules for it are not the Church officials, but instead the school officials. If a priest decided to say Mass in a public park, he would have no right to tell the other people using the public park that they weren’t allowed to play frisbee there while he was saying Mass, or sit under the trees making out with each other, or whatever else they felt like doing (within the bounds of the law). Just simply standing up and spewing a bunch of mystical gobbledygook doesn’t give them ownership of a public space.
spurge-
I was unaware that they were trying to get him kicked out of school. I read that people wanted him kicked off the student congress. I can sympathize with that argument…people might not want disrespectful and blatantly biased individuals serving on an impartial council. Kicking him out of school may be a stretch though…it depends what the school’s actual policy is…you know what I mean?
I’m curious if the Vatican has even really been fully briefed on the incident. Who knows what it has on its plate right now? After all, the US likes to think it is number 1 and should be dealt with before all, but I’m sure the Pope has many other obligations in the hundreds of other countries with Catholics. A death threat may not compare with say Catholics being slaughtered in Africa…just a thought.
so i thought a few of you might find this of interest…since you all accused me of taking the death threats lightly
“Myers, who was raised Lutheran and now considers himself a card-carrying atheist, said he’s been getting a “few death threats” since the conflict began, ‘but I don’t take them too seriously.'”
this was from: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/faith/24313139.html?location_refer=Faith%20+%20Values:highlightModules:2
cynic
I would like to know what you think of this quote?
“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ,” Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a news release.
+M
What you have done here is profane my God…our God…your God….(even if you don’t know Him yet). I am deeply grieved by this. Yet, I am also comforted and hold onto peace and hope because Christ came for the lost sheep of Israel. God still loves you Professor. You were created in His image and likeness and somewhere deep inside, you have a soul that yearns to know His love. I will pray for you. I will offer sacrifices for the grave mistake you have made here. I am not judging you. Christ will forgive you…because you, like all of us when we sin, are precious to Him. Christ forgave the first guys who drove a nail into His flesh….”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
What you have done Professor is wrong. The Church does have a right and a moral obligation to stand up for the diginity and sacredness of the Body of Christ.
I hope one day, you will see and believe.
Ah, thank you Erin. Best laugh I’ve had all day. And I just watched Stephen Colbert rip on a random city in Kansas for no reason, too.
Erin, my god is Odin. I’ve got just as much chance being right as you do. Oh, for what it’s worth, I’m betting Odin gets really upset with the false idols of the Catholic church.
Quoth Erin:
“What you have done here is profane my God
[blah]
I am not judging you.
[blah]
What you have done Professor is wrong.”
Thanks so much for not judging ;)
Erin,
Thanks. I won’t need any help sleeping tonight. I’ll just come back and read that and away I go.
Since this thread is obviously populated by the bitter-enders of theological ethics, please allow me to toss y’all this biscuit to chew on:
Sastra, I’ve been contemplating that SciAm article you mentioned earlier, and another point occurred to me in regard to the distinction between abstract problems and concrete problems. The thing I was thinking is that it shouldn’t necessarily be a strike against concrete teaching that it doesn’t imprint students with the underlying mathematical concepts as well as abstract teaching, because really the two different types of instruction fill two different roles.
Abstract teaching is the part that is indeed intended to explicitly lay out the mathematical ideas. But concrete examples are demonstrated to help students learn how to recognize the mathematical ideas as they tend to appear in real life problems. Real life objects don’t tend to come with a system of equations written on them that simply need to be solved, one generally needs to be able to sort through a lot of extraneous information, extract the necessary bits, and construct one’s own equations to solve. So although concrete examples may not be as instructive in terms of imparting the fundamental math, they’re essential for teaching people what to do with the math once they’ve learned it. The two types should, IMO, be seen as complementary instead of contradictory.
But I probably should just go read the darn article instead of sitting here overanalyzing a single quote from it. :)
Hm, curses, the article is not yet in the university library’s online catalog. *grumble*
Anne Nonymous #898
I’m afraid that was the entire article — or, rather, all they had on the study. It was part of their (head lines) section in the front of the magazine — short, pithy little two or three paragraph synopses of recent discoveries/development in neurology. I typed out what little was there. They might do a longer article later on, perhaps.
I agree with you that both approaches probably have their uses, as complements. I remember reading in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman his story about trying to help a South American college with its languishing science program, and realizing, when he asked for an example of the application of a physics formula, that none of the students had any idea at all of what he was talking about. They’d been memorizing and manipulating the mathematics symbolically without understanding that the numbers referred to — or should refer to — actual things. He himself, he wrote, always automatically invents some hypothetical scenario for every math problem, and translates the two together, as a cross-check.
