So that’s what I am now? The Minnesota Independent has an interview. It probably won’t soothe the inflamed mob.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
So that’s what I am now? The Minnesota Independent has an interview. It probably won’t soothe the inflamed mob.
Actually, I should correct my post #495. I’m not even saying that we should compromise our loftier values in order to respect an opposing set of pluralistic values. I’m saying that the reality of the matter dictates that we simply can’t get anywhere with that goal of a beautiful, religion-free, 100% rational society, or whatever it is, without working with the current pluralism in mind. Right now you will get nowhere, not anywhere, by shitting on Catholics and then saying “Well, if it makes you so mad, why don’t you just stop being a stupid Catholic!” That is an ineffective method. I hope you guys can see what I’m saying.
His Holiness Pope McTrousers @ 490 Personally, I would not waste my time and integrity “desecrating” a cracker wafer. I do not think it smart to publicly ridicule a symbol of irrationality when you know that symbol represents the very illogical thing that stygmatizes your actions. To pose an analogy: I am an atheist; I do not believe in any gods, so I will not give credence to the very thing that I find irrational and rant against by wearing a tee shirt that says; “thank god I am an atheist”. The point here is blatantly two-faced; I am an atheist, but I thank god for making me so. This is just silly bullshit and only serves to make the wearer disingenuous if not weakly silly in protesting his lack of a god but acknowledging it as well. I may not act silly in deed with the cracker, but I will ridicule it as often as I can and have done so as my posts will bear out since this insane crap was first announced and posted. As when I excoriate a religionist, and then close with “Here, have a cracker”. This is ever more demeaning, as is in these cases, the word is more digging than the deed. So all you phony atheists and religionists posting here; you are lost without a prayer and a god; here have a cracker!
These sheep have been led from an early age to not question the authority to whom they defer.
Yeah. Well I think probing questions and clever argument are more likely to encourage dissent from authority than screaming “fuck you” in their faces (which is how any Catholic will interpret cracker-desecration).
The bottom line is that crude, insulting stunts don’t encourage most people to question their beliefs. In fact, the opposite. They make them protective and defensive of them, with an added unhelpful splash of “atheists are assholes, the hell I’m gonna be one of those”.
Like the picture of you in London! The bridge behind him (for comment 88) is Waterloo Bridge. I guess PZ is standing on one of the new Hungerford footbridges.
Know the place well I does! Uh huh!
To my mind the vast effect of this sort of thing is to reinforce the mentality they share with this group: that they are persecuted, beset by unsympathetic enemies who wish to eliminate them, and that they can only triumph if they band together against them. In fact, that seems like the blindingly obvious result, in which case all the “It’ll open their minds” talk is pure rationalization for an act of spite, another grenade lobbed in the culture wars. There must be more reasonable ways to advance the dialogue.
Sure, because the way to help a psychotic person who has broken with reality is to reason with them, right? I’d really like to think so. I’d like to think that it’s possible to use the cognitive therapy techniques of clearly demonstrating the falseness of their delusion.
But I think we’re dealing with people well-primed to reject the evidence whenever it conflicts with their made-up stories. They “blank out” anything they don’t want to see. Given that, in a way it’s encouraging that PZ got their attention at all. If they were perfect at blocking out reality, they would complacently sit back and expect PZ to incur the angry judgment of a swift-punishing God as a natural consequence of his actions. They wouldn’t feel obliged to rush in like harpies and screech and sneer to prove their devotion.
We’re not trying to get anywhere. We don’t have to be constructive 100% of the time. They have the dick Bill Donohue to spout off every time a nun gets the vapors, we can be just as confrontational.
It’s not a tactic other than dissent and parody.
Breakfast writes
“Right now you will get nowhere, not anywhere, by shitting on Catholics and then saying “Well, if it makes you so mad, why don’t you just stop being a stupid Catholic!” That is an ineffective method. I hope you guys can see what I’m saying.”
I am not sure that all people here are covered by this generalization though some may well be. However the freedom of speech is precisely best when those with whom you most disagree are the ones you have the opportunity to engage.
The purpose to be served here is less with pissing Catholics off than with expressing outrage at the notion that a cracker used in a ritual within the Catholic Church takes precedence over the importance of a member of that same church.
1. Crackers are bread.
2. Bread mold is a life form.
3. PZ is a biologist.
Posted by: Jeph | July 14, 2008 4:38 PM
Mouldy Jesus. Now that would be something to see.
It seems foolish to weigh in 500 comments in to a controversy that is a week old but….
PZ has two problems with this brouhaha. First, regardless of the validity or efficacy of ridiculing those you disagree with or who hold ideas you deem to be foolish, PZ holds a position of authority in the community and should be expected to behave in a respectful manner. He will undoubtedly be encountering Catholic students and it is totally unprofessional to express his opinions the way he did.
The second problem is that PZ unwittingly makes the same philosophical errors as IDers, namely that with his little experiment to prove that the Eucharist is just a cracker he presumes God should behave exactly as he expects God to behave and if he doesn’t, God can’t possibly exist. That reasoning is puerile. Of course God is powerful enough to avoid being desecrated. It is that he chooses not to avoid it because he chose to give us free will. Nor is God going to rain down fire on PZ for desecrating the host. Why would anyone think that? Because that’s what they would do if they were God? That’s about as well-thought an argument as complex specified information.
You can’t criticize people for dismissing evolution when it is clear they don’t know anything about it and then turn around and mock Catholics based on a completely false assumption of the theology and an infantile understanding of the concept you’re mocking.
Owlmirror, there is one problem with your proof: it’s Jesus that transubstantiates, not God, and Jesus got crucified, so he obviously doesn’t always prevent himself from being harmed whether he can or not.
Note: Trying to apply logic to the trinity is an automatic failure.
PZ, I have a question for you.
How could you know if any supposed wafer mailed to you was genuinely illicitly taken from a Roman Catholic Mass?
I still think that the best desecration is for you, PZ, to eat the cracker… What could possibly be more horrible than an atheist eating a pretend-Jesus – assuming you can get over the thought of cannibalism…
But I think we’re dealing with people well-primed to reject the evidence whenever it conflicts with their made-up stories. They “blank out” anything they don’t want to see. Given that, in a way it’s encouraging that PZ got their attention at all.
I don’t see the relevance of that bit of psychological speculation, but they certainly are well-primed to be offended by, and to get defensive and aggressive toward, PZ and people like him. So I find it neither surprising nor encouraging that he succeeded in that task.
If they were perfect at blocking out reality, they would complacently sit back and expect PZ to incur the angry judgment of a swift-punishing God as a natural consequence of his actions. They wouldn’t feel obliged to rush in like harpies and screech and sneer to prove their devotion.
As any believer — or really anyone who looks at those beliefs without their snideness up high — would tell you, that is a pretty silly expectation.
He can’t. There’s no difference!
Um
wouldn’t all of this be solved if we put that cracker under an electron microscope after it had be blessed?
It would scientifically make the confirmation. And we could have it peer reviewed.
Steve_C, I like your comments. I’ve been arguing that cracker-desecration would be an act of pure unadulterated spite which would achieve precisely nothing, and you’ve been arguing the exact same thing.
Let’s insult every single one of them… We’re not trying to get anywhere. We don’t have to be constructive 100% of the time.
I wonder if PZ realizes that this is the mentality he’s fostering here? Cos I’d have thought he might want to set standards a little higher than a mirror image of Bill Donahue.
Michael, Catholics get all the respect they deserve, and like all other insane assholes, they deserve no respect at all.
“a completely false assumption of the theology and an infantile understanding of the concept you’re mocking.”
The concept we are mocking is magic. How much does a person have to know about magic to know the people who believe in it are deranged?
PZ was addressing the insane fringe Catholics who threatened and/or assaulted the kid, or spewed the “hate crime” crap.
Anyone else who got offended did so of their own volition.
You can’t criticize people for dismissing evolution when it is clear they don’t know anything about it and then turn around and mock Catholics based on a completely false assumption of the theology and an infantile understanding of the concept you’re mocking.
Demonstrable fact and superstition. Spot the difference.
Is there a non-infantile, non holier-than-thou understanding of transubstantiation? Seriously. Something beyond the Peter Pan-style “if I really believe, it makes it real, so nyah nyah nyah” concept?
“How could you know if any supposed wafer mailed to you was genuinely illicitly taken from a Roman Catholic Mass?”
Uh, that’s sort of the whole point. Nobody can know. The Catholics themselves can’t tell the difference between a consecrated host and an unconsecrated one if you lay them side by side on the altar. For all they know, the poor college kid may have had one that dropped out of the bag after the priest consecrated the rest. Ironic, isn’t it, that they can’t prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he actually took one that was consecrated, or sent back the same one he took? How could they know, indeed!
I used to have two female pups from the same litter. When they were of the age to go into heat, they would tear into each other and lock on so tightly you could grab one by the tail and ep up swing two dogs at once and even that wouldn’t get them to let go.
Without a clear and present antagonist, many of you are attacking each other and yelling “TROLL” if someone dissents even in the finest of points.
The “Goddamned “or “Frackin” cracker thread has been beaten to fucking death.
Objections to PZ’s possible desecration? Duly noted.
Reasons for the suggested desecration? Redundantly addressed.
People who will never get it? Futile to argue with.
People who believe? See: People who will never get it.
Any atheist who dissents? An Uncle Tom New AtheistTroll(tm)
It’s a Yogi Beara thing -PZ’s gonna do what PZ’s gonna do.
And besides, all the usually brilliant posters here are beginning to resemble punch drunk pugilists.
Let’s move on, shall we?
I know, I know: “Fuck me”…
The mentality that hokey superstitions and miracles should be made fun of? That one?
Religion is owed no respect. Only tolerance when tolerable.
PZ was addressing the insane fringe Catholics who threatened and/or assaulted the kid, or spewed the “hate crime” crap.
Anyone else who got offended did so of their own volition.
Maybe it was insane fringe Catholics who acted against Mr. Moore. I wasn’t there, and can’t write with authority on the subject.
But Dr. Myers’s plans for a consecrated host don’t just insult those implicated in the incident in Florida, they insult *all* believing Catholics.
I’m curious when such a strategy has proven wise. Our military’s recent adventures in the Middle East would seem to be a good counterexample to the notion that the proper response to an offensive act by an individual of a religion is to do something to offend all members of that religion.
If Dr. Myers is as brilliant as people claim he is, I’m quite sure he could have devised a method of protest that was more specifically targeted. He didn’t.
Invading a country isn’t quite the same as violating a jesus cracker.
JohnMcG, when you’re fighting an infestation of roaches, for example, you don’t just kill off the few that are actually on your food and let the rest go about their business. (Roaches, that is, standing for the pernicious lies of religion and not the people brainwashed by them, of course.)
PZ is expressing hate and bigotry at Catholics
Not at all. What PZ is doing is expressing his disgust at the idea that nothing could be more vile than desecrating a piece of bread. We are living in a world where people will say to you, “Return that cracker or we will kill you.” Can’t you see the absurdity of this? If I take a communion wafer during mass and then turn to the crowd and say that I am removing it in order to desecrate it, would you think it worth killing me to get it back? Because if you are putting armed guards in a church to stop people from taking hosts home with them then that is what you are saying. I can think of few things more vile than valuing a piece of bread over a human life.
How about if we do this… instead of desecrating the hosts, hold them hostage. Tell the Catholic Church to stop interfering in secular issues or the host gets it.
“But Dr. Myers’s plans for a consecrated host don’t just insult those implicated in the incident in Florida, they insult *all* believing Catholics.”
Yeah. So what?
E. V. @ 520 No, you have every right to lambaste the overkill of the “crackergate”. I’m with you to a point. We will never even come to the numbers of crackers that have been swallowed, literally and figuratively by way of ridicule, but I think the best the catholics could do would to give up this insane practice and find out if it makes a difference. I’m sure they will discover that they can still brush their teeth, start their car, catch a train and all sorts of things that they couldn’t do when they started that pathetic nonsense. Get it? Any way, take a break, and here, have a cracker! Just kidding!
I’m sure Dr. Myers is probably sorry that catholics take so seriously the fate of a cracker and will probably be egregiously insulted. But that’s what happens in the sphere of ideas, sometimes they get trampled. No harm, no foul. Anyone arguing that harm has taken place has a seriously distorted view of reality.
Holbach,
I love a cause as much as the next guy, but it seems we’re left only to tilt at windbags…
Michael, Catholics get all the respect they deserve, and like all other insane assholes, they deserve no respect at all.
Bob C: That is neither here nor there. Read what I wrote. I did not say that the opinions of Catholics deserve respect. I said that PZ Myers’ position in the academic community requires that he treat them respectfully. If you can’t even parse a sentence correctly, how am I to suppose you can even think rationally?
The concept we are mocking is magic. How much does a person have to know about magic to know the people who believe in it are deranged?
See, you clearly have no idea what you are mocking. Transubstantiation is no more magic than phrenology is science. One can rationally argue against transubstantiation or an omnipotent God. But lumping it all under the category of magic underscores your ignorance about that which you are criticizing and demonstrates that you have virtually no knowledge of philosophy, logic or reason.
Yeah. So what?
So we’ve just spent four years in Iraq with no sign of getting out because they’re Arab Muslims, and Arab Muslims did 9/11. How did that work out?
We have some unkind words for those who attack, or even from bad opinions about a group based on the behavior of a few of their members.
