Now I’ve got Bill Donohue’s attention

The Catholic League is preparing a stake for me. They’re going to go straight for the jugular and threaten my job — notice how they repeat that you can access my post from my faculty page, nicely avoiding the fact that the post they find so offensive is not hosted on any university server, and that they are urging everyone to harass the president of my university and the regents and the Minnesota legislature. Extortionists and witch hunters, that’s all these scumbags are.

Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website.

Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”:

“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“The Myers blog can be accessed from the university’s website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the ‘Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.’ One of the school’s policies, ‘Code of Conduct,’ says that ‘When dealing with others,’ faculty et al. must be ‘respectful, fair and civil.’ Accordingly, we are contacting the President and the Board of Regents to see what they are going to do about this matter. Because the university is a state institution, we are also contacting the Minnesota legislature.

“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.”

When dealing with others, I must be respectful, fair and civil. Hmmm. Doesn’t seem to say anything about when dealing with crackers.

That last paragraph is marvelously blind. Hey, Bill! I can think of something more vile! How about intentionally desecrating the bodies of young altar boys who respect the position of trust held by Catholic priests? I think that is a lot more vile than mistreating a cracker. In fact, I can think of innumerable vile acts going on all around the world right now, and not all of them even involve Catholicism. It takes the moral vacuum of a purblind ideological bigot like Bill Donohue to think that goring his sacred cow is the worst thing in the world.

Keep that sword out of the hands of the Lord

Here’s a much more serious issue than a goddamned cracker: it’s the steady accumulation of military power in religious hands. It’s not overt policy, but we should be worried that there is an increasing association between religiosity and military service — an association between credulity and obscene amounts of physical power. Jeremy Hall is discovering this first-hand.

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Theology is a deceitful strategy

Karl Giberson is interviewed about the subject of his new book, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It looks interesting, in an aggravating sort of way, and it’s on my long list of books to read and use to put dents in my wall. The interview reminds me why I detest the rarefied apologetics of sympathetic theologians as much as I do the bleatings of the purblind literalists — neither one even notices the fundamental flaws in their core of belief.

Let me be nice first. Giberson does say a number of eminently sensible things — he’s a physicist by training, he has no brief for creationism at all, he might wish Intelligent Design were true but he sees it as a betrayal of the scientific enterprise. Don’t mistake him for your corner bible thumper! Here, for instance, is a good argument well spoken:

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The Official Australian “Vent About World Youth Day” Thread

I must have a lot of Australian readers, or the few of you are really upset about this, because I’m getting a rising volume of email about World Youth Day. This is a bizarre Catholic get-together for young people — bizarre because, well, the idea of a pack of Catholic priests herding a flock of young boys and girls into one central mass sounds like the preliminaries to a feeding frenzy to me — which is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a substantial chunk of which is being subsidized by Australian taxpayers. Isn’t it a bit peculiar that a secular government is paying for a massive membership drive for sectarian superstition? Furthermore, the Australian government is expanding police authority to restrict protests at the event, levying prohibitive fines for even trivial expressions of free speech.

All this for a goofy medieval religion that has decided that it needs to get jiggy with the young’uns to maintain its relevance.

Anyway, Australian atheists, agnostics, and secularists, you’ve got reason to be pissed off. The thread is yours.

Cheap parking in London!

Well now, isn’t this special: if you’re a religious leader on official business, you can get free parking permits in North London.

Mike Freer, leader of the council, said: “The importance of religion to many Barnet residents cannot be underestimated and the council has acknowledged this with a policy that will assist spiritual leaders when engaging with people in times of illness or crisis.”

It may be important to some people, but since it doesn’t actually do anything for them, this logic seems backward to me — clergy should be paying extra for the privilege of peddling superstition, as a kind of idiot tax.

