OK, people, you’ve got to stop this. These comment threads keep filling up with noise — I’m closing one bloated thread and starting this one, if you feel you must.
Just a suggestion: if you are an outraged Catholic who is here to tell us a) you’re very upset, b) the cracker is very, very important to you, or c) that you’ll pray for us all, please, don’t bother. We’ve heard it a few thousand times already, it wasn’t at all persuasive the first time, and we’re just getting more and more exasperated at your obtuse lack of originality. Go to church, instead.
Prosecuting someone for fraud for getting a communion wafer?
Imagine this scenario. I trick you into giving me a penny. I tell you that if you give me the penny, it won’t rain on Tuesday. But it does rain so you go to the police and demand my arrest for tricking you out of a penny. A penny, they ask. But you insist it was a very special penny that had a very special value because if you rubbed it three times while thinking about dalmatians it makes your headaches go away. Now what prosecutor is going to actually prosecute that case? Because Catholic Direct sells communion wafers for less than 2 cents each. Any value beyond that is simply irrelevant in court.
“Eternity is a looooong time, Just think about it : )”
Eternity is a meaningless concept.
“Catholics put a premium on forgiveness and reconciliation–they do not conduct vindictive campaigns of personal destruction under the guise of promoting the Catholic cause.”
I think Donohue just crossed the line from “ironic” to “lying”.
“My question is much less frivolous than yours: if a consecrated cracker is meat and an unconsecrated cracker is bread, then if you put a consecrated cracker between two unconsecrated crackers, is that a Jesus burger and, if so, can I have one with gherkins?”
Only if it’s a special electric Jesus gherkin.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/i_dont_think_this_is_the_messa.php
Norman Doering @#500 (A nice, round number! :) ):
And I think that rotting away, or being pickled in formaldehyde, count as “physical changes”. :)
It’s a cracker.
We know it’s a cracker.
We don’t know it’s Jesus, and if someone claims it’s Jesus, the burden of proof lies with them.
It’s really that simple.
Anyone from Corpus Christi, TX? and like to steal things?
http://www.caller.com/news/2008/jul/15/eucharist-taken-cathedral-tabernacle/
Posted by: Bored enough to be pretending to be Kenny | July 18, 2008 4:14 PM
Die, fowl anal hemorrhoid!
And then come back to life and tell us which came first.
That sounds good to me. I was just presenting what seemed to be OMH’s position, up to a certain point.
I’m very, very unclear on the basic legal issues here, and what the precedents say.
It’s not clear to me how you go about fighting things based on selective enforcement, etc. For example, when can you use it to get a charge dismissed before trial, and when do you have to wait until after conviction to get a law struck down or restricted on appeal?
I’m guessing there’s a ton of precedents about it, so that if first amendment issues don’t come up, it’d be pretty straightforward—you just have to know the ins and outs of well-settled criminal law.
But if first amendment issues do come up, it could get very weird and go either way.
Maybe P.Z. could say that his first amendment right to free expression trumps the tiny material value of the cracker, so any enforcement of theft law about this is ridiculous.
On the other hand, maybe the Catholics could say that their right to free exercise trumps trumps the tininess of the material value of the cracker.
That kind of reasoning does seem to get upheld in the case of specific laws about hate crimes. The seriousness of a petty property crime goes way up if the property owner was targeted “because of” religion (in Minnesota), or out of “religious bias” (in Texas, where I am).
It’s not at all clear to me how the various things interact. So, for example, if there’s a threshold of seriousness to a crime that’s relevant to whether it’s “too trivial” or “too selective” to prosecute a particular case, is that threshold applied before or after any amplification of seriousness by a specific hate crime statute? Can you get a similar amplification of seriousness of an offense by applying the First Amendment directly, without a hate crime law? Can you use it to justify whether to prosecute, or only how seriously to penalize something that you can prosecute on basic legal grounds?
It sounds like OMH is saying that there is no threshold of seriousness (property value) in deciding whether obtaining something by deception is theft. Lots of petty things are theft, even if they usually go unprosecuted and even if most of them can’t be prosecuted because it would be too trivial or unfairly selective.
Presumably there are several principles that can determine whether a case can be thrown out for triviality or selectiveness, or whether it can be appealed on similar grounds. It would be good to have a clear statement of those principles.
BobC @461 wrote:
Actually, intentional desecration of the Eucharist is a sin that only the Pope himself can absolve. Although the Pope might be able to delegate this power to a bishop, not sure. So while any ol’ priest can absolve the sin of murder, only the Pope or someone with his expressly delegated permission could forgive the Host desecrator.