If that’s what you and Dr. Myers want to be, then I guess you’re right that it’s not a big deal.
My last word on the subject. If Dr. Myers is going to go through with it, I concur with Cuttlefish about killing two birds with one stone and laying this accident/essence sophistry to rest. Test it. Cheesit or Jezit?
That’s the problem with you fuck-tards. You conflate argument with physical warfare. You actually want to kill someone if they disagree with your crazy ideas. Fuck off scum. Grow a brain. Insults to not equal physical assault! Get it ass-wipe?
But lumping it all under the category of magic underscores your ignorance about that which you are criticizing and demonstrates that you have virtually no knowledge of philosophy, logic or reason.
Posted by: Michael
Michael, it actully demonstrates YOU have virtually no knowledge of philosophy, logic or reason, nor do you understand the definition of magic. Look it up. We’ll wait…
James Goetz asked:
Well, it would depend on how much faith PZ had in the person who sent it.
Ultimately he can’t know. And so, if PZ makes his video, he’ll have to add a subtitle to the title: “PZ abuses your Christian cracker… Or, maybe not. No one knows.”
So, unless the cracker starts screaming “Oh Noooo!!” like Mr. Bill, there will be no way to know.
Please point me to the post in this thread where anybody advocated violence.
“I said that PZ Myers’ position in the academic community requires that he treat them respectfully.”
Bullshit. PZ doesn’t talk about religious stupidity in the classroom, but he can say what he wants on his own blog. Are you against freedom of speech? If yes, then get out of my country.
“Transubstantiation is no more magic than phrenology is science.”
Transubstantiation, also known as jebus in a cracker, is not magic?
Bullshit. Your entire idiotic religion is nothing more than a collection of magic tricks.
Michael @ 530 We are still waiting, and eating “crackers”!
“There’s talk here that the Catholic reaction has to a large degree been generated by the frothings of the Catholic League people. Perhaps people would not react so much without demagogues reacting for them.”
Amazingly inconsistent. The Catholic League had nothing to do with this. One minute people are telling Catholics that they’re ignoring the original Webster Cook incident. The next minute, they ignore it themselves. I found this website through an email someone forwarded me. But it’s my beliefs and the beliefs of the Catholic Church that actually compelled me to reach out. Donohue’s comments were totally mild compared to what I felt inside.
And going out of your way to desectrate the Eucharist is only going to make things worse. Catholics aren’t going to leave the Church over this. They’re going to get pissed off and unite because some bigot is insulting them. Do you honestly believe that the two people who emailed threats to PZ have a solid grasp of transubstantiation? They might, but I find it improbable. They reacted to a threat, pure and simple.
I’ll tell you the end result if PZ continues. Catholics will unite. Other religious groups will then join in. And everybody will be talking about the petty and hate filled bigot. People won’t have to demand that he gets fired. The university will do that on their own because they don’t want the negative publicity. Nobody with two brain cells would be willing to believe he’s not spreading that hate in the classroom as well.
No good will come from this.
“But lumping it all under the category…”
No Michael. What those ideas espouse is hocus pocus, woo, ooga-booga-booga, ro1l-the-bones, read-the-tea-leaves, abracadabra, viola, magic – just like the witch-doctors but much more sanctimonious and civilized – still just as fake.
There is nothing there but flim-flammery and blind faith.
JohnMcG, there is nothing wrong with ridiculing every Catholic in the world, and every other religious person in the world, because religious insanity is out of control, and because anyone stupid enough to believe a magical fairy hides in the clouds deserves to be ridiculed.
Let me see if I understand the principle being asserted here — behavior outside of one’s job should have no impact on one’s employment? Anyone who thinks otherwise should get out of the country.
In that case, there’s going to be some crowded boats, because a number of people have lost jobs for saying the wrong things.
JohnMcG.
I just read your blog. Your being disengenuous if you can say you aren’t aware PZ has recieved threats of violence. “(I’m sayin’ THIS specific thread…”) C’mon, you are a man of honor. Go back just a few threads if you happened to have missed the shit storm.
“Nobody with two brain cells would be willing to believe he’s not spreading that hate in the classroom as well.”
Except all his students.
Go fuck yourself Jim. Compared to PZ you are a cockroach.
JohnMcG, OK, then you are in favor of suppressing free speech. Please go live in Iran.
Here’s a crazy idea, just insult all those who think that there are no deities! Yeah, that’s it! And see how we all whimper and whine!
Ideas are not actions. Crackers are not people or ideas. Crackers are crackers. If your ideas are so feeble as to get bruised by a “misused” cracker, then that really sucks to be you. Why don’t you go burn an Evolution book or something? Fair is fair. Big deal!
Advocating someone getting fired for insulting a group by doing something with a cracker is insane and sickening.
@ 536 JohnMCG
If I’m not mistaken hes referring to the death threats that Cook and PZ have gotten
Addendum: Never mind. I went back, read it, and realized that John is a complete gibbering nutcase like Jim and Salt…
well that’s a bit harsh, he hasn’t quite reached the level of denseness that Salt has or the boring piety of Jim but still, he has a certain… repetitiveness about him.
Oh, yes, I’m very aware of the threats. I am reminded of them every other post.
In the post I quoted, the personal pronoun “you” was used — “You actually want to kill someone” This implies that the current audience is guilty of that behavior when they are not.
If you are aiming to be better than those who threaten actual violence, then you have achieved that goal. But that does not describe most of those who oppose what Dr. Myers is proposing.
You’re reading too much into a simple word, John
My suggestion is to set up the host next to a birdfeeder or any area where wild birds and/or squirrels gather. That way you don’t have to wait a long time.
There shouldn’t be anything toxic to wildlife in a host cracker.
Then film the animals chowing down on the cracker and post it on the net.
Or alternatively put it next to a fire ant mound and film the ants taking the cracker apart crumb by crumb.
It’s not very scientific granted, but animals eating a cracker people believe is Jesus certainly would promote a discussion. After all is it desecration, God’s will, or both?!
Let the hand wringing commence!
Bob,
I am in favor of employers having the right to exercise some prudence when someone’s public comments compromise their ability to do their job.
It’s why Jimmy the Greek was fired.
It’s why Al Campanis was fired.
I’m sure that if a bishop or priest made a public statement that pedophilia was no big deal, and kept his job, you guys would rightfully be all over us for letting this guy continue to be in his position.
It’s at least conceivable that Myers’s statements and plans would compromise his ability to teach Catholics and Muslims.
If everyone who thinks employers should have this ability has to move to Iran, it better be a pretty big boat.
Be careful in any attempt to desecrate the host, PZ. I read Joe Nickell’s “Eucharistic ‘Miracles'” in the current Skeptical Inquirer last night (this was referenced in a previous thread). I urge you, do not stab it with a knife.
If you must, I beg of you to at least put on a poncho before hand. I don’t want to see shirts needlessly stained.
A must see:
Bullshit. PZ doesn’t talk about religious stupidity in the classroom, but he can say what he wants on his own blog. Are you against freedom of speech? If yes, then get out of my country.
Wow. You’re not much with the nuance, are you? Certainly PZ is free to say whatever he wants to say. But freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. He is a professor and as a professor what he says contributes to how he is perceived, and how the university is perceived. And that is just a fact of living in a society. With his position comes responsibility, and part of that responsibility is to not create a hostile environment for his students. It is childish to think otherwise. I am increasingly getting the impression that I am conversing with a mental midget with no formal education.
Transubstantiation, also known as jebus in a cracker, is not magic?
Bullshit. Your entire idiotic religion is nothing more than a collection of magic tricks.
Again, pick up a book. Go read some Aristotle. Jesus isn’t in a cracker. Of course, you might have to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in your head at once. That might be too much for you. But then again, you probably don’t understand the quantum theory of light either. How can light be a particle and a wave? Oh no! Ooga booga! It must be maaaagic…
John,
Forgive me if I misread your post about the 9/11 conflict. The way I understood it is that you implied things weren’t going well with that. You implied that the bad opinions are what was egging on the U.S. enemy. Then you proposed that perhaps the nasty name-calling cracker desecrating atheist community would bring on further ire and combativeness from the catholic community by bing that way.
It’s a bloody war you equated with oversensitive myth believers and their feelings of impropriety. If you think the comparison is justified then yes, then I feel you feel it justified to escalate a competition of ideas to a bloody war. Of course, the other death threats made by the “few” don’t help the situation.
I apologize if I have misinterpreted the intentions of your post. However, I still strongly disagree with your overarching position.
Personally, I prefer PZ smashing that wafer with a copy of Darwin’s works (Modern hardcover reprint, of course, no need to waste fine manuscripts) while screaming “DARWIN IS BETTER THAN YOU”, but that’s just me :P
Doesn’t make it tasteless, though, I’m all in it for a good laugh.
Michael #554:
Show me the math. Show me the double-slit experiment.
#529 & Holbach – You’re right this horse is beat to death. Later! :)
Posted by: Michael | July 15, 2008 6:22 PM
But then again, you probably don’t understand the quantum theory of light either. How can light be a particle and a wave? Oh no! Ooga booga! It must be maaaagic…
you freakin’ idiot – quantum theory is empirically testable and incredibly well verified through experiment. Can you say the same for god-in-(or-not-quite-really-in)-a-cracker theory?
JohnMcG
I consider you to be a man of integrity, but I’m feeling the swagger and trash talk of an insulted Catholic. You’re a bigger man than this. You don’t need to throw any late punches, this fray is over until something new happens.
I suspect PZ is having more of a positive effect on UM Morris than negative.
The difference, Michael, is that scientists say “I don’t understand that, let’s see what makes it tick” while religios say “I don’t understand, so goddidit!”.
How do you think we even got to wavicles? Some bible reference? IIRC, god is the light per various christers around here.
BTW, thanks for the reading advice, I didn’t know Aristotle wrote about crackers with or without cheeses.
And since I haven’t seen it yet, I’ll hope I’m first:
It’s not the lord, it’s a FRACKER!
“How can light be a particle and a wave?”MEASURE it in those ways. That means it is detectable and accurately describable in those ways. That is not magic, that is REALITY! Something myth-believers have a hard time understanding where the boundary lies. The woo in your particular myth only has stake in your imagination, not in reality.
@#553 – excellent. I have Brit envy when ever I hear “pee-zed”.
It’s at least conceivable that Myers’s statements and plans would compromise his ability to teach Catholics and Muslims.
NO. What compromises PZ’s ability to teach Catholics and Muslims is the fact that he is a scientist and biologist teaching evolution. What compromises his ability to get science into their thick heads is not his scientific views but their unscientific, medieval supersitions.
Michael #509,
Oh but I don’t mock Catholics based on false assumptions, look, I’ll even grant you with the groovy details from the vatican’s own catechism on the sacrament of the eucharist, it’s all there :
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm
these paragraphs are the funniest :
BUT THEN, WAIT !
So you see, all of this coldswallop has to be taken on faith, it can’t be apprehended by the senses, it’s supernatural as usual.
And then, please note the little comment :
“The Church and the world have a great need for Eucharistic worship.”
Doesn’t that need to be ridiculed ? That’s the whole point isn’t it, their systematic assumption that the rest of the world absolutely needs them.
The Church
and the world havehas a great need forEucharistic worshipyour money.Fixed it for them.
Now that was funny True Bob. Thanks for that.
But freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
the law limits the range of consequences.
yelling at PZ on his blog?
perfectly acceptable.
sending him death threats?
*buzz*
Posted by: BobC | July 15, 2008 5:51 PM
Nice strawman argument there. Phrenology is a long-debunked field of pseudo-science, just as the Catholic theory of transubstantiation is a long-debunked superstition that was believable to our species during the Dark Ages when scientific knowledge was primitive – to put it politely – compared to today’s society. We have the knowledge now to know that it simply is not possible to prove without committing the logical fallacy of appealing to the divine.
So your comparison really fails on all levels, because just as transubstantiation is a theological myth (and definitely not magic, since it is literally impossible for a piece of bread to transform into flesh), phrenology is a pseudo-science that was refuted quite a while ago. So let’s recap your faulty statement.
Transubstantiation is no more magic than phrenology is science. Since phrenology is not science due to its lack of ability to provide testable hypotheses that result in consistently accurate observations, then transubstantiation is not even close to a valid hypothesis, because when subjected to the same scrutiny as phrenology, transubstantiation fails just as miserably. It is not magic – is a religious belief, and one that has absolutely no reasonably valid basis whatsoever. So let me fix your statement to make it accurate:
Transubstantiation is no more
magicreal than phrenology is science.There, all better.
Michael:
That is exactly what it means. Are you suggesting that our First Amendment tells us that we have the right to say what we want, except that after we do, we have to worry about retribution? Freedom of speech is exactly that – freedom from fear of retaliation based simply on your speech. The exclusions to this right exist only in situations where the abuse of the right can directly lead to harm or violence in the legal sense, and the relation between the speaker and the results must be direct, as in the most common example of screaming ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater, or any other form of intentionally inciting violence.
PZ has every right to say anything he wants on this blog, because it is in no way affiliated with the official positions of his University. If you don’t know that entities can absolve themselves of perceived offenses committed by their employees during their own personal endeavors, then you don’t pay much attention these days to the multitude of disclaimers that exist, in all forms of media, that an individuals personal beliefs reflect in no way those of their employers, publishers, etc… Your interpretation of our right to freedom of speech is ridculously uninformed, and I would suggest you rectify that situation before making statements such as that.