That may be best, but I’m not sure everyone is a Richard Feynman.
I managed to locate the original study. It’s in the April 25, 2008 issue of Science (vol. 320 pp. 454-455), and the first author’s name is Kaminski, not Kasminsky. :)
Now, it’s possible I don’t know shit about how education works, but it seems to me that the experiment they’re doing doesn’t show what they think it shows.
Their “concrete” version of the task is essentially a demonstration of modulus three addition with liquid in a cup, tennis balls in a container, or slices of pizza. Their “abstract” version of the task actually is a slightly more advanced concept — they give a list of three arbitrary symbols (a circle, a diamond, and a squiggle) and a set of rules for combining them (anything plus a squiggle is itself, two circles combine to give a diamond, two diamonds combine to give a circle, and a diamond plus a circle is a squiggle). Yes, one could think of the circle as being 1, the diamond as being 2, and the squiggle as being 0 and see this as analogous to modulus three addition, but it looks to me like this example introduces the idea of doing arbitrarily-defined operations on arbitrary symbols, while the concrete example only introduces the notion of a slightly-modified type of arithmetic which still acts on actual numbers.
The task the students are then asked to do with what they’ve learned is to play a supposed children’s game wherein children sequentially point to objects and the child who is “it” must select the object which is the result of the previous sequence. It’s essentially identical to the task performed by the “abstract” group, but very different from the task performed by the “concrete” group. They seem to have expected the “concrete” group to somehow develop from modulus three arithmetic the idea of completely arbitrary operations on arbitrary symbols. Which I know I sure as hell couldn’t have done on my own. At least, not in the amount of time alloted for the experiment.
In my experience this is not how concrete examples are usually used in learning. Usually you teach the abstract principle first, and then introduce concrete examples for students to practice on. Or alternately, you motivate what you’re doing by demonstrating a specific concrete example, and then explicitly show the students what ideas you are intending to abstract from it. In both cases, you give students both abstract and concrete examples to work with, but nobody would expect the students to be able to discover on their own (without any prompting whatsoever) a transition from concrete idea to abstract idea that took humanity centuries to develop!
So, I am not impressed. But again, perhaps this is because I am not an education researcher and don’t actually know shit about shit. *shrug*
oooo.. 98 away from 1000!
I think I should add here… A fairer demonstration of abstract vs. concrete, it seems to me, would have been showing modulus three addition with numbers to one group, and with cups of liquid to the other group. In this case, I might expect the second group to do better than the first on a hypothetical “modulus three” game, but only slightly. Or alternately they could come up with some actual real-world situation that uses mathematical groups of non-numerical objects (I can’t think of one, but there probably is one somewhere), and compare it with their squiggle example.
The difficulty I see here is that their “abstract” example is more abstract primarily in the sense that it’s actually using a more sophisticated and general mathematical idea than their “concrete” example. Both are still what I would call “concrete” in the sense that they’re taught by means of an example rather than by just giving the students a lecture about a big idea and saying, “Okay, now, kiddies, run along and play with it!” Whereas, I think what they’re trying to do is to make a comparison between examples that involve items from the real world (like cups of liquid) and examples that involve abstract shapes, and I don’t think the ideas behind their two examples are similar enough to make this a fair comparison.
One argument one might reasonably make from their data is that it’s unreasonable to expect students to generalize on their own to sophisticated concepts given only concrete examples, and thus it’s always important to explicitly tie each example in to the generalization you want them to make, and to present a variety of examples so that they can see various aspects of the generalization. One might also argue that it’s important for a teacher to ensure that those examples really are varied, and not just the same thing repeated over and over with only superficial changes, as the three different “concrete” examples in this experiment were. (Perhaps this is really what they wanted to say and I’m reacting more to media distortion than to their actual article, but their introduction and conclusion lead me to believe otherwise.)
In any case, the way I’d sum this whole issue up is to mangle a phrase from the separate magisteria crowd: abstractions without concrete examples are lame, but concrete examples without abstractions are blind.
Anne Nonymous wrote:
Heh! Very well put. And I suspect you’re right about the study, but I’m not equipped to evaluate it. (Sorry about Kaminisky/Kaminski)
Yes, we’re over #900 posts now — but unless someone new and angry and really verbose from the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy comes in, I think we’re too far away from the initial subject of the post to make #1000.
Just as well. My computer does not like to load this page. At least, it wouldn’t like it if it were anthropomorphized.
Sastra: don’t anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.
cynic @853:
I would argue that Cook’s act may well have been innocent (as regards deliberate disrespect), in that he didn’t consume the wafer because he meant to show it to his non-Catholic, but curious, friend, given that we’ve had posts from current and former Catholics that indicate that consumption on receipt is not the invariant custom; that in some congregations, at least, the wafer is often carried back to the pew (as Cook was doing), for purposes of meditating over it. I think you are presuming premeditated malice where none may have existed.