It used to be too that only a bishop could absolve the sin of intentionally having an abortion (or aiding someone’s attempt to have an abortion). I believe that has been changed now such that ordinary priests can forgive the sin of abortion in the confessional, although it might be up to the individual bishop in whose diocese that priest resides.
The Washington Post piece on this topic is extremely annoying. I was blocked from trying to post this:
The author is, of course, an Orthodox Christian who must consider my comment offensive but I can’t understand why. Is it because I used the word orthodox or god without capitalizing the first letter? How rude of me to use improper nouns.
Here’s a couple for you lawyers that are so sure it is a crime…
Suppose I set up a card table on a street corner and give out blank pieces of paper but if you take one you must write a poem on it. You can’t use it for any other purpose. Suppose someone walks by and takes a piece of paper, spits their gum into it, and tosses it in the garbage. What do you think my chance is of getting anyone to prosecute this for me?
What if I ask my friend to go into a card shop and take a penny from their little penny cup used when you buy something and it costs $5.01 and you don’t have a penny? Do you think a prosecutor would take that case to charge me with conspiracy?
RC POV @490, thanks for your thoughtful post.
You wrote:
Aha, yes, you bring up an excellent point.
I realize this is a commonly held belief (or urban legend) among Catholics. My Opus Dei teachers repeated the same thing. But I’ve never seen any proof of it. From what I’ve read, in fact, “the black mass” is largely an invention of the witch hunts from Medieval Europe. Even Internet searches on “the black mass” don’t come up with a standard ritual for it, leading me to believe it exists largely in the mind of fearful Catholics and maybe some fanciful Pagan/Satanist types. Care to offer some evidence of either 1) black masses occurring or 2) Satanists using consecrated hosts for anything? And no, Malachi Martin’s writings don’t count.
Again, I’m familiar with this claim going back to my Catholic school days, but I’ve only heard it repeated as “friend of a friend of a friend” stories. I think it’s really just an urban legend among Roman Catholics.
I know the theory behind Catholic ethics. I’m talking about how it plays out in the real world. And telling me I’m misunderstanding Christian ethics doesn’t exactly wow me as an argument. I’m sure that you think a misunderstanding of the Church is what led me into atheism, but I would disagree stridently with that assertion. I’d argue that it’s the deeper understanding of the Church and its history that actually led me away from the Roman Catholic faith. I believe that the foundational beliefs from which “Christian ethics” are derived is about as real as fairies or Santa Claus. Therefore, I believe most of Catholic dogma is quite divorced from who and what Jesus (later termed “Christ”) actually was: a human being and a Jewish rabble-rouser, not the Second Person of the Trinity.
the mind of fearful Catholics
That’s a vaaaaaaaaaaast landscape.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Luke 12:32
Surely it is the atheist that wallows in fear rejecting God and salvation out of some sense of unworthiness. It is the brave who acknowledge their sinful nature.
And one last one for you prosecutors… how do you prove that the cracker that was desecrated was actually a consecrated cracker from an actual mass and not one purchased online? I am fairly certain that they don’t have serial numbers. This would be as if someone complained that their #2 pencil was stolen and then trying to prove which of the thousands of #2 pencils lying around in a typical office was the stolen one.
Surely it is the atheist that wallows in fear rejecting God and salvation out of some sense of unworthiness. It is the brave who acknowledge their sinful nature.
Sure. Yeah. Whatever. Let’s go with that. Can you leave now?
Surely it is the atheist that wallows in fear rejecting God and salvation out of some sense of unworthiness. It is the brave who acknowledge their sinful nature.
So, you have engaged in activity so evil that the murder of another human being is somehow reasonable and welcome.
Please, do stay away from me. You’re one sick puppy.
Pete Rooke @513: So what is so brave about branding oneself as “sinful”? Did you ever think that maybe the Church is like the proverbial snake oil salesmen of old, trying first to convince you of what an awful sinner you are and then trying to sell you the remedy for “sin” (meaningless rituals, repeated prayers, groveling before a priest)? And not for free, of course. Good Catholics donate part of their income to the Church. And, of course, you’re only sinful because supposedly the first human beings sinned. You’re being punished for something you didn’t even do, and you receive this punishment (Original Sin) before you’re even born!
SEF #385
Aaarrrrgghhh! My grammar!