PZ has every right to say anything he wants on this blog, because it is in no way affiliated with the official positions of his University. If you don’t know that entities can absolve themselves of perceived offenses committed by their employees during their own personal endeavors, then you don’t pay much attention these days to the multitude of disclaimers that exist, in all forms of media, that an individuals personal beliefs reflect in no way those of their employers, publishers, etc…
One thing I would add to that, is that there does indeed appear to be a double standard wrt to the application of that when we look at public representatives, who have indeed historically lost their jobs over something stupid they said, even if not said during the performance of their duties.
However, that a double-standard exists, hardly makes it a basis for saying that there then SHOULD be dire consequences to expressing one’s opinions.
The Christian extremists don’t seem to respect any of the First Amendment. They don’t respect the Establishment Clause, and apparently they also want to throw out freedom of speech, especially when people don’t speak kindly about their sacred crackers.
But, but,….
But magic is not real either.
Posted by: JohnMcG | July 15, 2008 5:38 PM
Such an idiotic statement only shows your willingness to be as intellectually dishonest as you have to be to twist your point into something coherent. If you’re really suggesting that Iraq was a xenophobic retaliation for the attacks on the Trade Center, then you’ve completely bought into the bullshit line that there was a link between that country and that attack. And if you haven’t, then you’re treating this war as if it were a recess argument between kids.
What got us into that war was not some childish reaction aganist Arab Muslims, but rather a selfish and greedy administration who wanted to get into the business of nation-building in an attempt to get rid of theocracies in the middle east by creating a democratic client state in Iraq (though only one that we approve of, of course…) and hoping that the movement will destabilize the authoritarian governments in the region. That, and because it was an opportunity for the administration to play upon irrational fears to mask the fact that they have spent the last 7 1/2 years trying – and succeeding, mostly – to distort the Constitution and award the executive branch with far more unilateral power than our founding document actually gives them. Oh, and don’t forget the opportunity it afforded for the administration to seriously ramp up the privatization of a ridiculous amount of services that once were handled by the military itself. And of course, the contracts, many of which were no-bid contracts, went to friends of the administration, to include the Blackwater mercenary army operating in the predominantly Muslim area, led by a right-wing Christian zealot who belongs to one of the same families that bankrolled Reagan’s candidacy and continues to advocate the intrusion of their specific form of Christianity into positions of control in our government and society.
So your reductionist and intellectually vacant description of why we got into Iraq seeks only to distort the truth in order for you to try to make some kind of point here on this board. The reasoning fails, and so does your argumentation.
#569: “Transubstantiation is no more magic than phrenology is science.
Posted by: BobC | July 15, 2008 5:51 PM
Nice strawman argument there.”
Just for the record I didn’t say that, one of the Catholic weirdos said it.
I think somebody said a religious belief is not magic. I don’t get that. I thought every religious belief was a belief in a magic trick. For example, the magical insertion of jebus into a cracker. Or the magical transformation of the dead jebus into a zombie.
A lot of people are commenting on the ‘blowback’ that PZ’s going to get for saying what he said.
Dawkins wrote a book called The God Delusion; essentially, he called every religious believer – not just Catholics or Christians, but anyone whose religion is deity-based – deluded. That’s pretty offensive as far as I can tell – I’m not a believer and never have been, so i’m only guessing here.
It a) sold a lot of copies, b) got a lot of press. So that would have no doubt offended a whole bunch of people.
Remind me – when Dawkins got back to England after touring for the book, did he find the locks to Oxford changed and his stuff packed into a couple of boxes to be collected at Security?
Michael and Jim, is there any Catholic bullshit you DON’T believe? Please answer the question. I don’t think there’s one thing you retards would reject if the pope told you to believe it.
BobC wrote:
Does anyone know if any of the Popes have actually come out and formally said anything like, ‘hey, guys – lay off the kid-fucking, will you? It’s kind of wrong’.
If you include me in those people, I haven’t “cocksure”ly declared that there are no restrictions on the use of free gifts (my example in the other thread was, IIRC, that you can’t sell your portion of food from a soup kitchen). I’m just saying that so far I’ve found your analogies of torturing puppies etc., very far-fetched.
Here is an example of Eucharist theft that is analogous to the example of stealing an entire stack of free newspapers. Regifting single items is not in the same category.
Your example of the law against damaging religious property may be more relevant, but it is a completely different issue from the use of free gifts. And if that law is invoked in defense of a wafer, things will at least get interesting…
Wowbagger,
Well, the religious tribes are like that. They react much more agressively when they are singled out, than when they attacked all at ounce.
Can one of the religious here explain something to me. What about all those drops of wine that are spilled every Sunday during communion, does Jesus get upset with the waste of xxx pints of blood every week?
I know that when I was growing up, some Catholic churches didn’t distribute the wine, only the bread but I thought that has changed. If not, I know the wine is distributed in the Lutheran church I grew up in.
BTW, I don’t think PZ is going to find his locks changed and his stuff packed, I think he has nothing to worry about. I’m quite certain that Bruininks is going to defend him anyway, even if there are external pressures from the Catholics, as he has already done in the past when he defended the representation of the very anti-catholic Dario Fo theater play “The Pope and the Witch” in his University.
Negentropyeater, #580
Would you say that that is because, when it’s non-specific, maybe they can all say something along the lines of, ‘oh, he doesn’t mean me and my god – he means all those people who believe in another god/religion/sect/minor interpretation over a single line of text in the bible that makes all the difference over who goes to hell and who doesn’t’?
RMP, #581
They bring out the Holy Handiwipe™!
Here’s some brave soul over at Free Republic who suggests bringing hate crime charges against PZ based on the same law Paul W. found. Problem is that it applies to “real property” only.
what? a hate crime against a cracker? srsly?
you know, it wouldn’t bother me if these crazy theocrats burned a copy of The God Delusion or something.
just so long as they had it on tape and posted it on youtube.
I’m not too worried about PZ. Any attempt at criminal charges would have to go through either a federal or state prosecutor, and they are way too busy with real criminal acts to even consider bringing a blasphemy charge. Also, the retail cost of the cracker, which is the only worth they can consider, is too insignificant for them to bother with. Any civil suit will run up against PZ’s constitutional right of free speech and die on the first defense motion to toss the suit, with the judge probably allowing the defense to collect their legal fees from the plaintiffs. He has tenure, which means that the list of offenses to fire him, short of disbanding the whole department, is very small. And giving offense to a religion on his own time is not one of the offenses.
I do understand and respect what you’re saying. My choice of words, vulgar as they were, was to illustrate the current false paradigm of ‘superior beliefs’ from which this idiotic “offense” has taken its predictable Internet life.
In my thesis, I have a belief that a cracker is just a cracker. Further, I have a competing emotional position that it is OFFENSIVE to me that others believe that it has any special significance in any way that is not entirely related to the physical properties that it possesses. Further, my belief is that I, or anyone else, should not be castigated for not respecting said cracker.
My belief is belief is in direct competition with the belief that the Magic Jesus Cracker deserves, though the emotions of the deluded who hold the beliefs to be true, respect. They are free to believe that. I actually respect that, though I will be blunt in my laughter at their primitive superstition because I don’t have to respect the ideas, only their rights to hold those ideas.
No matter how stupid, barbaric or silly they are.
And, at no point, are their beliefs about their magic cracker better than anyone else’s. No matter how many times they talk about Jesus telling them about the magic cracker. (Which, in and of itself, is a lie, but I’m not going into the additions to the bible here today. Until I get my remodeling done, my reference materials are packed away and I’m not going one-armed into a theological dispute over the changes made to the bible by the early Catholic Church to support their otherwise unsupported beliefs in the Trinity, The Last Supper and the Place of Women in the Church.)
this guy has the best idea: PZ should make a suit of armor made out of consecrated crackers…he’d be untouchable!
Windy@584:
You know, John, when some of see an asshole we call him an asshole. We don’t elect him Pope and put him in a funny hat. Then yell at people who notice he’s an asshole and deserves to be imprisoned for his conspiracy to hide child rapists.
Wasn’t some religious nutter just arguing a couple of days back that communion wafers, being consecrated, were AS god, and therefore NOT property?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…. No. Otherwise a perfectly fine post.
E.V. is correct that I have probably indulged my playful side here more than I should, so this will be my last post.
One of the principles being asserted is that even though only a few Catholics (Bill Donahue, the lay minister in Florida, those sending death threats) are guilty of objectively offensive behavior, it is still an appopriate response to do something that would offend *all* Catholics.
My Iraq war analogy was admittedly a poor fit. But I don’t think we would have accepted the Iraq invastion if 9/11 happened, nor would we have accepted it if Iraq was not populated mainly by Arab Muslims. Arab Muslims carried out the 9/11 attacks, maybe the case for war wasn’t quite solid, but damnit, those Arab Muslims have it coming!
Yes, it would be an oversimplification that we went to war out of a bigoted desire to get back at Arabs. But it would be wrong to deny it played a part.
And the results have been disastrous.
I don’t want to threaten Dr. Myers; I’m not going to work to see him fired. But I think our discourse would be much improved if people didn’t do stupid stunts like this, and if people like Bill Donahue didn’t stage elaborate flops.
Religious objects, for purpose of the statute, would be almost certainly be interpreted as fixtures. Like one of those nasty bleeding Jesus statues affixed to the wall. Or a sign or banner that’s been “permanently affixed.”
Btw, that nasty bleeding Jesus statue gave me nightmares.
Not as bad as the Holographic Jesus whose EYES FOLLOWED ME AROUND MY BABYSITTERS HOUSE!!!! AHhhhhhh…… JESUS IS STARING AT ME!!!
Man, that was creepy.
But nightmares.
You people are sick with your religious fetish objects that include dead men, bleeding, hanging from torture devices. Seriously, that’s perverse. And disgusting.
I absolutely agree. Believe me, it creeps me out all the time.
BTW, why are all you Magic Cracker People here anyway, the Bible is clear:
Shun those who disagree with your religious views. Romans 16:17
So, really, shun away… It’s your Christian duty…
Michael #554 said,
“How can light be a particle and a wave? Oh no! Ooga booga! It must be maaaagic…”
The claim that light exhibits both properties of a wave and a particle has been experimentally verified. The double slit experiment shows light’s wave-like behavior while the photoelectric effect shows light’s particle-like behavior. The claim that a cracker exhibits both properties of a cracker and the offspring of a divine entity has yet to be shown experimentally.
“Again, pick up a book. Go read some Aristotle.”
Aristotle knew less about the universe than a grade school kid does today. In those days the importance of experimental verification was not well known. This is one of my favourite quotes from Bertrand Russell:
“Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.”
do something that would offend *all* Catholics.
except for the Catholics, whatever their total number, who themselves wrote in these threads that they too thought it ridiculous to be offended (to the point of assault or death threats) by the actions of Cook, or the putative (not even taken, mind you) “actions” of PZ.
for example:
so, don’t presume to speak for anyone but yourself.
http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1461
New press release! Donohue sure developed a fast man crush; for a guy who had never heard of P.Z. until last week.
If it was that offensive to ‘all catholics’, I sure someone would have brought it to the pope’s attention; if it is, in fact, such a shocking act of sacrilege and blasphemy and a ‘hate crime’, surely he’d have spoken out about it.
Has anyone heard anything about this from the #1 catholic in the world?
Posted by: BobC | July 15, 2008 7:55 PM
My mistake on that one – My intended target for ridiculing that statement was Michael (the “Catholic weirdo” that originally put that logical nightmare of a statement up in the first place).
And a bad mistake, too, because, for the record, I get quite a bit of enjoyment out of reading your posts.
for a guy who had never heard of P.Z. until last week.
Incorrect. He tried to get PZ fired for helping to promote an anti-religious play at UMM a year or so back.
which worked out as well for him as his current stunt will.
for better or worse.
Has anyone heard anything about this from the #1 catholic in the world?
He’s too busy touring Australia on the State’s dole, and preparing his apology for his minion’s sex crimes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7503246.stm
@Ichthyic
Maybe I should have said for a guy who claimed to have never heard of P.Z. until last week…
;-p
I think our discourse would be much improved if people didn’t do stupid stunts like this, and if people like Bill Donahue didn’t stage elaborate flops.
two words:
Overton
Window
Ichthyic,
I know he’s in Australia – since that’s where I am :) – fortunately, he’s not in my part of the country.
Unfortunately, it’s all over the news, and the sight of the thousands of poor deluded saps running around revelling in their ignorance just saddens me, and the sound bytes of the chief Australian hypocrite/scumbag/rapist-protector (Pell) make me want to vomit. I just hope the Sydney businesses are gouging them as much as they did tourists during the 2000 Olympics.
Maybe I should have said for a guy who claimed to have never heard of P.Z. until last week…
oh man, did he?
what a maroon.
like anyone couldn’t have checked that ON HIS OWN BLOG and found him criticizing Myers previously.
someone around these parts even recently posted the direct links to Donowhore railing against that play and PZ.
I just hope the Sydney businesses are gouging them as much as they did tourists during the 2000 Olympics.
hmm, I could sell action figures of dead teen-age saints!
I’m on a plane, man! I’ll call McFarlane and tell him to re-gear some of the Spawn action figure molds.
Do I need a permit to sell junk to fundies if I’m not a resident?
Wowbagger,
when they are attacked all at once, they just feel , ah we’re in good company, it’s just those damned atheist attacking all of us.
when they are singled us, it’s immediately, why us and not them ? and don’t forget that it’s not only the atheists who have attacked the catholics about this issue of the Eucharist, so of course they take it much more personal, they react more aggressively.