The Catholic wrote
I take each part of Catholic belief, dissect it and determine if I agree with it
In that case “the catholic” is not a “true Catholic” as far as the Church is concerned.
The whole point of Catholicism is that this is already supposed to have been done (centuries ago by Catholic theologians and Saints ).
The outsider seems to think that a lot of the posts are due to our ignorance of Catholicism, I am not the only one here who was raised a Catholic and my atheism came about precisely because I did know the teachings of the Church and could see how divorced from reality they really were(as can anyone Catholic or not who stops to think about them ) .
I have studied Aquinas and have read C.S .Lewis and they fail to be convincing to anyone with any critical faculties.
Lewis’ work in particular is an example of “muddy thinking” ,a pre conceived belief in the dogma of the Catholic Church and a vapid superficial veneer of “scholarship” that even a reasonably educated 14 year old could easily refute,if the best that the Catolic Church can come up with is his silliness then no wonder it is in a bad way
(I don’t like Lewis’ work in case you hadn’t guessed )
Nick Gotts,
I’d looked on Wikipedia and not found anything before I posted the earlier stuff, but it turns out I was misspelling Levitt; he doesn’t put an “a” in it. Sigh.
Here’s an article about the controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect
I think your reservations (and mine) are entirely reasonable.
It looks like Dohohue & Levitt made some (now-admitted) statistical errors that weaken their conclusion. They also gave Lott short shrift to the point that he sued for defamation. That suit’s not finished, but they’ve already had to apologize about some stuff.
Sigh.
Sastra & Anne,
FWIW, the Kaminski et al. paper has been blogged on a couple of other ScienceBlogs
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/04/when_learning_maths_abstract_symbols_work_better_than_realwo.php
http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/04/abstraction_compartmentalizati.php
I haven’t looked at the original paper or thought too hard about it, but I’m inclined to agree with Anne that abstract vs. concrete is a false dichotomy. You often have to do both, and they serve different functions.
It seems that the original paper was not as naive about that as some of the pop coverage, but I haven’t followed up.
Sorry, professor, but I completely agree with them. Only bakers should be allowed to comment on cracker-related matters.
Wait, this just in: I heard a voice in my head saying create a new religion called Antikrakology that requires adherents to desecrate hosts. (Prove it ain’t so.) Now, you can exercise freedom of religion and also defile crackers. According to the Confraternity’s logic, this should be just fine.
Did they really use the word “diss”? Evidently, the Conflagration of Catholic Clergy – sorry, the Convolution of Catholic Clergy – no, wait, the Coevolution…damn…the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy want to be “hip”.
Wait – maybe it’s the Con Fraternity. “The Big House” does wonders for one’s use of colloquialisms.
(I haven’t read all the posts, so please forgive if someone’s already brought this up.)
I brought it up on another site some time back; but that doesn’t count from your point of view since you are unlikely to have read it! More than one person can have the same idea independently, eg Darwin + Wallace.
Do you not understand why Catholics are upset over this matter? I myself am not a theologian or an expert about the faith but I am Catholic. I am just a teen Catholic. I acknowledge that everyone here in the U.S. has their freedom and they are allowed to do what they WISH to do. That does not stop people from doing what they shouldn’t do. Whether you realize it or not, that host is the MOST important part of our faith, and you have just attacked us outright. If it was anyone else do you think the masses would have responded with more anger? It saddens me to think that the American people get upset over our flag being burned and over Nazis parading the streets and don’t even try to understand why we are very upset over this issue. Can you not see what is happening? Is it not enough that you desecrate the BODY OF CHRIST but do you have to attack us on your blog? I believe that was the worst action taken. Yes, we understand that there are lots of people who disagree with what believe, but can there not still be some mutual respect. For you, it is science, and although science is very important, my Catholic faith is crucial in my life. Surely you can understand that. Even though science says it has the answers, where does the extra stuff come from? Can science give you virtue? Anyway, I hope you understand our plight somewhat better, and I also hope that maybe you will look into things more deeply than just what’s on the surface.
I would like to congratulate you, Michelle, for resisting the temptation to augment your plaint with a contrived and unenlightening analogy to some other perceived form of desecration. This is a feat of fortitude not even attempted by the vast majority of your co-religionists who have chosen to make their views known here.
However, nobody Catholic was attacked, and what you call THE BODY OF CHRIST is, in fact, just a cracker. Your “plight” is that a biology professor threw a cracker in the garbage. I’m pretty sure you’ll be okay. Finally, if you want me to respect your beliefs, get some respectable beliefs.