Okay, the site at other side of link (http://www.savethecracker.com/) is funny whether you click through or not! Well, I think it is hilarious, that is. But unless you are psychic, you’ll never know unless you go read the posts yourself.
Oooooooh, if you ARE psychic, call Randi, get proof, make millions. (calling Randi and getting proof are, apparently, optional)
;) ctenotrish
Tom P. @514:
Apparently you need to find a devoted Satanist who has this particular talent. Priests don’t.
Dahan #482: That was deep. Beautifully put.
Surely it is the atheist that wallows in fear rejecting God and salvation out of some sense of unworthiness. It is the brave who acknowledge their sinful nature.
I do not wallow in fear. You do.
I am very worthy of a lot of things. God is not one of them, because there is no such thing.
I am not sinful. There is no such thing outside of your puny feverish mind.
Needing an imaginary friend to forgive you and give you worth makes you a pathetic coward without any sense of worth or self-esteem.
Project much, you gibbering fool?
Here is some insight into original sin:
http://home.newadvent.org/summa/2082.htm
Adrienne,
Which is in direct contradiction with the doctrine of the catholic church itself, which holds true, in its own catechism, the following :
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm
Bill Dauphin #409: No, it’s both funny and not-funny until you click; it’s Schrodinger’s link!
Actually that appears to be quite correct. Humour is subjective. The link by itself is neither funny nor not funny. It is simply a link. The reader (observer) decides whether it’s funny or not.
Argh – I’m turning into Truth Machine!
‘Project much, you gibbering fool?’
The fool hath said in his heart: “There is no God”; they have dealt corruptly, they have done abominably; there is none that doeth good.
Hmm, on one side you have Rev. Dawkins and his acolytes. On the other God. Which should I value?
The fool hath said in his heart: “There is no God”; they have dealt corruptly, they have done abominably; there is none that doeth good.
blah blah blah blah blah
“Surely”? LMAO. More inane bullshit from Mr. Rooke, who uses a online “complaint letter generator” when he wants to post a substantial comment.
It is the sane who seek to know themselves, and who acknowledge the imperfect nature of mankind. The concept of “sin” is for suckers, Pete. Nobody’s perfect, and nobody behaves perfectly at every moment of their lives. Knowing this, we do the best we can to live well, and to treat other with as much fairness and compassion as we can spare. Go ahead, dress these self-evident truths up as much mystical, theological nonsense as you like – but don’t expect everyone to be as irrationally credulous and superstitious as yourself.
Yeah but who do you want to have your back in a bar fight?
A person or god?
Oh that’s right god won’t step in… ever. What a whimp.
Hmm, on one side you have Rev. Dawkins and his acolytes. On the other God.
You do? Says who?
Which should I value?
The one that exists?
Keep ’em coming, I can do this all day.
I only read about 100 comments in, so this may be way out of date but:
With regard to knowing about implied contracts of receiving crackers, I made it to the age of, oh, let’s say 21 without actually knowing that technically you’re supposed to be a Catholic who believes in transubstantiation to be allowed to receive a wafer. And I went to Catholic school for 13 years (kindergarten through high school). In college, I even had a friend who wasn’t Catholic come to mass with me once, and I told him it’d be all right if he went through the line, which was probably incorrect, by Catholic rules. But I was pretty liberal and thought, for some odd reason, that god wouldn’t really give a shit.
Now, maybe I’m colossally stupid, but it seems that if I can make it that long without knowing all the details of the “implied contract” (which, as someone mentions, almost no one ever bothers to talk about), you’d be hard pressed to claim that any random non-Catholic would obviously know about it unless they’re a moron. It’s, perhaps, obvious in light of the huge stink being made over this situation, but excepting that, it’s not something I’d expect to be common knowledge.
So, that’s Donahue’s big victory. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…
At the risk of sounding like a concern troll, should we be doing something to support Webster Cook in his battle with the trogs at his school? Pelt me with jeezits, if you must. BTW, I thought the idea of gluing hordes of them in a stack to make a dildo was an excellent idea! I was just going to line my cat boxes with them, but now you’ve got me thinking in other directions.
#522 – Pete Rook – Do you believe your own saviour?
Jesus Christ – “There is no sin.”
Gospel of Mary Magdelene, 7:15
So Pete, take your sin and shove it. Don’t come trolling here until you learn the gospels. Piss off!
Wow, look how PZ’s traffic has dropped off since Donohue got the link removed from the U Minn page. It’s been so dead here since that happened. Yup.