All of this is just very predictable. What, some people are surprised by the Cathos’ reaction ? No way. So what ?
I mean, there’s no way America is going to become a society more tolerant of non believers if it systematically avoids conflicts.
What do you guys think we had to endure in France in the 60s with people like Jean Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir, Devos, Gainsbourg and many others ? They did much worse than what PZ did, in terms of civil disobedience, in order to chock and provoke the church. It was quasi permanent.
For chrissake, Jean Paul Sartre was almost imprisoned, and then what did De Gaulle say ?
“You don’t arrest Voltaire !”
Of course, in France, we only had the Catholic church to worry about, whereas in the US you have a few big ones, and that’s an additional difficluty.
I don’t see how these kinds of things should be avoided, I mean things like this crackergate that make enough noise, on the contrary, they need to be exploited. So far, non believers in the USA have not really eaten up in the territory of the religious. The statistics show that over the last 25 years they have about doubled and have gained a critical mass of approx. 15%. But the religious have remained stable at about 80%. So now obviously, it’s going to be a different ball game, the next phase if it is to be succesful, will necessarily be more conflictual.
Nobody likes to lose market share. Don’t forget that for them, religion is a business.
Not to mention that we are just dumber in general.
OK, on your reading “fixtures or religious objects contained within a place of worship” doesn’t mean “fixed objects, or religious objects that may be simply contained within a place of worship.” Instead it means “the usual sorts of fixtures (such as light fixtures) plus any fixed religious objects…”
My reading was that they were meaning to extend the notion of religious real property to include things that weren’t necessarily fixed, but which were not incidental to the religious function of the land and building.
I like your reading better—it keeps the real property clause about about land, buildings, and things affixed thereto—but I’m not sure they couldn’t work it the other way. (After all, the same section talks about obstructing activities as well as damaging real property, so it’s not just a law about real estate.)
paul – before you attempt to stretch the application of that statute any further, do also recall that with this specific “object”, the intended purpose of it is to destroy it.
You’ll have to work that into whether the statute is applicable as well.
Frankly, I think those who are trying to apply it are entirely spinning their wheels, but whatever, have fun.
Wowbagger, I’m at Circular Quay (Sydney, on the Harbour) and the poor deluded happy clapper god bothering cracker swallowing papal groupies are deadset everywhere. Easy to pick out too, red and yellow WYD packpacks, national flags and scarves, travelling together in packs, eyes glazed and stupid grin – like they’ve just dropped an E, and they respond to a “hi” with a “didn’t Jesus make this a glorious day” or something. If they weren’t so peaceful and happy they’d look like marauding band of football hooligans.
When the new anti-annoyance laws were thrown out yesterday it was funny to see protesters trying to hand out condoms. You should’ve seen the dirty looks from the pilgrims. A couple of girls on tele last night handed the condoms back saying that they were only 13 and 14. Oops.
When the new anti-annoyance laws were thrown out yesterday
damn, now that’s newsworthy of posting here.
I must have been out of the loop, but for others likely in the same boat:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24027384-17044,00.html
I’m tired of crackergate, let’s get back to Popegate.
A couple of girls on tele last night handed the condoms back saying that they were only 13 and 14.
gee, I’ve never heard of young teens having sex.
*rolleyes*
A thought:
By publicly desecrating the consecrated wafers, isn’t PZ Myers acknowledging its symbolic and cultural power? Blasphemy, desecration, and profanation are not done to neutral or meaningless objects. Negative attention is still attention. Perhaps the most diminishing and deflating thing PZ can do to the host, the risen Nazarene in the flesh, would be to walk away from the matter, return the wafers, and note his lack of interest in such things.
Just a suggestion.
Icthyic,
You’re begging the question a bit here. I’m not sure I am “stretching” statute to apply it, though I hope you’re right.
It looks like a law against interfering with transitory religious processes, as well as damaging permanent religious property. It’s not clear that they meant to protect transitory processes and fixed property, but not transitory or unfixed property used in those processes. (Why would they do that?) They may have just jammed the “or contained in…” clause in badly. (Which might mean that the law would need revision before they could enforce it as intended.)
They may have meant to generalize the real property clause to cover any religious objects contained in the place of worship, in order to protect the function of the building as a place of worship.
As for the intended purpose of the wafer being to destroy it, that’s not right. Its intended purpose is for believing Catholics to absorb their undead God’s zombie essence, which according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (I think it was) takes about 15 minutes, during which you should maintain the right frame of mind, while digesting God. After 15 minutes, it’s done, and the wafer has reverted to normal matter you can excrete per usual without making Jesus cry.
(Shoving the wafer straight up your ass, on the other hand, would be a no no. How it gets into your ass is important.)
Consider a free newspaper, which you’re not supposed to steal for non-reading purposes. After it’s served its purpose, you can dispose of it or destroy it, but you can’t take it and destroy it just to keep it from serving its purpose—e.g., to stop other people from reading it.
I wouldn’t the courts could apply similar logic to a wafer, ruling that it’s specially protected because it serves a particular function, and is protected from interference with that function. The fact that its function is transitory (like a newspaper’s) doesn’t break the argument.
I think you should scientifically analyze it and show everyone that its not human flesh
Exactly, the better half nearly jumped through the tele saying the same thing.
Annoying is handing someone a condom if they don’t want it. Inconvenience would be tackling them to the ground and rolling one on maybe.
Or an inconvenience might be a defective condom. Damn, that would annoy and inconvenience me.
A couple of girls on tele last night handed the condoms back saying that they were only 13 and 14 and added they weren’t planning on spending that much time around priests.
Fixed.
Colugo@616
I think PZ freely acknowledges the cracker’s symbolic and cultural power – that’s the point. By ‘desecrating’ it, he forces people who are under the spell of catholicism to think about why they hold it to be sacred. Hopefully it will cultivate a rational perspective in a few believers ‘faith’*.
*a.k.a. the indoctrination of children with baseless dogma under threat of eternal torture (and if that’s not psychological abuse then nothing is imo)
#599
From the new Catholic league press release :
Donohue is of course lying, what else can he do ? Of course he can safely assume that his hordes of devoted deluded followers will never go and check the truth. Afterall dishonest propaganda is his area of expertise.
Compare this lying cristofacist and his dishonest propaganda :
Its intended purpose is for believing Catholics to absorb their undead God’s zombie essence, which according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (I think it was) takes about 15 minutes, during which you should maintain the right frame of mind, while digesting God.
Ok, now you’ve gone beyond the ability of my mind to process religious nuttery, and it’s causing noticeable loss of brain cells
Uncle, already.
to stop other people from reading it.
doesn’t apply in Cook’s case, since it was given to HIM. It was never intended for another person.
using your newspaper analogy, it would indeed be like destroying a newspaper your paper boy delivered before you even read it.
frankly, I do that with junk-mail all the time.
added they weren’t planning on spending that much time around priests.
thankyou. much clearer now.
:P
Or an inconvenience might be a defective condom. Damn, that would annoy and inconvenience me.
which brings up the amusing hypothetical scenario of a “Youth Week” participant filing charges under that statute if they got pregnant after utilizing a free condom given to them by a protester that had a hole in it.
Re: the Catholic League press release –
Liars for Jesus™
There are no depths to which we will not stoop
Posted by: Paul W. | July 15, 2008 11:30 PM
That analogy doesn’t work either, because – simply put – yes you can. If given a free newspaper to read, it is then yours to do with what you lease. There is no requirement that you return it for others to read, so there is no crime in using it as a firestarter, if you should so please, which I have done quite a many times. In the case of the wafer, it is given to you for the purpose of consumption, and if you fail to do so that is definitely a very direct contradiction of Catholic doctrine. What it is not is in any way a criminal act, and the Church, while they can internally condemn the action and excommunicate the perpetrator, has absolutely no grounds upon which to demand action be taken against him or her outside church authority.
Exactly. It was only their rules he broke – no-one else’s. The worst they can do is excommunicate him – though, from what I’ve read, they’re not that keen on that anymore ’cause it’d mean they couldn’t claim him as a Catholic when they try and justify special treatment because of how many of them there are.
The Catholic League and other religious fuckwits should read their own Bible: Romans 3:5-8.
Paul W. did reference legislation that would exist to protect the distribution of free newspapers from intentional disruption or abuse which could properly apply to the distribution of communion wafers. Both free newspaper and wafers could be taken in mass for profit or simply to cripple further distribution, otherwise.
I can’t say I,m familiar with this type of legislation myself, especially not in the US, but I think it sounds really abusive to say that legislation like this would actually make the act of one person taking a single free newspaper into entering a binding obligation of reading the newspaper. Which is what is implied to apply to the improper use of communion wafers; someone who receives a wafer is then legally obligated to follow all of the proper rites. Seems to miss the spirit of the free newspaper protection idea altogether.
paul
-if the priest hands the cracker away, then assuredly he is relenquishing property rights over it. does he expect to get it back? Never. SO, but this extention, there really is a transfer of property.
1. the priest intends to transfer it to another
2. the priest does transfer it to another
3. the other person accepts it and takes dominion over it.
it’s a gift.
it’s not a bailment either…just a plain gift. so, when it is handed over, it is not the property of the church afterall….
Just checking wickipedia, and found this: “In the Eastern Orthodox Church the bread and wine that are consecrated during the Divine Liturgy are referred to as “the Gifts”. They are first of all the gifts of the community (both individually and corporately) to God, and then, after the epiklesis, the Gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ to the Church.”
As to the question of whether PZ’s antipathy towards Catholic beliefs would effect his ability to teach Catholic students, the same question could be asked of Catholic professors teaching atheists who they believe are bound to go to hell. Mocking someone’s beliefs is not bigotry.
“To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion – that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas – any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. And the law which attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness – and the other represents oppression.” – Rowan Atkinson, speaking out about the latest attempt to criminalize speech in Britain.
I believe that the 15 minutes figure refers to an longshot estimate of how long it takes for a cracker to dissolve in your stomach – Catholic dogma states that when the physical characteristics of the wafer no longer resemble bread, then there’s no Jesus left in it. Which is why Catholics are allowed to poop.
Also, the language used in “or other religious real property, including fixtures or religious objects contained within a place of religious worship” clarifies that fixtures and religious objects which are real property are subject to this law. By analogy, which sentence makes sense?
“Other mammals, including ducks and frogs”
or
“Other mammals, including rabbits and squirrels”.
Redefining real property in an afterthought clause is ridiculous. Especially when they could have simply included those objects as personalty instead – had they meant to include them.
I’ve been following this blog for about a year now. I love biology and am a proud atheist so it seems like required reading. I’m afraid to say that this Catholic League business is when NuAtheism jumped the shark (or should I say octopus?).
What we need now is the New New-Atheism because these little attention getting devices are not helping anybody. This pathetic relationship that PZ and the Fundies have (offense->righteous condemnation->offense) is a shrill masturbatory exercise that only confirms the worst ideas about what an Atheist is.
What we need now is the New New-Atheism because these little attention getting devices are not helping anybody.
thinking: you’re doing it too shallowly.
The free mnewspaper analogy falls apart for many reasons. Taking a host given by the priest does not effect the ability of anyone in the church to practice their religion. Comparing this to taking ALL of the available newspapers to keep anyone from reading them is absurd. The law does not prevent me from taking a copy of a free newspaper in order to wrap my lunch in it, use it to blow my nose, or cut it up into paper dolls. I am not required to read any free newspaper that I take. In California, for example, I can take up to 25 copies of a free newspaper and burn them in my fireplace. In Maryland it is a crime to distribute free newspapers in a way that is likely to lead to litter. As an aside, in almost every case of free newspaper displays being cleaned out, it is for the purpose of reselling the newspapers to recycling companies. So to complete the analogy, a similar law for hosts would make it a crime to take a number of hosts significant enough to prevent people from making use of them and then reselling the purloined hosts. Taking a single host and quietly taking it away from the church premises would not interfere with the worshipers at the church service.
Posted by: Numad | July 16, 2008 12:22 AM
It misses it completely, but I’m sure he knows this, and was merely reaching for an analogy he thought would pass muster to support his point.
^i think that was commented upon in #632. no newspaper references are necessary…
Posted by: j.d. | July 16, 2008 1:25 AM
Any rational person would believe the same thing, but such disingenuous comparisons are better dealth with en masse. Have you ever seen someone so prone to such disingenuity swayed by a single valid rebuttal of their claim? I have not, mainly because their pursuit is one of searching not for truth, but rather they search for any equivocation that supports their point – regardless of its accuracy. Such tactics in discourse deserve just as much discredit and refutation as it takes. Mind you, this response is in no way likely to change their rigid minds, but instead to continually point out the flaws in their argumentation in hopes that they will give up and move along to somewhere where they can posit such idiocy to those already in the mindset to take it as truth. While it may be redundant, I enjoy giving them a bit of their own medicine from time to time.
At #448 JohnMcG wrote:
I’d be interested if anyone could point me to the online comment thread where Catholics are trading creative ideas on how best to kill Dr. Myers or Webster Cook.
I’d be interested if anyone could point me to the online comment thread where atheists are trading creative ideas on how best to kill anyone.