Texas court approves traumatic exorcisms

Well now…if you’ve had a hankerin’ to torture, abuse, and do who knows what else to people at your whim, here’s what you do: move on down to Texas and set up a religion. The Texas Supreme Court just ruled on a case in which a young woman was subjected to extreme distress and restraint during a church-run exorcism (isn’t that insane enough right there? An exorcism in 21st century America?), and they threw the previous judgment against the church out. Why? Because holding a church liable for psychological damage “would have an unconstitutional ‘chilling effect’ by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs.”

Damn right it would. Holding religion accountable for the stupidity perpetuated by it certainly should send a shiver down the spines of hordes of witch-doctors and mullahs and priests and other such folk with a vested interest in superstition.

The court ruling basically says that because this church carries out this practice all the time, and because adherents of the religion accept it, it’s OK to pin people to the floor and scream at them for a few hours.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion, said the church’s exorcism sessions were a matter of church doctrine and were thus subject to certain — though not absolute — First Amendment religious protections.

“The laying of hands” and the presence of demons are part of the church’s belief system and accepted as such by its adherents,” the ruling said in part. “These practices are not normally dangerous or unusual and apparently arise in the church with some regularity. They are thus to be expected and are accepted by those in the church.”

Hello, world. In the United States, it is not considered unusual to accuse teenagers of being possessed by demons, and we subject them to frightening magic rituals to cast out such satanic forces with some regularity. Do not be alarmed. We also have nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems. But I repeat…do not be at all alarmed.

One of the lawyers for the church noticed a key point of this ruling — it’s too bad he thinks it is a good thing.

“The key point of this ruling is that we don’t have a right to have our standards of reasonableness foisted upon some other religion,” Dallas attorney David Pruessner said. “None of our religious beliefs can be examined when they are emotionally disturbing to other people.”

No religious beliefs are to be examined critically, no matter how disturbing they may be. That’s the way things work down in Texas, I guess. Oh, but he hastily adds…

Pruessner said no one should think Friday’s ruling would give protection to a church leader accused of abusing a child.

Except that that is exactly what happened in this case: the victim of this church-endorsed abuse was 17 at the time, and the church has now gotten off scot-free, held not culpable for their insanity, and told that they can keep on doing it with the protection of the law…and they’ve been informed that any weird religious belief is “normal”.

I would suggest a well-known compromise, one that has been violated by the Texas court decision. You are free to believe whatever wacky nonsense you want — you can believe moody teenagers are possessed by demons, and you can believe that cutting out the hearts of virgins will guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow, and you can even believe that barbecued babies are especially delicious — but you are not free to act on those beliefs in a way that infringes the rights of other people. The Texas court, in its zeal to protect religious beliefs, has gone too far and has endorsed the right of a church to do harm in the name of their god.

Bad radio notice

Uh-oh. The president of Minnesota Atheists, August Berkshire, is descending into the den of idiocy that is our local evangelical radio station, KKMS. Listen if you can bear it. Personally, I don’t know that I can — it’s too repellent to listen to people who stress the importance of mindless faith, yet have only bad faith to offer.

If you missed it, here’s an MP3 of August’s segment.

A smattering of news from the wicked world of religion

I’m in Vegas, I’m at the Amaz!ng Meeting, I’m distracted by all the shiny flashy lights and all the strange people who want to talk to me, so you’re all going to have to talk among yourselves for a while. Here are a few news items to prime the pump.

  • Don’t read this one until after breakfast. It’s the sad case of Ondrej Mauerova, a young boy kept imprisoned and tortured by a weird Czech cult. I don’t even want to say any more about it.

  • In a less malevolent but even more catastrophic cult failure, Neil Beagley, a 16 year old Oregon boy, has died because his family only believes in “faith healing”. He could have been cured with a catheter.

  • The Anglican church is about to be sundered by rabid homophobes. While it’s always good to see another cult fall apart, it’s not good to see the more vicious side isolating itself from more moderate influence.

  • Canadians have it good. Their largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada, is having meetings where they talk about just giving up in the face of plummeting church attendance. How wise, and how Canadian.

  • Americans United is suing South Carolina over their state-sponsored “I Believe” license plate.