Sorry, but theologians have all figured this out, when you get to heaven God gives you a lobotomy and you’re HAPPY!!! HAPPY!!! JOY!!! JOY!!!
Except for “Left-Behind” Evangelicals. If you’re a “Left-Behind” Evangelical, you don’t have to get your second lobotomy.
And here I was thinking that fear of God is a virtuous thing. Go fig.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Luke 12:32
“Suffer the little children! Humperdumperdoo!”
Ennis 21:11
“Jog on.”
Pegg 24:17
Pete Rooke,
thank you for drawing my attention to this verse. Did you notice the passage :
Well, that was just the kind of message the church needed to maintain most of Europe’s population in absolute misery for about 1700 years… and now, what they are using in Africa.
Thank you Church.
Just make sure you put a condom on it or all those sharp edges of cracker will ream the hole out of you.
It looks pretty clear at this point that walking out with the wafer would probably not get you arrested and in the unlikely event that it did the case would be dropped. Unfortunate since it would potentially be epic social theatre. The more His Crustiness gets into the public forum the worse it’s going to be in the long run for Catholicism.
I’m still interested in trying to find the boundries on some social issues. I’ve got some thought experiments and wonder what you think.
Which of the following would: create civil injustice; be bigotry; hate speech; or, bring about undo pain and suffering?
1. Sneaking into the headquarters of a voodoo sect and removing a live chicken who’s head is scheduled to come off in that night’s rites.
2. Taking a hidden cam into a gay s/m club to tape scurrilous scenes to be used on a conservative religious web page.
3. Deviously obtaining Mormon sacred under garments to use in a public comedy monologue.
4. Publicly mock Tom Cruise on The Tonight Show for believing in alien possession.
5. And hauling out Godwin’s Corrolary, a TV preacher excoriating jihadist beliefs.
It strikes me that the jihadists and the Catholics would be the most tormented. To what extent in the social action context does one have to protect the sensibilites of others?
I was recently listening to one of my favourite philosophers, Flacco, commenting on George Pell and the CC’s stand on cloning…
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2301580.htm
(listen to mp3)
..isn’t this exactly what the church is claiming to be doing when consecrating the host? Cloned Jesus in a cracker?
Considering the archaeological record tends to refute the claims and doctrine of Christianity as a unique religion, but is rather quite apparent that it is an amalgam of many religions, including a core taken from Judaism I find any argument you make, or will make, to be laughable. Your bible is a construct. Your religion is a construct.
And Paul, like Mohammad centuries later, was the L. Ron Hubbard of his day. He and the early Christians ripped off at least nine different pagan religions which they combined with the Jewish core-faith.
Even that core-faith had changed dramatically, though you’re blissfully unaware of that fact. It’s clearly documented that there were massive changes of the Jewish religion, from a POLYTHESITIC religion with HUMAN SACRIFICE to a MONOTHESTIC religion. The largest re-write came in 700BCE which included the writing out of Gods’ wife.
Really, considering it’s just a bunch of clumsily co-opted, and frequently changing, myths ranging from the Mediterranean to India, I think the non-existent heaven will be empty. Just like the non-existent Tir-Na-Nog. Or the non-existent Valhalla. Or the non-existent Paradise.
So, all your hand waiving is for naught. Your religion is empty of original “divine” content. And it is only your shared delusion with other “Christians” that makes it seem true.
Just like the Hindu Heddle.
Just like the Muslim Heddle.
Just like the Heddle from whatever religion that Heddle is from.
My friend Vicky is a female episcopal priest. She once had a debate with an opponent of women’s ordination where her opponent actually said the priest has to be a male because the priest inseminates the snacks. Vicky’s response was “So that’s why they always did it with their backs toward the people.” End of debate.
@299: Fuck, yes, Opus Dei are Catholics. Who do you think the Pope is staying with right now, while he visits Australia?
Emmet Caulfield @538 wrote:
No danger. 1) They are wafers, not crackers. And pretty insubstantial wafers at that; they will either break or bend when subjected to force 2) They are round. No sharp edges.
Given that they will partly dissove and get very sticky when they come into contact with any sort of liquid, though, a condom in such a circumstance would be a wise idea.
@322 Don’t shoot the messenger… It’s potentially criminal: when you say “boilerplate” and “enforceable”, I suspect you have civil law in mind. All we’re discussing is whether something is a crime or not – issues of proof, value, likelihood of prosecution are not relevant.