I’d be interested if anyone could point me to the online comment thread where atheists are trading creative ideas on how best to kill anyone.
cough… abortion… cough
The person who sent the threat from their 1-800-flowers email has been fired:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148476/woman_fired_over_death_threat_sent_from_work_email.html
From the pcworld article:
A failure to properly secure her email account was interpreted as ‘misuse of company systems or equipment for personal purposes’ . Typical management failure to appreciate distinctions – or the fact that 99% of their employees are incapable of securing any computer-related resource.
In the comments section at the following address a “c kroll” claims to be the sender of the threatening email and says that Melanie Kroll had nothing to do with it. He also has a lot more to say. It was posted very early a.m. July 16.
http://breakingspells.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/employee-of-1800flowerscom-issues-death-threats-to-professor/#comment-274
I trust all those who decided to contact 1-800-Flowers.com now feel satisfied at the outcome.
I imagine you will be the only ones who are.
@646:
Looking at the original email I can see that the email from 1-800-Flowers came from a machine internal to their corporate network. It then becomes a case of seeing who was logged into the machine, and whether that person was in the office at the time. Once all of the evidence is gathered it then becomes a case of the corporate computer usage policy and how it relates to the situation.
If this occurred at my place of employment, and if the evidence places her logged into the PC at the time, the she is responsible. Our computer usage policy states that anything done via a machine whilst a person is logged in is that persons responsibility. That is why staff are actively encouraged to logout or lock a machine when you leave it for any reason.
While it is unfortunate that Melanie was fired, 1-800-Flowers wouldn’t risk this unless they had solid evidence. Otherwise they are open to a wrongful dismissal case. Being ignorant of corporate policy is no excuse. Neither is her trusting whomever sent the email. Her login and machine are corporate property – and since the email came from the corporate system it is their neck on the line if PZ did pursue legal action. It is for this reason Computer usage policies exist.
IAmMarauder.
My point was that it was PZ to contact the company should he wish to do so. It was not for those readers who decided to take it upon themselves to contact the company, especially when PZ had made it clear he did not want people doing that.
Hi Matt,
Sorry about that, I misinterpreted the intent of your post.
What kind of society would we have if no one took action due to a victim’s request that no action be taken? Despite PZ being the victim here, and having the sole right to bring charges upon the perpetrator, it is not in the community’s interest to tolerate such threats or leave the pursuit of recourse to the discretion of the victim once the act is publicly known. Were we to remain impartial then opportunities for silencing the victim prevail over justice.
“What kind of society would we have if no one took action due to a victim’s request that no action be taken? Despite PZ being the victim here, and having the sole right to bring charges upon the perpetrator, it is not in the community’s interest to tolerate such threats or leave the pursuit of recourse to the discretion of the victim once the act is publicly known. Were we to remain impartial then opportunities for silencing the victim prevail over justice.”
There is a good argument that is some circumstances people should be prosecuted even if the victim of a crime does not want a prosecution. Such circumstances would be where the victim is intimidated, such as in cases of domestic violence.
I do not think PZ was feeling intimidated by these e-mails.
One wouldn’t have to be in the office if the company uses a VPN.
Whether he was intimidated or not is not entirely the point.
I think we can all agree that every person has a right to personal security. When it becomes publicly known that a person is threatening another person’s security then we as a society have an obligation to the victim and even ourselves to pursue justice regardless of the victim’s wishes.
I trust all those who decided to contact 1-800-Flowers.com now feel satisfied at the outcome.
This is getting close to the nonsense from Uriel in the other thread. Ms. Kroll was bound to be fired if her employer learned of the email from any source, including PZ. But the people who would feel satisfied at the outcome are those who think that she should have been fired for allowing her email address to be misused (I’m not one of them, FWIW). That group is orthogonal to those who contacted her employer (I’m not one of those either, FWIW).
At the same time, there’s another outcome, which is that the true sender of the email was revealed (assuming that the post from C. Kroll is legitimate), and that seems like a good thing.
When it becomes publicly known that a person is threatening another person’s security then we as a society have an obligation to the victim and even ourselves to pursue justice regardless of the victim’s wishes.
First, protecting people’s security and pursuing justice are quite different things. Second, it’s not at all clear that either was achieved. Third, it sounds a whole lot like you’re rationalizing vigilantism.
“This is getting close to the nonsense from Uriel in the other thread. ”
Truth Machine, sometimes you say things that are sensible. Other times you talk total bollocks. This is an example of the latter.
“I think we can all agree that every person has a right to personal security. When it becomes publicly known that a person is threatening another person’s security then we as a society have an obligation to the victim and even ourselves to pursue justice regardless of the victim’s wishes.”
This could be valid, but only if rather than contacting the company people had contacted the police. If someone is a threat then they will be threat even if they have been sacked. In fact it is quite possible sacking such a person would increase the risk they pose. It is very unlikely to reduce it.
I’m on a VPN right now, working from home. I still lock my computer when I get up. It’s just a habit, but if Melanie had cultivated the same habit, then maybe C (same last name, maybe a household member?) wouldn’t have had the opportunity to (I’m guessing) send e-mail from her unlocked computer. Again, just a guess at what may have happened.
Other times you talk total bollocks. This is an example of the latter.
Wow, that’s some cogent argumentation. I stand refuted.
Not.
. If someone is a threat then they will be threat even if they have been sacked. In fact it is quite possible sacking such a person would increase the risk they pose. It is very unlikely to reduce it.
Right. This fleshes out my comment in #655 that it’s not at all clear that the result was either security or justice.
Sorry to any of you who feel badly for this twat. She was caught. Her employers did the right thing by sacking her. I feel no sympathy for her. If it turns out she was innocent, she can perhaps look into litigation. If not, it’s not like there’s a dearth of telemarketing jobs out there.
/brutal bitch mode
Unless it was a new setup, it’s not remotely credible that this was the first instance where someone had casually accessed her account.
Owlmirror (Comment #23):
However, there’s nothing to prevent God from untransubstatiating the host after the initial consecration, but before it can be subjected to unorthodox treatment. So your
doesn’t follow, because God has at least one other option available to him.
It might have been better to say that God would be obliged to ensure that an about-to-be-desecrated host is no longer transubstantiated, either by not transubstantiating it the first place, or by subsequently untransubstatiating it.
Of course, a Catholic can still get round this by arguing that it’s not up to God to rearrange things so that we don’t do things which are inappropriate or sinful (since this would negate much of the point of Christianity), and hence that it would be unreasonable to expect God to untransubstatiate a host in danger of desecration. It would be our responsibility not to desecrate, not God’s to prevent us from doing so. And in terms of Christian doctrine, this would be a perfectly consistent position.
Well, for the above reasons, I don’t think your argument works. But since making arguments that don’t work seems to be the main qualification for being a theologian … ;-)
Broken Soldier et al.,
Let me clarify my position.
I agree that the newspaper analogy “doesn’t work” to show what the actual rules are about communion wafers.
I agree, I think, that PZ is doing nothing criminal. I also don’t think he is a bigot. I think I understand and sympathize with what he’s trying to do.
(Another point of clarification—I agree that Webster Cook is innocent. He may have violated a Catholic rule, but he didn’t try to obtain a wafer illegitimately and use it for something basically contrary to its intended purpose. What I’m concerned with now is people trying to get wafers for reasons that are obviously contrary to their intended function, and what the legal implications might be. What PZ is doing is very different from what Webster Cook did.)
The point of the free newspaper analogy is just to show that the usual rules of property with respect to mass-produced things that are given away “for free” may not apply in cases where there’s a conflict with a First Amendment right. A lot of the argumentation we’ve heard over and over for the last week is just invalid. It’s not obviously a case where simple reasoning about cheap, mass-produced property “given away” will be decisive under the law, in court.
I would not expect the details of the newspaper situation to transfer to the wafer case. I never meant for the analogy to apply in all the details, just to demonstrate a few things.
That’s one reason I’ve made several admittedly iffy analogies in the previous thread. No one analogy was a very good fit, but each demonstrated that some simple and obvious principle that people were assuming did not in fact apply universally in the obvious way.
I think the free newspaper analogy is somewhat better—it demonstrates more things clearly at one whack—but far from perfect. Obviously newspapers and communion wafers are different in details that matter. To see how those details matter, you have to look at some actual laws, and the different contexts.
For example, I think it’s true that you can just take a free newspaper and line your birdcage with it. I don’t think that aspect transfers to the communion wafer case.
In the case of newspapers, one reason the law may not say it’s illegal to take a copy for non-reading purposes is that it’s a common practice and unenforceable to prohibit. Another reason is that the newspaper people don’t care much. They’re not very worried about that, partly because if people take a few copies and throw them away, it doesn’t affect their bottom line much. On one hand, it wastes paper and printing costs, but on the other it increases their circulation statistics and may even increase their revenues. If it was a bigger problem for them, the law might be different. As it is, it’s just accepted as a minor cost of doing business that it’s not worth legislating away. Courts would be unsympathetic to attempts to do so, because it’s not practical.
The wafer case is at least arguably different. Catholic churches do control the distribution of wafers much more tightly. They don’t leave stacks of them lying around, and they generally do try to watch what happens to the wafers when people take them—that’s how Webster Cook got caught.
The Catholics also have a better argument than the free newspaper folks about the cost to them of people taking wafers for the wrong reasons and doing the wrong things with them. For the newspapers, the cost of the occasional paper-taken-for-the-wrong-reason is pretty small and fixed. They can overcome it by printing up a few more papers, and their first amendment right to freedom of the press isn’t harmed much.
The Catholics can argue—with some justification, I think—that the occasional theft of a wafer is a much bigger deal to them, with respect to their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. They can argue that a few “stolen” wafers have a bigger chilling effect on their religious exercise, or creates a bigger “undue burden,” than a few stolen papers has on a newspaper’s freedom of the press.
I don’t like that. They can give bullshit reasons for being very, very upset and taking drastic security measures, and use that self-imposed “cost” to get more leverage. The fact that I think their reasons are bullshit doesn’t mean that the courts won’t buy them. I think the courts have bought that sort of argument in the past, and are likely to do so again.
I think the treatment of an occasional misappropriation is a point of disanalogy between wafers and papers, but it works in the Catholics’ favor. That’s one reason I cited 18 USC 247. It’s an example of a law that enshrines the special treatment of (some) religous objects. Defacing even one fixed religious object can get you put in federal prison for up to a year, and the law is not conditional on whether that object is cheap or mass produced.
I think I agree that 18 USC 247 itself doesn’t apply to communion wafers, for the reasons Moses gave. (But I’d double check with a lawyer if I was PZ or anybody planning to do similar things.)
I may be wrong, but I think the courts have upheld 18 USC 247, and that shows that many people here do not understand some of the relevant legal principles. (Either that, or the courts don’t, but in practice it’s the same thing.) Religious interests can get laws passed and upheld to protect religious objects in ways that mostly ignore their objective, material value. Religious folks don’t have to prove objectively that, say, a damaged crucifix is rationally valuable to get you put away in federal prison.
One reason I’m concered about this is that while I think what PZ is doing is probably legal, doing it may get it made illegal. I don’t see any basic constitutional reason that laws can protect both transitory religious processes and cheap fixed religious objects in a church, but can’t protect cheap, transitory religious objects used in those transitory processes.
There may be a good reason for that. There may be a legal principle that I don’t know, that explains why 18USC247 talks about “real property” but not property generally. If so, I’d really like to know what it is.
Until I understand a legal principle that makes communion wafers fair game, I’d be very leery of fucking around with communion wafers. (PZ may be in the clear, but people in other jurisdictions may not. Check your state laws.)
Economy in flames. Two countries invaded. Millions dead or displaced from their homes. Over 4000 American soldiers dead. Civil rights of Americans being sold off to protect phone companies. Bush claiming the right to read our mail and confiscate our property on his word alone. No real ability to contest any of this in court. Gas is over $4 a gallon. Peak oil is either rapidly approaching or already happened. Entire sections of the ocean are barren.
and these stupid assholes are worried about a fucking cracker.
Perhaps if these people actually LISTENED to what their mythical Jesus character is supposed to have said they wouldn’t be acting like this.
Book of Matthew
5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
5:40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also
5:41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you
Romans 12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
So Catholics, STFU. If your god exists and has a problem with PZ or this kid who stole your cracker your god will take care of it himself. It even says so in that book you have so much faith in. Perhaps if you lived by these words as you claimed you wouldn’t be so angry or be sending death threats to some stupid college kid.
They can argue that a few “stolen” wafers have a bigger chilling effect on their religious exercise, or creates a bigger “undue burden,” than a few stolen papers has on a newspaper’s freedom of the press.
Actually, they can’t. Wafers taken home have zero effect on their ability to practice their religion. It might upset them but that is in their heads.
The laws you are talking about have to do with defacing churches and synagogues. The laws are meant to stop you from going into a synagogue and drawing a swastika on something cheap and then claiming that you did no real damage. The communion wafer has no more protection under that law than the church bulletin handed out at the end of each mass.
666? Congrats, Tom P.
E in MD,
I will break my fast just to point out the exact same logic could be used to justify the Church’s leaving pedophile priests in place and not seeking their persecution. After all, vengeance is the Lord’s. Buying your exegesis, parents of child rape victims should offer their other children to be raped. No Christian should stand up for anything.
But I don’t anticipate we’ll see any posts from the atheist crowd where they congratulate the Catholic hierarchy for being true to their Christian principles and ensuring that pedophile priests are not interfered with. Nor do I anticpate that atheists will stop using the pedophile scandal as a rhetorical trump card.
Because that’s an absurd proposition. Loving your enemies does not mean standing idly by while they plan to do evil. Instructing the ignorant and admonishing the sinner are spiritual works of mercy.