Hmm… unlike the other Catholics, Michelle (#913) seems to have explicitly rated being “attacked” on a blog (NB verbal ridicule not physical assault) as worse than the alleged desecration of the cracker. It may have been a mistake but, on the face of it, was probably a more honest statement of her actual position than the Catholic whingers who pretended the cracker part was the worst thing ever.
Eg I don’t simplistically believe the one who offered to lay down their life for the cracker. I’d need some sort of Abrahamic style evidence of that from any individual claiming it.
In reality, the majority probably do care more about themselves, their families and even being mocked than they do about the cracker. The cracker is merely the convenient Archduke Ferdinand excuse of their war-cries, covering their real theocratic, hypocritical, demanding-to-be-special motives which they carry around primed and cocked at all times.
It would be nice if we could recognise that we in fact all agrre on one thing…
This is no normal ‘cracker’ we are talking about. If it was a normal ‘cracker’ then those seeking to mock Catholic beliefs would appear as stupid as they insist the Catholic’s are.
Furthermore, if it was just an ordinary ‘cracker’ from the store, Catholic’s would not have the slightest interest in whatever you chose to do with it.
The value of this ‘cracker’ in fact lies in from where it was acquired (even if not how!)
The fact is that it is an altar bread, prepared accroding to ritual for offering at the sacrafice of the mass in which Catholic’s believe transubstantiation occurs changing the simple ‘cracker’ into the living body of their Lord and Saviour.
Catholics need the ‘cracker’ to be that as it is at the very core of their beliefs and those who would mock them need it to be that also if they are to personalise that mockery!
You see, in reality we all agree that the ‘cracker’ in question is in fact more than a simple cracker!!!
No, we don’t agree that the cracker is more than a cracker. We only agree that the cracker-people want to pretend that particular subset of crackers are more than crackers and don’t extend their pretence to other crackers. That’s part of their crackpottery which is being mocked.
If they genuinely thought that god-Jesus was everywhere all the time wherever he wanted to be, they wouldn’t get het up about specific crackers. If they thought they could do magic reliably and provably and even undo it again, there would also be less of a problem. The issues arise because they’re saying that only certain dress-wearing blokes can do the cracker-magic and that it’s also magically undetectable and indistinguishable from no magic having happened at all (with a side-order of cannibalism being somehow less bad than merely taking the cracker gift away and disposing of it by burial, entombment etc).
WOW! I am truly amazed. My whole life I have been a liberal, a Democrat, hell, I have never even voted for a Republican dog catcher. I have been socially active in service programs, a union organizer (GO UNION), a volunteer for community outreach (Red Cross, Amnesty International). I have marched against the death penalty and for more power to unions. However I am also a proud Catholic. In love with my Church not just because of the theology but also because of the HUGE Social justice issues it deals in as well as its dedication to science. YES, its dedication to science..I am not talking about some of the horrible things the Church did 500 years ago….(I see that even after 500 years you and others blame an institution for its mistakes.) I am talking about its dedication to education.. Need we forget that it was the Catholic Church which ESTABLISHED the university system ITSELF, the Church which invented the SCIENTIFIC METHOD. it was a PRIEST Georges Lemaitre, who came up with the idea of the ever explanding universe, or that other priest who also helped science a bit…Copernicus! The Church runs more AIDS hospices, more orphanges and social service agencies than ANY government or secular institution on the PLANET. Its the CHURCH fighting for the rights of the illegal immigrants and standing (many times ALONE) against the bigots who hate immigration and the Mexican people. And yet, here on this site i hear fellow Democrats and liberals INSULTING and MOCKING another belief. I was taught to believe that a progressive person tolerated different beliefs, had an open mind to others and respected people and their differing views. I was taught to be proud to be a progressive and a liberal because they stood for the common people and the toleration of all. YOU, professor and others show me thats not true. You are as bigoted, close minded and mean as the right wing fundamentalists. Your are not different at ALL from the Right wing wakos….in fact you are JUST like them. Mean spirited, bigoted, and not progessive at all. I am ashamed that you bring dishoner to your profession and the “liberal” movement. Dont get me wrong..I am still not voting Republican….geeez i am not CRAZY… But now i see that the left wing of my own party is as mean and closeminded as the right wing of the other. I for one am ashamed at you for calling your self liberal. You are NOT. I hope you didnt teach your children such disrepect for others views as you yourself seem to have. One side hates blacks, and gays, and your side hates Catholics and Muslims. Maybe you and the right wing should get together and realize your closer than you might think!
You’re about a month late there Frank.