@459, 488 – You’re looking at the wrong offence: obtaining services by deception. I was dealing with the offence of obtaining property by deception.
This said, both were due to be repealed by the Fraud Act 2006, although it may not have come into force yet (but remember, as I said, I’m an ex- not a current prosecutor). If they have been replaced by the Fraud Act offence, the situation is worse for your potential cracker-nabber as the statutory offence of fraud was much wider as I recall. Omissions were sufficient for deception in the Fraud Act, for example.
@487 “OMH’s demonstration that this is covered by “a basic law about theft” has been a little tiny bit dubious.” I’m sorry that you feel that way. The fact is that the theoretical threshold for “theft” is pretty much nil. That’s the way the law works. The way prosecution works is that someone then decides whether to bring a prosecution considering the public interest, value stolen, whether the perpetrator will offend again &c.
“And yes, it does look like defining crime by infraction to religious dogma.” You need to ignore the religion angle. A cracker is property. It can therefore be stolen.
And, yes, I am a lawyer, I was called to the Bar of England and Wales in November 1999 by the Inner Temple. I practised for a year and a half in chambers and then became a prosecutor of financial crime, which I left for a career in forensic accounting abroad… Happy?
“A cracker is property. It can therefore be stolen.”
Obviously. Claiming that it would constitute theft in specific instances is a different thing altogether. The Fraud Act of 2006 came into effect the 15th January 2007. Is that before or after last October? I’m done with these generalities and done with this issue.
There’s no TOS on wafers.
I haven’t touched one in 20 years, but I recall a variety of levels of rigidity, chewiness, and crumbliness. Some of them I recall being as hard as the hob of hell.
The lids off tin cans are also round, does that mean they have no sharp edges?
I imagine that a glued together stack of communion wafers would be pretty darn rough if you rubbed it with a sensitive part of your anatomy. Worse still, as you say, little bits of it would break off, and it would start to dissolve in contact with moisture. Best to just soak the whole thing in marine epoxy, allow to harden, then sand it down, or turn it on a lathe. Ribbing and contours optional, although the more like a penis it is the better for pissing off Bill Donahue.
Hmm, Emmet Caulfield, have to say I never had a communion wafer that was “hard as the hob of hell”. Mine were always soft, although Opus Dei used purely white flour versions whilst my parish church used a whole grain version (which I preferred, both tastewise and texturewise).
Both would stick to the roof of my mouth, though, which I always hated. It’s hard to reverence Jesus when you can’t get him unstuck from your palate.
And yes, I think epoxy and sanding down a stack of them would be the way to go, were you or someone else looking to make a sex toy out of a stack of them.
Adrienne,
I suggested it, someone else said they thought it was a good idea. I think if you were seriously contemplating it, putting them in a blender and using the powder as a buffer in epoxy or latex and using a dildo mould would be the way to go.
@546
“There’s no TOS on wafers.” Well, I think in the relevant sense that there is. I don’t think they are correctly analysed as “gifts” either, which was suggested somewhere above by someone.
Okay, so the relevant offence is a Fraud Act offence (my bad – I’m outdated…) I don’t believe that makes any difference to the analysis: s2 “Fraud by false representation fits the bill exactly (and NB s2(4) A representation may be express or implied). Legal principles don’t tend to change much, I’m afraid.
Whether you are “done” with the issue or not is not going to alter the proposition that if someone misrepresent themselves as a catholic “eucharistee” and in order to obtain & thereby obtains a cracker they are committing an offence in the UK and almost certainly in the US too. In much the same way as the republican drinking the “democrat-only” beer.
I appreciate that folks don’t seem to like it but that’s the way it is. Yes, you can alter the facts a bit and it becomes more marginal; yes, a prosecution is highly unlikely; yes, “crimes” such as this are committed all the time; yes, we probably wouldn’t be discussing this if it weren’t for the publicity; yes, there is unlikely to be much by way of civil recovery (although I understand that the US has quite a strong exemplary damages doctrine). Still a crime, technically.
“Eternity……and it keeps going and going and going.”
Am I the only one who got an image of the Energizer Bunny stuck in his/her head after reading this line?
Where’re all the funny genuinely offended Catholics?
The trolls, cretins and godbots are boringly routine.
I miss the hostility and fatwa envy.