It was an abducation of duty for the hierarchy to leave pederast priests in place. It is a similar abdication of duty to stand by quietly as Dr. Myers plans and execues his stunt without voicing protest.
“But it’s a frackin’ cracker” not a child being raped — yes, that is the fundamental disagreement. Your post asserted that for Catholics to defend the Eucharist was a betrayal of their professed principles. Regarding the consecrated host with reverence is not.
Paul W. writes
“The Catholics can argue—with some justification, I think—that the occasional theft of a wafer is a much bigger deal to them, with respect to their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. They can argue that a few “stolen” wafers have a bigger chilling effect on their religious exercise, or creates a bigger “undue burden,” than a few stolen papers has on a newspaper’s freedom of the press.”
The difficulty I see for this position in a court of law is them having to substantiate the position they take that the cracker is actually changed into Body of Christ to the satisfaction of the court. Failing this they should not be able to claim that they were acting out of defensive concern for an actual entity being abused by the person in question and would then have to defend the actions they took as applies to just a cracker.
It would be an interesting test of the justice system concerning religious exemption on the basis of belief though.
Re: free speech, to BobC and others.
I have a very accurate understanding of freedom of speech in this country. I have not called for legal action against PZ. He has every right to act like a child, but if he does so he should be expected to be treated like a child. If I’m on the phone, frustrated, with my cable provider and I tell the operator to go fuck himself, he has every right to respond to my free speech and hang up on me. My freedom of speech has not been violated. Furthermore, I maintain that as a professor at a university, society expects PZ to act with class and professionalism.
Re: the duality of light v. the duality of the eucharist
The response that the wave-particle duality of light has been empirically verified whereas transubstantiation has not does not actually address the issue. Both dualities demonstrate that an object can hold two seemingly exclusive properties (essences) at the same time. However, to say that transubstantiation is false because it cannot be verified empirically suggests that there is only one way to seek or demonstrate truth and understanding. That is facile, vacuous reasoning. You cannot experimentally verify that you love your wife; that does not mean you don’t. Nor does it mean that love does not exist. It does not exist in the same way that rocks exist but nevertheless that you love your wife is true. (Now, one can certainly claim that emotion does not exist in the sense that we perceive it, but then we get into another philosophical quandary; if truth is only verifiable by empiricism, we are naturally limited by our ability to perceive the world. That perception is inherently subjective.)
And this is where PZ’s classless idea of desecrating the host to prove it isn’t desecrate-able is idiotic and poorly reasoned. It is an empirical challenge outside of empirical verification. I will piss on the Eucharist, he says, and if X, Y or Z doesn’t happen, it demonstrates that this cracker is just a cracker. What are X, Y and Z? Will the host bleed? Will God rain down fire and brimstone? Will he strike PZ dead of a heart attack? These are pieces of empirical data not suggested by either Catholics or God. They are suggested by PZ. If I kidnap PZ’s wife and demand $5million ransom in 24 h to prove he loves his wife, and he doesn’t produce the money in time, have I proved he doesn’t love his wife? No, because I have set up arbitrary outcomes I deem to be positive and negative, dealing with a subject that cannot be verified empirically.
So how do I know you love your wife, even though you sometimes produce evidence, such as failing repeatedly to mow the lawn, that you do not? Perception, witness and wisdom. The abstract concept of love has been passed down through patterns of behavior and people witnessing to their experiences (e.g. poetry). So too is theological witness and reasoning.
Furthermore, referring to the host as zombie Jesus shows no more understanding of the theological concept than creationists referring to evolutionary explanations of speciation as “just-so” stories show a grasp of evolutionary theory. It’s sophomoric.
Actually I think PZ’s main goal was to relieve the pressure from a young man who did nothing wrong but was being threatened with violence by people in his community. He has done that admirably well. His secondary goal was to start a conversation about the entire issue.
So Michael, as a Catholic perhaps you could answer these questions: Is desecrating the host, as Mr. Donahue has claimed, really the vilest thing a person can possibly do? If so, then is killing a person to stop him from doing it something that you would promote? If killing a person stealing a host is not acceptable then why are armed guards being permitted at church services?
Paul W.
“In the case of newspapers, one reason the law may not say it’s illegal to take a copy for non-reading purposes is that it’s a common practice and unenforceable to prohibit. Another reason is that the newspaper people don’t care much.”
I really don’t think this is why “the law may not say it’s illegal.” If the newspaper people cared and it was possible to enforce that interpretation of the law, what would the case look like?
We followed them home and they just looked at the cartoon page? They glanced at the opinion column and tore the paper in frustration? It’s ludicrous to pretend that the legislation you reference actually gives the theoritical power to the newspaper people to control people’s actions once they do the simple act of picking up the newspaper.
And I’m fairly sure that this is well outside the rationale you’ve given for such legislation. Altough, obviously, I haven’t seen the actual text of an exemple of such legislation. It’s not the actual failure to read the paper that the publisher’s first amendment right would need protection from. I’m afraid that’s just not something I would believe before reading actual text to that effect.
“A lot of the argumentation we’ve heard over and over for the last week is just invalid.”
Because you’ve admittedly made a few bullshit arguments with the excuse that someone else may buy bullshit arguments? I don’t think so. I think a lot of people weren’t even arguing about the legal level of the thing, and especially not the sort of “potential, may or may not be legal in the future” level that you insist on.
Michael: “Furthermore, I maintain that as a professor at a university, society expects PZ to act with class and professionalism.”
You expect PZ to respect your magical cracker.
Michael, it’s very obvious you’re a shit-for-brains asshole. You better start getting used to your idiotic religion being ridiculed. It’s never going to end. The Catholics acted like terrorists and they will never be allowed to forget it.
“Furthermore, referring to the host as zombie Jesus shows no more understanding of the theological concept than creationists referring to evolutionary explanations of speciation as ‘just-so’ stories show a grasp of evolutionary theory. It’s sophomoric.”
Michael, you got a lot of fucking nerve. It’s sophomoric to call your magical cracker a zombie jesus?
Look it shithead. Every single Catholic belief you have is pure bullshit. Your magical cracker, your belief your stinking dead jebus became a zombie, all the other miracles, and your magical fairy in the clouds, they’re all inventions of ancient idiots and believed only by gullible batshit crazy assholes like yourself. You don’t have one shred of evidence for any of your childish fantasies. Who cares about the minor details of your theological bullshit? I don’t have to know anything about astrology to know it’s bullshit. All religions are the same. Any sane person can figure out it’s all garbage without knowing every detail of every supernatural magic trick.
You cannot experimentally verify that you love your wife – Michael
You confuse “experimentally” with “empirically”. It is quite possible to determine empirically whether one person loves another: they show it by their behaviour.
I [PZ] will piss on the Eucharist, he says – Michael
Here’s a challenge for you Michael: try to get through a whole comment without lying. Think you can manage that?
Posted by: Michael | July 16, 2008 12:28 PM
You may think you do, but when you make statements such as:
you give the impression that you do not. Our freedom of speech is a legal freedom, and for you to say that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, you’re saying that people must temper their speech in order to prevent retaliation. While this may be true in a pragmatic sense in the interest of tact, such concerns have nothing to do with the First Amendment. If you meant that people should be more polite, then say so. But to say that our freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences is patently false.
No, the light example shows that things can display such duality. Transubstantiation shows no such thing, because it has never been tested and verified. At best, it is a myth that claims the wafer has such duality. One is based in reality and evidentiary scrutiny, while the other is based in mysticism.
It’s called the scientific method, and the only one using facile, vacuous reasoning is you when you suggest that theological and philosophical debate is even remotely effective at finding “truth” and furthering our understanding of physical matters – such as the transformation of a cracker into God. Use all the theological equivocation and biblical citation you want, but until it is subjected to empirical scrutiny, then its “truth” shall remain a spiritual one, and decidedly not one based in reality.
Get a clue – it is called ridicule and sarcasm, and it is used for the express purpose of pointing out exactly how unreasonable and silly the idea of transubstantiation is in the first place. If you want to try to take the intellectual “high road,” I’d suggest that you explain to me how it is not a correct characterization of the consecrated wafer. It is supposed to be transformed into the flesh of a man dead for 2000 years, so while it may be sophomoric to you, I find it to be a crass, yet funny, comment on the literal belief that a wafer can transform into a deity.
And be careful with the suggestions that the people you’re debating here don’t have a grasp on theology and the arguments for and against the religious topics that arise. It is very common for someone to claim – honestly, no doubt – that they are devout believers, but it is decidedly less likely (especially in contemporary America) for those very same people to have a command of the ideas they so fervently advocate. On the other hand, most atheists you run into here are much more well versed on theological arguments. Just speaking for myself, I was a cradle Catholic that left my faith only after seriously examining what it was that I was expected to believe, along with the personal experience of seeing how religion as a whole (not just Christianity) has affected – and is still affecting – the world. So assuming that I don’t know the finer points of theological debate is a dangerous one, indeed, because it is incorrect, just as such an assumption about most of the regulars here – atheist or not – would be incorrect.
I can’t recall the exact quote or who it came from, so I’ll paraphrase. (If anyone can nail it down, I’d appreciate it…) You’d do well to really take this to heart:
A belief cannot be truly valued until it has been subjected to skepticism and doubt, and thusly confirmed.
Meaning, that if you hold a belief you have never doubted or tried to discredit, then it is most definitely not a true belief, but rather a rote piece of doctrine that you have taken hook, line, and sinker from someone else.
This whole stunt is based on the notion that speech, nay, even passive belief, has consequences. Catholics believe and assert something absurd, therefore they deserve whatever abuse can be heaped on them. That when we say what we believe about a “cracker” we have self-identified as fools unworthy of the tiniest respect.
How many times in this thread have we seen something to the effect of “shut up” or “STFU” directed at believers?
Of course, speech has consequences. Otherwise nobody would bother to speak.
A belief cannot be truly valued until it has been subjected to skepticism and doubt, and thusly confirmed.
Meaning, that if you hold a belief you have never doubted or tried to discredit, then it is most definitely not a true belief, but rather a rote piece of doctrine that you have taken hook, line, and sinker from someone else.
That’s fine. I’m unconvinced that the best form for such skpeticism is what Dr. Myers is doing. At best, it’s rude and counter-productive.
Posted by: JohnMcG | July 16, 2008 2:51 PM
Keep playing the smug, persecuted victim if you want, but the reason for this entire uproar is exactly because a member of the Catholic congregation levied a death threat against someone who merely stated an intention of “abusing” a communion wafer. Catholics are not being abused simply for their belief, but rather for their insistence that the rest of us hold that belief as sacred as they do. But then again, you know that, and were simply trying to play the victim – again.
In the sense of personal respect as a human being, you’re completely false in stating that your beliefs diminish the humanistic respect afforded you. In the intellectual sense, however, such respect is earned. And by believeing that a wafer can become the flesh of Jesus, you invite such intellectual criticism upon yourself. The fact that you believe a piece of bread actually turns into a deity is quite silly to me, and if you post here, I have the right to tell you so. As far as societal respect goes, your beliefs deserve no more – and no less – than any other religious belief. Except, that is, when you start demanding people be fired over failing to conform to those beliefs of yours. Then the door is wide open, and you definitely do deserve the ridicule. If you don’t like it, I’m sure there are plenty of other sites out there whose regulars will “respect” your beliefs much more.
Hey, way to take a post from a completely different conversation way out of context. PZ’s actions are in no way directed at being skeptical and examining his beliefs in order to confirm or deny them. His actions are in the pursuit of demonstrating his belief that a piece of bread does not hold a higher value than a human life. The piece of bread, while it may be a religious symbol, is nothing more than a piece of bread.
You expect PZ to respect your magical cracker.
No, I expect PZ to ignore my magical cracker, not go out of his way to shit on it.
Michael, it’s very obvious you’re a shit-for-brains asshole.
Whatever dude. If you can’t be civil I have no use for you.
Moving on…
Our freedom of speech is a legal freedom, and for you to say that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, you’re saying that people must temper their speech in order to prevent retaliation. While this may be true in a pragmatic sense in the interest of tact, such concerns have nothing to do with the First Amendment. If you meant that people should be more polite, then say so. But to say that our freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences is patently false.
Duh. How many times to I have to say it?? I was talking about TACT, and how a university professor should have some. To think that people are immune from societal retaliation for things they say is idiotic! I was only speaking in a pragmatic sense. I never said anything at all about stifling First Amendment freedoms. But I will repeat again, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Because while you have the right to say what you want, I have the right to say whatever I want back. If you shout loudly “I hate fags!” in a gay bar, you suffer the consequences of getting thrown out.
Use all the theological equivocation and biblical citation you want, but until it is subjected to empirical scrutiny, then its “truth” shall remain a spiritual one, and decidedly not one based in reality.
So spiritual truth, metaphysical truth, etc are not real? There are a variety of ways to see the universe. There are different methods of inquiry available to us. That you choose only one is your issue. But it makes you not very smart. Or even observant of your own actions, given that you use non-empirical ways of deriving understanding on a daily basis without realizing.
Get a clue – it is called ridicule and sarcasm
I prefer my sarcasm and ridicule with a little more wit and innovation.
And be careful with the suggestions that the people you’re debating here don’t have a grasp on theology and the arguments for and against the religious topics that arise.