#543 Cath the Canberra Cook
Speaking of Poppy Red Shoes…a couple of Chasers were on ABC radio earlier. Sounded like they’re up to something. :)
“Chasing the Pope” (36.39 mins in)
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra/stories/2008/2308164.htm
Yeah, you haf to be reel dense to believe in the “cracker”. Stupid like Blaise Pascal, an idiot. Or how about Louie Pasteur, that dummy. Gregor Mendel,another fool. Dos Catliks sure is dum.
What have any of them done recently?
Do ya’ll think, if you leave the Christians alone, they might leave you alone?
But no, this appears more political, than anything spiritual.
I guess I should ask…why are the Christians cramping your style? What power do they have, which is preventing you from living the lifestyle you choose?
At #556: I don’t think someone’s being following along particularly well.
Emmet Caulfield @549:
Just for the record, I’m not seriously contemplating it. :-)
Also, pulverizing the consecrated wafers into fine powder would de-Jesus them.
When have Christians, even Catholics, left anyone else alone?
Speaking of Tom Cruise, I read the other day that his IQ is 98. Well, that explains a lot was the first thought to scamper through my brain…
Once again, physical aggression is initiated by a *loving* (newspeak) Cathaholic.
This one got arrested :)
“Pilgrim ‘annoys’ protester”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24044508-12377,00.html
“I guess I should ask…why are the Christians cramping your style? What power do they have, which is preventing you from living the lifestyle you choose?”
I’m sure MAJeff, or any other homosexual who frequents this blog, would just love to enlighten you.
Open thread so I will drop this bit of randomness. In case you are not aware of Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, here is your chance to get a PhD in Horribleness. Damn, I think I need to join a Neil Patrick Harris fan club. (Yes! I made a very geeky Buffy in-joke there.)
Today, July 19, is the only day it will be free.
I’m sure MAJeff, or any other homosexual who frequents this blog, would just love to enlighten you.
That doesn’t count, Rey. We gay folks aren’t people.
Do ya’ll think, if you leave the Christians alone, they might leave you alone?
Been waiting a hell of a long time for that, especially from Papa Nazi, who has called allowing people like me to raise children doing evil to those children, and who sends out his legions of hateful fuckwits to actively attempt–through political policy as well as cultural life–to make the lives of queer people worse.
Don’t even get me started on the murderer wannabes in the Southern Baptists Church.
Damn, I think I need to join a Neil Patrick Harris fan club.
If I join, is there a chance I can have Neil as a sugar daddy? That would rock!
Sauceress,
yeah but you know,he was from Newcastle,not a true catholic !!
OMH:
OMH, you keep saying this, but I haven’t seen you point to a statute. I don’t know how it works in England, but in the U.S., criminal law is statutory. If you think something is a crime, you need to point out what statute is being violated. I looked through the Minnesota code and didn’t see anything that would even come close to criminalizing PZ’s (anticipated) behavior. Do you have any authority to the contrary? Otherwise, you’re just blowing smoke.
JoJo (#555),
Pascal, Pasteur, and Mendel- you ask, what have they done recently? Ever hear of Pascal’s triangle? Or pasteurized milk (thanks to L. Pasteur)? Mendel is considered the father of modern genetics. Of course they’re dead now but I’d love to hear prof. Myer’s explanation of why these three believed in the “cracker” as he likes to say. After all, these three made foundational contributions to math (Pascal) and science (Pasteur, Mendel) so they weren’t stupid and should have been smart enough not to believe in the “cracker”. Tell me why those three believed the wafer to be the body of Jesus. Someone explain how smart people could believe that because as this blog teaches me, only idiots, moron, bigots, and whatever else believe in the “cracker”.
Nice straw man you got there Imsosrmt.
Nice straw man you got there Imsosrmt.
You could actually make enough sense of that blabbering to find a straw man?
@570,
Imsosrmt, that’s what’s called an appeal to authority. It’s a logical fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
I never let almost total incoherence get in the way of finding logical fallacies.
In regards to #101, it would appear that the poster reads a lot of Vox Day.
Vox Day likes to disparage Aspies in an attempt to insult atheists, but really he only makes himself look stupid. What Vox Day knows about autism would fit neatly inside of a thimble.
Anyway autism isn’t a mental illness, it’s a developmental disorder. The brain is simply wired differently. And as an Aspie I can attest that empathy isn’t always my strongest suit, but that doesn’t make a person a psychopath.
Psychopathy and autism are two entirely different things. Fortunately psychology has come a long way in the past few decades.