But no one has demonstrated a firm grasp of transubstantiation. That you say: “I find it to be a crass, yet funny, comment on the literal belief that a wafer can transform into a deity” underscores this lack of understanding, at least if you are using it as an attempted (albeit supposedly sarcastic) rebuttal or questioning of the belief. Certainly the idea that the wafer literally transforms into a deity is bizarre but that is not what is believed. It is not literal in the sense that the bread and wine physically become a dead guy, but that they substantially become a dead guy. For example, if I find a body naked on the side of the road, I would have no way of knowing that he was, say, a lawyer. I could do no physical, empirical test to determine such a thing from you physical appearance alone. Yet the fact remains that he is a lawyer, substantially, not physically. So too is Christ substantially present as the bread and wine, not in the bread and wine and the bread and wine retain their physical characteristics.
How would I empirically determine that the body I found was that of a lawyer? The witness of people who knew him. All of that is circumstantial, of course, they could all be lying to me or deluded. Yet most people would choose to trust those who knew him as a lawyer and would accept his lawyerliness. Our disagreement, therefore, must not be with the manner in which witness contributes to the understanding of reality, but in the reliability of that witness. I cannot demonstrate to you, in a combox, why I believe the witness to Christ’s real presence to be accurate, but it’s akin to why I believe Jefferson owned slaves. I can only go on the written word, passed down from generations that document his owning of slaves.
A belief cannot be truly valued until it has been subjected to skepticism and doubt, and thusly confirmed.
I will say two things. You presume I have never done so, or else you wouldn’t ask me to “take this to heart”. I have. My confirmation may not satisfy you, but given the forum and the nature of the statement, you should believe me. But I ask you, have you ever subjected your belief (which I rightly or wrongly presume you have) in common descent to the same skepticism?
And I guess, for the record, since I’ve been previously branded as the “Catholic weirdo”, I should disclose my “creds”. Yes, I accept evolution and common descent. No, I don’t believe in ghosts. Or zombies. The jury is still out on vampires. I also hold a Ph.D. in biophysics, if that makes a difference.
If you shout loudly “I hate fags!” in a gay bar, you suffer the consequences of getting thrown out.
did it feel good to type that? Get a thrill out of breaking a taboo and calling gay folks what you can’t in “polite company”?
I am not claiming victim status, I am saying that you also believe that speech has consequences. Me expressing my belief in transubstantiation has the consequence of you having less intellectual respect for me. If you were in a position to make a hiring decision about me, I suspect that would have an impact on your decision. If so, I couldn’t say my First Amendment rights to Freedom of Speech means you have to pretend you never heard me say that.
So, if someone concludes from Dr. Myers proposing this stunt that he’s a jerk, and they’d rather not employ jerks, the First Amendment doesn’t prevent them from doing so, anymore than it prevents you from concluding that I’m a moron for believing in transubstantiation, and treating me accordingly.
Posted by: Michael | July 16, 2008 4:02 PM
It most definitely has been largely ingored up until now, and would have stayed that way had the Catholic response to this situation not been the attempted “shitting on” the civil rights afforded Mr. Webster Cook by the Constitution. PZ’s declaration of intended sacrilege was a direct response to the insistence that the belief in the saced nature of a wafer be recognized by the rest of us, to the extent of insisting that action be taken against Cook and PZ for their “disrespect” of a symbol.
And if you cannot mount a defense for your position without resorting to demanding universal respect for a wafer at the expense of the expulsion of a fellow Catholic from his university, or the demand for firing PZ from his tenured position, then I have no use for you, either.
You most certainly did, in using the specific phrase ‘freedom of speech.’ In that post, you were expressly stating that PZ’s position as a professor limits what he can and cannot say, and it was clear from your post that you meant his recent blog post should affect his employment at the university. While true in the classroom while operating in his official capacity, his comments on his own personal blog are separate from that, and he has the freedom to express his opinions without fear of losing his job. Had he stated in class what he posted on his blog, then such consequences would be valid.
And your example of inciting homosexuals to violence against you fails, as well. Because just as you have the right to walk into such a place and make that remark, they have the right to ignore you. If you were – deservedly so, I might add – to “suffer the consequences” you mentioned, then you would then have every legal recourse to file assault and battery charges on those who attacked you. I shouldn’t have to remind you that in a trial over such a matter, “he called me a bad name” is a completely inadequate defense for committing a crime.
And here you’re showing your lack of knowledge on Catholic doctrine. I showed a similar gap in knowledge just recently here in another post – and was corrected by kmerian – concerning the concept of transubstantiation. It is most certainly Catholic doctrine that upon consecration, the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Simply because some Catholics either reject that or don’t know enough about the details of the subject to know that is what their faith maintains does not mean that it is not what is believed by the Church.
You rightly assume I believe in common descent, and I most certainly have subjected it to opposing viewpoints, and in good scientific practice, I still do. The day I stop doing so will be the day that I am no longer of this Earth. While there are some things that I do take for granted, when it comes to beliefs that truly matter to me, I – along with most of the regulars here, I assume – never hesitate to subject them to skepticism. The ones that haven’t stood up to such examinations – i.e. religion – I no longer believe.
The reason common descent stood up to such examination is precisely because there is a multitude of rational, empirical evidence in support of its claim.
I’ll ignore the obvious disingenuity of that question and answer plainly. While there are no physiological tests that could be done to determine his occupation, there are myriad other ways to colect the empirical data needed to confirm that he was, in fact, a lawyer. And if you can’t grasp what those might be, I suggest you look into this thing we like to call research. Even a cursory examination of the man’s home is likely to turn up evidence that he was an attorney, and failing that, I’m pretty sure that all attorneys are required to attend specialized schools and pass admission tests upon their graduation. Perhaps some record of him would exist there?
You, on the other hand, just gave an image of yourself standing over the problem, stagnant, and coming to the conclusion that it would be impossible to divine the answer. Sorry, but the search for truth actually does require a little more legwork than that.
And in the case that you are simply asked to leave, I’ll remind you that presence in a bar equates in no way to employment or matriculation at a univeristy. If you say such things in your official capacity, then yes. Such as, if the bartender says such a thing, he will more than likely be fired. But a professor at a university may say whatever is on his or her mind when they are on their own personal time, and do not have to fear retribution from their employers, especially when the alleged offense is against a wafer.
“Actually I think PZ’s main goal was to relieve the pressure from a young man who did nothing wrong but was being threatened with violence by people in his community. He has done that admirably well.”
So…he’s kinda like Jesus! PZ Myers, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!
Then this is a matter of academic freedom, not the First Amendment and freedom of speech, since if thie were a First Amemdnment issue, the bartender and Dr. Myers would be due the same level of protection.
In Re: #678:
I appreciate your description of the transubstantiation doctrine and your highlighting of the various doctrinal considerations, given the arguments posed.
I have a few quick points to make, mostly things that came to mind after reading this article:
Antilocution is a term defined by psychologist Gordon Allport in his book the Nature of Prejudice, 1954. Antilocution defines verbal remarks against a person, group or community, which are not addressed directly to the target. However because antilocution creates an environment where discrimination is acceptable, it frequently progresses to other more damaging forms of prejudiced behavior. Its use is overshadowed by the more modern term “Hate speech” which has almost the same meaning.
My question to the blog author is what other motivation does he have than to “create an evironment where discrimination is acceptable”, and where it may “progress to other more damaging forms of prejudiced behavior.”
1. An argument based on recrimination would not hold weight as there are many members of the particular group targeted (Catholics, in this case)who have not, presumably, spoken out against the author of this blog or engaged in antilocution in a way that his respose would seem reasonable under the circumstances.
2. An argument seeking to engage in antilocution for the purpose of disproving a religious tenant (transubstantiation, in this case) is also without merit. As most major religious tenets are based on one’s acceptance of certain facts on faith, they cannot be proven through scientific inquiry and thus the negative “effects” (i.e. increased discrimination, hatred, ill will) certainly do not seem to outweigh any percieved “benefits” (i.e. to conclusively disprove a religious belief).
3. An argument seeking to engage in antilocution for the purposes of highlighting the percieved absurdity of a religious tenant also bears skepticism. While personal opinions are certainly encouraged, and speech i
4. An argument based solely on the assertion of one’s First Ammendment right to free speech is similarly lacking. The constitution fails to recognize “lewd” or “offensive” speech for purposes of First Ammendment. Such speech recieves little or no constitutional protection. So while the author is certainly “free” (in the constitutional sense) to desecrate as many Hosts as he would like, his actions should be subject to scrutiny as once again the negative consequences of antilocution seem to outweigh
5. Finally, an argument based solely on one’s freedom to do as they choose so long as it is within the law (in this case, desecrating a religiou item) is a claim that should be considered in light of current societal norms. Certainly, one is free to engage in lawful activities to the extent that they do not interfere with others. However, to the extent that one’s activities have the specific intent and effect of creating a climate of hatred and discrimination towards a particular group of individuals, those activities may need to be reevaluated.
To all these points I would conclude simply that one should exercise personal restraint on activity to the extent that the activity is 1) unnecessary, 2) resulting in extreme prejudice or discrimination and 3) lacking in any sort of rational basis.
The “should” comes not from a religious duty, but from a societal one that is not limited to any particular ethical theory. Namely, the duty to treat ones fellow human beings with a level of civility and dignity is an idea that should not be foreign to those of us in the United States. After all, this country is one of diversity and as such, intentional prejudicial behavior should recieve close consideration and critique. Each citizen should recieve the level of respect accorded to him as a citizen. I believe this, at the very least, requires that we respect the right of each citizen to hold a religious belief free from prejudice, hatred or reprisal from fellow citizens. This rule should not be limited to Catholicism, nor should Catholicism be exempted from it.
I would be more than happy to respond to those who wish to comment on these things, however, I should mention that I am not interested in engaging in ad hominem or fruitless arguments over the merits or faults of Catholicism. My argument is simply a common-sense one, and as such I appreciate and enjoy common sense responses. Thanks.
Sigh, at least make it “I’m going to deface a Cher CD!”
Posted by: JohnMcG | July 16, 2008 5:31 PM
Since it is a First Amendment issue, Dr. Myers and the hypothetical bartender are not in the same situation. In the bartender’s case, the owner of the establishment would be well within his rights to fire the bartender, not simply because he is an employee of his establishment, but for the specific reason that he made his comment while in his official capacity with the bar. That is grounds for removal, for obvious reasons.
The university, bound to certain restrictions due to the public money they receive, would have no grounds to fire or otherwise punish Dr. Myers unless he made his statements in the classroom or while acting as an official representative of the university. Since it was on his personal blog, firing him would solely be on the grounds that they did not agree with what he said – a violation of the First Amendment – because the University cannot censor their employees’ opinions and statements when they are not operating in their official capacity.
Given the First Amendment protection of free exercise of religion, I don’t think they have to prove that the cracker isn’t just a cracker. They only have to show that they think it’s a much bigger deal than a free Keebler at Costco.
Assuming that they have the right laws in place, that is. In this case, I think they don’t, unless there’s a relevant law I’ve missed.
I agree (I think) with what frog said two long threads back: they can’t just use regular property law to defend their crackers’ special status, and subjectively assign it a huge value to them, as I originally thought they might be able to. They have to have particular laws in place, and those laws have to be defended on First Amendment grounds.
18USC247 is interesting (and a bit scary) to me because it shows that they can get at least some similar laws passed and upheld.
(For anybody who’s only interested in whether what PZ is doing now in Minnesota is illegal now in Minnesota, this comment isn’t for you. I’m generally interested in the legal principles about this kind of stuff either way, but if you’re not, this will probably just seem boring and off point. One reason I’m interested is that I have some friends planning to do similar things elsewhere, and if there’s any chance it’s illegal, I’d like to know that; even if they couldn’t lose a court case, it’d be good to know they won’t have to fight one. The other reason is that I’m generally curious about Church/State issues.)
It seems to me (not a lawyer) that 18USC247 is almost the kind of law they need to prosecute communion wafer “theft” for desecration.
To get it passed and upheld, I don’t think they needed to show that “interfering” with “religious observances,” or particular damage to things like churches and crosses in churches has any particular consequences other than its effects on believers.
I’ll bet they didn’t have to prove that Jesus gets really upset if you interrupt Mass with an objection to something the priest is saying, or that Jehovah is displeased if you paint graffiti on a synagogue. (How could they?)
I think the underlying idea is that religious people have a right to believe and act on whatever religious ideas they have, within certain bounds. In particular, places of worship and at least some associated religious objects are a kind of specially-protected “safe zone” for religious sensibilities, and religious observances create or amplify a safe zone like that, temporarily.
For the most part, I think that safe zone idea has to be reflected in particular laws, and be justified in terms of free exercise.
On the other hand, there does seem to be a whole lot of leeway for religion in 18USC247. It doesn’t just say that you can’t shout heretical things like “Jesus is not God!” in a church, or paint religiously offensive things like a swastika on a synagogue. It just says you can’t interfere with their observances or damage their real property, period.
In other words, the religious people don’t have to prove shit about the severity of your offense, in any objective or rational terms, for you to be guilty of a special federal crime. Apparently, if you damage a church, even trivially and in ways they really shouldn’t take particular offense at, you could go to federal prison.
I suspect that the “severity” is taken into account by prosecutors in determining who to prosecute, and judges in determining sentencing, like whether you spend a month in the pen or a year. I would not count on them applying any objective, irreligious standards of provable harm that would satisfy anybody here. I’d guess they’d see the purpose of the law as protecting religious exercise regardless of its truth, so the more religiously offensive the damage, the more likely you are to be penalized severely, even if the religious offense-taking is just plain crazy by any rational standard.
(Being rational would likely count against you. So Webster Cook, for example, would likely be off the hook because he’s Catholic, and it’d be mostly an internal difference of opinion on theology within a Catholic church. His theology might be equally protected. An outsider coming into the safe zone just to nab sacred objects would not have that defense; it’s not a safe zone for atheists.)
I could be wrong, but that’s my perception of what special laws protecting religious exercise are exactly for—they’re to provide a safe zone for crazy ideas. In the safe zone, rational standards of actual harm are mostly moot. If you paint something on a synagogue, it’s not up to you to decide how offensive Jews should find it. You crossed a line into their safe zone, you’re screwed, and you’re at the mercy of a judge whose job is to protect their ideas and practices in their safe zone, no matter how stupid you (or the judge) think the ideas actually are.
Likewise, if the law did cover communion wafers, it would be irrelevant that any rational person knows that they’re just cheap crackers. A church is a safe zone for irrationality, and it’s their special house, and their special property, and your rational standards of value are moot.
Yes. One of the reasons I find this brouhaha interesting is that we may see new laws and court cases testing these sorts of principles. Unfortunately, I think our side is likely to lose. (I also think it’s bad timing. It’s the kind of thing that could get some people to vote for McCain, who seems more likely to promote special protections for religion.)
not simply because he is an employee of his establishment, but for the specific reason that he made his comment while in his official capacity with the bar.
I missed that part of the hypo, and hadn’t assumed the bartender said that as part of his job. My apologies.
But I suspect that even if a bartender wrote something similar on his personal blog, and the customers became aware of it, that could ultimately lead to his dismissal, as he would have compromised his ability to serve the clientele. And the First Amendment wouldn’t help him there.
Since it was on his personal blog, firing him would solely be on the grounds that they did not agree with what he said
No, it could be on the grounds that his job requires him to relate with Catholics and Muslims, and his public writings have compromised his ability to do that.
A police commissioner who used the n-word in an unofficial capacity would have severely compromised his ability to relate with black police officers, and I would expect he would be fired.
Posted by: JohnMcG | July 16, 2008 6:16 PM
Again, this is not an accurate analogy, because the police commissioner is in a position of leadership over those offended by his remarks (who have no choice but to report to him as long as he is their superior), and is therefore vulnerable to any action his superiors want to take. In Dr. Meyers’ case, his colleagues have no requirement to associate with him if they do not desire to, and he is in no supervisory or superior position in regards to the “Catholics and Muslims” that he has to relate to. And if you’re referring to his students, then it goes back to the classroom explanation. If his students read something they disagree with on his site, they have every right to voice their opinion to him, but his personal statements on his own blog have nothing to do with his ability to effectively teach his classes, and the student is free to take the course from a different instructor if he feels he does not want to be in Dr. Myers’ class.
WRT dead body analogy – the dead body is NOT a lawyer, it is a corpse. It ceased to be a lawyer when it died. It is an ex-attorney. If he weren’t naked in the street, he’d be pushing up the daisies.
You can find his identity by examining fingerprints, dental records, etc. That’s how they do identify unknown corpses. That’s using the old noggin, examine the evidence. Not stare helplessly and say “Idunno”.
Apparently you worship the god named Gluten.
Posted by: Paul W. | July 16, 2008 6:11 PM
Neither one of these has happened, and even when PZ completes his promise, this will still be the case. These “safe zones” you mentioned are specifically only for the practice of that religion. There is no legal “safe zone” that applies for religion, while somehow excluding atheists. Cook did not disturb the service, and in “desecrating” the cracker, PZ will not have damaged any church’s real property.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/q013.htm
Excerpt:
What this means is that the church’s land and permanent structures, along with any other items that aren’t classified as personal property, are protected under the statute you cited. The wafer is not real property, it is personal property, and in the eyes of the law, the ownership of that personal property transfers from the priest to the person taking communion the moment he hands it to him.
You’re correct, but only with the qualifier that it provides safe zones in which believers can practice their religion. They do not provide legal shelter for the believers when they step out into society demanding that their ideas be respected to the point of using our law enforcement community to enforce respect of their beliefs. They have the right to practice their beliefs, but they definitely do not have the right to demand that society mete out punishment for supposed heresy.
Apparently, the law Paul W. has been referring to is also known as the “Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996”.
Matt Penfold said:
especially when PZ had made it clear he did not want people doing that.
a bit late in THIS thread, but as I pointed out in the original thread, PZ did NOT make it clear, in any way, what anyone was to do or not to do.
He posted the emails, as is, literally WITHOUT COMMENT.
that he chose, at some point later, to add (only in the comments until the NEXT DAY) that he didn’t want people to send emails to these people hardly made it clear.
don’t be so fucking obtuse, OK?
there are a hundred ways PZ could have made what he wanted (if he was even thinking about what he wanted) clear when he posted the emails to begin with.
He did not do so.
If you don’t take anything else from that, take this message home with you:
If you are going to post personal information publicly, you better damn well be very clear about why you are doing so, and what you expect to happen because of it.
Like the fact that Melanie’s husband is really to blame for her getting fired, PZ bears partial responsibility for the reactions to the posted emails, only because he failed to make it clear why he was posting them to begin with.
I don’t say emailing the company, or even the people responsible, was something I would do (and i didn’t), but this is the internet, and blaming people for responding (especially without a clear admonition initially NOT to), is like blaming commenters for responding to trolls.
Broken Soldier@692
Several of the things you say are things I’ve been saying lately, though less confidently. Maybe you’re agreeing with me, but it sounds like you’re disagreeing. Or maybe you’re just disagreeing with my lack of confidence in things that I’m somewhat tentatively or “mostly” agreeing with?
to reiterate:
I don’t think P.Z. is breaking any law. The closest thing to a law against cracker desecration that I’ve found is 18 USC 247, and I think agree that it doesn’t apply to crackers because they’re not “real property.”
I don’t think Webster Cook did any thing illegal, or even very “wrong” by the Catholic rules—he meant to eat the cracker when he took it, so it wasn’t stealing.
Just clarifying, again, that I’m mostly persuaded by what frog, windy, truth machine, and others have been saying about things I’ve been worried about.
On the other hand, I’ve come up with an example of something that seems to contradict the principle we’ve been agreeing on, that the “safe zone” for religion has to be implemented by specific laws. I’ll put that in a separate comment, though, because if it’s right, it’s an important point I don’t want to bury.
OK, here’s an example that I think shows that the “safe zone” for religion doesn’t have to be implemented by specific laws. (And that’s kind of creepy.)
You can let your kid die for lack of medical attention, if you excuse it on the grounds of religion and the courts buy your religious grounds as sincere.
If I understand that area of law correctly—and I may not, I’m not a lawyer—no specific law is necessary for courts to say that medical staff & government authorities can’t give medical treatment to kids over their parents’ objections. There’s a special exemption from the usual law that would apply in a nonreligious conflict.
If I understand this correctly, the courts can just apply the First Amendment and say that a law that could normally be enforced can’t be enforced, because the religious “safe zone” for parents extends into hospitals and affects what hospital staff can do to a third party. (An innocent child about to die, no less.) The child’s own beliefs are not the main thing—it’s the parents’ belief.
(I guess that when they do that, they do generally pick and choose which of conflicting specific laws to apply or restrict the application of. So in the dying kid situation, they don’t just say that the parent’s religious freedom trumps the kid’s right to life. They say that because of that, the parent’s specific legal right to withold consent to a medical procedure trumps the physician’s specific legal obligation to provide sound medical care.)
Before anybody flames me and says that there’s no useful analogy between communion wafers and dying kids, let me say this: it’s not an analogy, it’s an example. I’m just arguing that the safe zone for religion is not well-defined and exclusively implemented by specific laws in the obvious way. It’s sometimes implemented by jiggering the prioritization of laws (or their principles of applicability) when free exercise is threatened.
I don’t like that, and I would be happy to be shown wrong.
If it’s true, though, it suggests that my original intuition about these things a couple of threads back had some merit, and that frog’s rebuttal wasn’t complete. There are at least some cases in which courts use the First Amendment right to free exercise to adjust a balance between conflicting rights. (In this case, the parents’ right to free exercise vs. the child’s right to life.)
Even if the courts must use specific laws, they’re doing something like picking which conflicting laws apply based on weighting a First Amendment right heavily.
That is the kind of thing that makes me worried that when First Amendment rights are in question, seemingly obvious legal principles may not apply as they do in other contexts.
Judges may say that in the context of a First Amendment right being threatened, certain legal principles are more applicable and others are less applicable, to preserve free exercise. That creates gray areas in the law where there wouldn’t otherwise be, and seemingly solid legal reasoning may not apply.
In particular, I would be suprised but not entirely shocked if the courts decided that what counts as an implicit contract changes in a clearly protected religious context such as a Catholic communion ritual in a Catholic church. I think they’d really rather not go there, and would wait for legislatures to pass specific laws, but I would not absolutely count on it. They might decide to re-weight the conditions for an implicit contract or bailment in a clearly religious context, or something roughly like that.
Michael (Comment #678):
As True Bob (#691) points out, a corpse is no longer a lawyer, and lawyer-ness can be determined empirically from a person’s behaviour and history. But that’s not the only thing wrong with your analogy. A lawyer still isn’t a lawyer substantially – he/she is a lawyer accidentally. One can be a person (living or dead) without being a lawyer, but in order to be (or have been) a lawyer one needs to be (or have been) a person. Or to put it another way, the category “person” is ontologically prior to the category “lawyer”, not the other way around. And the point about a substance (in the metaphysical sense) is that it is ontologically prior to the properties ascribed to it.
So if anything, the relationship between lawyer-ness and person/corpse is the opposite of the alleged relation between Christ-ness and host.
Furthermore, the problem of determining the former occupation of a corpse is a problem only in practice – it might be difficult, but it is still possible in principle, because there are potential facts open to empirical discovery. In the case of the host, there is no means of determining the “substantial presence” of Christ as a matter of principle. There are simply no empirical facts that one could discover that would confirm or disconfirm it.
So your analogy is unsound on at least two counts.
Again, a poor analogy. Believing that Jefferson owned slaves is reasonable because there are multiple lines of evidence to support that he did (including his own writings). There are also multiple lines of evidence that many people in his culture owned slaves, and it is an empirically demonstrable fact that slavery existed (and in many ways still exists) as an institution. Consequently, even if there were no historical records supporting it directly, the claim that Jefferson owned slaves would still have some prima facie plausibility, because it simply asserts a particular occurrence of a well-verified phenomenon.
None of this applies to the transubstantiation of the host during communion. There is no background of empirical knowledge that establishes transubstantiation as a real phenomenon (or as a plausible hypothetical instance of a real phenomenon). There are no witnesses to Christ’s “real presence” in the host, since it is not something one can observe. (And if you’re using the special Christian sense of “witness”, in the sense of expressing one’s faith, then I’d just point out that this is very different from the evidential sense of reporting an observed occurrence.)
Uh, what?
Here’s a disturbing bit of Minnesota Law.
Minnesota Statute 609.595, subdivision 2 (Criminal damage to property in the third degree), paragraph (b) says:
I don’t think P.Z. is doing anything illegal, but if the courts decided that the wafer taking was theft, that their value was not zero, and that the wafers were still the property of the church, proceeding to damage them seems to be a hate crime with a penalty of up to a year in prison.
I don’t think P.Z. is a bigot or acting out of hate for Catholics, but this “hate crime” law doesn’t seem to require that—just that you damage somebody’s property “because of” their religion.
If I was P.Z. and had wafers that I wasn’t sure a court wouldn’t decide rightfully belonged to the church or priest or somebody, I would be very careful not to damage them.
If I was determined to desecrate them, I’d do it in a way that didn’t involve any physical harm to the crackers themselves. (And I’d give them back unscathed.)
It can’t be theft if it was freely given away. It can’t be theft if it’s supposed to be a person, viz Jesus-god, since people can’t be property in the US any more.
Furthermore, it can’t be kidnapping if it’s Jesus-god because that particular god is already alleged to be everywhere (omnipresent) and fully able to take care of itself (omnipotent). Part of the Jesus story is about the character willingly going to be crucified to serve the highly dodgy purposes required of the plot. So the (omniscient and omnipotent) character is hardly going to be fooled into being forced out of a church, cunningly disguised as a wafer (despite already being omnipresent), unless that was also part of some “mysterious ways” plot.
The religious folk simply have no genuine faith in their religious fairy-tales or gods at all. If they truly believed (and weren’t irrational, emotional idiots), they wouldn’t make a fuss.
If the Catholic god supposedly gets so upset when one of his crackers is defiled at the hands of an atheist, then let him fight his own battles. If or when PZ decides to perform his heinous cracker abuse, then let ‘gentle Jesus meak and mild'(TM) smite him, or cause 3000 volts of electricity to pass through the thing, or something such like. If nothing happens, then it will just go to show that the Catholic god doesn’t really give a shit about what happens to one of his ‘frackin crackers’. Perhaps PZ could do a variation on Martin Willett’s ‘Smite Cam’.
http://www.mwillett.org/SMITECAM.htm
Posted by: Paul W. | July 17, 2008 8:08 AM
I did perceive your comments as advocating the protection of the wafer under the laws you cited, and in light of your reiteration, I apologize for doing so. My perception was inaccurate.