Getting back to the topic, services are not being disrupted nor is anyone condoning interfering with worship services or destroying parish/non-personal property. If someone does that then he or she is an asshole and deserves any legal repercussions.
Simply descrating a food item that was freely given to you is not harmful to anyone nor is it stealing.
The point is that you don’t harm or threaten harm to others over a cartoon or a cracker. They are not worth a single human life. Maybe if the cartoon is posted enough times or the cracker descrated enough they’ll get the idea. It is ,after all, a fracking cracker.
Funny how theists whinge about the intolerance of athiests and yet ignore the plank in their own eye.
Lowell,
IIRC, OMH is saying that the basic theft law in all “common law” countries (the U.S., U.K, etc.) is basically the same, with variations mostly in terminology, thresholds, etc.
This may be the particular Minnesota Statute (609.52) that would cover what he’s talking about:
https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=609.52
Subdivision 3 of the same law lists severities and penalties, the last and least category is for property under $500; there doesn’t seem to be a lower bound, so technically, tricking somebody out of a two-cent wafer would be swindling and therefore theft. The relevant penalty clause is
Before the paragraph about swindling, there’s one about “false representation,” but I don’t think it applies. I think swindling is pretty general and covers all sorts of theft by deception that are not covered by the enumerated types of false representation.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a link saved, but I came across a case in which (IIRC) a Minnesota court ruled that it does not have to enumerate all the varieties of swindle, and that that would put undue burden on the legislature and courts; there are just too many was of tricking people out of their property, and people keep inventing new ones. So apparently, if the courts think you tricked somebody out of their property, that’s swindling and therefore theft.
I really doubt that PZ would be prosecuted for a two cent wafer, and maybe he couldn’t be, but I think this is the kind of law that OMH is talking about when he says it’s technically theft to trick somebody into giving you a two cent wafer.
There’s also a Minnesota Statute (609.595) that makes damaging somebody else’s property much more serious if it’s done “because of” their religion. (It doesn’t have to be a religious object—it seems to cover any property of theirs that you damage.) The least serious category (again, no lower bound) makes you eligible for up to 1 year in prison and/or a $3000 fine. (For “not more than” $500 worth of damage.)
https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=609.595&year=2007&keyword_type=exact&keyword=religion
If both those laws applied, that would make tricking somebody out of a communion wafer and proceeding to damage it pretty serious. Oddly, damaging the property would be much more serious than simply stealing it. (Or maybe there’s some legal principle that precludes applying the law that way? Or maybe not; it’s a hate crime law, so maybe it’s meant to punish things like sacrilege more harshly than things like theft, without making that explicit and putting the courts in the position of deciding whether something is sacrilegious.)
Lowell,
It would be a logical fallacy if I was using the stature of Pascal, Pasteur, and Mendel to try and “prove” that the “cracker” is Jesus. I’m not trying to prove that or anything else, I’m just asking why Pascal, Pasteur, and Mendel believed it. Why would intelligent people believe this? If only retarded, backwards, intolerant people believe it, why would they? Prof. Myers must have some ideas, or maybe not since all the Catlicks he taut be slow ones, therefore, all Catlicks be slow, therefore Pascal, Pasteur, and Mendel, being Catlicks were slow and stupid and thus couldn’t really have done the great work credited to them.
Why did intelligent people believe in Zeus and Athena?
In general, the Christians who troll here are so bad as to be giving the rest of their faith another bad rep. Not to say that the other aspects of said bad rep aren’t justly deserved.
However, that’s not the point I’ve come to address. My fellow Catholics, I’m going to make a claim that’s probably going to piss you off unless you’ve bothered to think it through. Here it is:
The Catholic church has fundamentally betrayed the tradition of the Eucharist.
What makes me say that? Didn’t the Church invent the whole idea?
It’s more accurate to say that they adapted it. The Jewish idea of the Last Supper was a community meal held in the evening. The bread was broken -before- the meal and the wine was drunk -after- it. When the Christiansgot ahold of the tradition, they combined the breaking of the bread and the libation of the wine at the end of the meal to better emphasize the ritual parallels.
Back in ancient Greece, it was common for holy celebrations to include a ritual feast, where one would eat the food blessed under the auspices of a god. When early Christianity hit Greece, the remembrane of the Last Supper fit straight into this existing cultural paradigm. That’s right, people; back in the day, the Eucharist was in fact an actual meal, not just a holy wafer and a dabble of grape juice. For the poorest of the congregation, it was one guaranteed dinner of the week.
When Paul came around again to Greece and saw what the congregations there were doing, he was outraged – this is what he wrote in I Cor 11: 17, 20-22:
when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. . . When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?
The quote is fairly self-explanatory. Paul said this in response to his observation that when everyone went to eat, the people stratified themselves by social class as they are wont to do, leaving the poor eating the common fare with the poor and the rich sharing their delicacies. Hence the poor “went hungry” because all they had was what the church had prepared, while the rich brought their own wine and shared with their table, which proceeded to “become drunk.”
Well, as it turns out, Paul had some influence within the early churches, and at his behest the Eucharist as a ceremony was separated from the communal meal which it used to bracket, with the intent of emphasizing that all were equal before God. The ceremony was separated moved to the morning, with the understanding that people would all eat the church lunch together.
Fastforward a few years, and according to Justin Martyr, at the end of the consecration of the Eucharist, the bread and wine were distributed to the members of the congregation, who could either consume it there -or take it home-. (So what is the outrage over the current stunt all about?) Incidentally, Justin Martyr’s views of the Eucharist were decidedly against transubstantiation; he speaks of the ritual bread and wine as being “in rememberance” of Christ’s sacrifice, not a reenactment of it.
Fast-forward 2000 years, or so, and what do we get now? a wafer and a shot of wine that anyone can get by standing in line. No dinner. No lunch unless we pay for it. So,without further ado, here are my indictments:
Specifically,
a) the Catholic church is betraying the Eucharist by serving it to strangers who have shown no interest in joining the congregation.
Also,
b) the Catholic church has discarded the fundamental idea of having its congregation share the common meal that was the Eucharist of old, and is instead working an empty ritual with the promise of a miracle. This is called bait and switch (even if the switch did take two millenia.) I want my early church Eucharist, dammit!
The bottom line is this: even if you won’t even condescend to consider the atheist arguments that have already been presented to you, you -still- have no argumentative ground to stand on in this debate because -you don’t even understand your own damned ritual in the context of your own tradition-!
Read up on your Justin Martyr. Read up on your Didache, on your Irenaeus. And read up on that Bible of yours before you forget it’s there. And please don’t forget that the Council of Nicaea had to include four (4) gospels because they couldn’t agree on which one of the many gospels that were in circulation at the time was right in the first place. You think they’d have included four if they could have made a single account? That would have saved so much trouble in the end, you know…
But in order to bring that sort of prosecution, the religious nutters would have to drop all their guff about it being zombie Jesus and admit in a court of law that they know it’s only a rubbish cracker really.
It seemed like a good idea at the time?
One reason is that vitalism and classical dualism were not evidently unreasonable in those days, as they are now.
We’ve learned a fair bit since then. Science has pretty well destroyed the metaphysical bases of traditional religion over the last three hundred years.
They didn’t know any better; we do.
There’s a reason why top scientists now generally disbelieve in God. (93 percent of the National Academy of Sciences are non-theists. For the Royal Society, the percentage is even higher.)
To turn your question around, why are the modern-day heirs of Descartes, Pasteur, and Mendel—top philosophers, biolists, physicists, etc.—overwhelmingly atheists who not only don’t believe in the cracker, but think it’s a patently ridiculous idea?
I think the answer is obvious. Vitalism is dead, classical dualism is dead, and Aristotle and St. Thomas were just flat wrong about essences and causation. Catholic theology about the Eucharist is, scientifically speaking, a load of bollocks.
There’s just no way that a stone dead wheat cracker is a living god.
Of course they don’t! They like being retarded (mentally, educationally, morally and emotionally) – and the church especially likes them that way and makes it out to be a virtue.
They don’t want to think about the stupidity of it all or be well-educated on the truth of the matter. Having a holy book (which they generally haven’t even read but can pretend contains all knowledge) and priests (to tell them what to think and do) is much easier. They like being able to get away with lying (eg for Jesus) and all manner of other immoral acts (forgiven by confession without having to make amends) while pretending to be morally superior. They particularly like throwing over-emotional (and sometimes violent) tantrums at every imagined slight instead of having to be rational and civilised.
They like being artificially retarded and the church enables their addiction and feeds off it and them.
Did Pascal, Pasteur, and Mendel actually believe in the reality of the Eucharist? I honestly don’t know, and I would suggest that as smart people, they in fact might not have believed, but, being smart people, knew that speaking out about their disbelief might well get them into trouble, and therefore feigned belief.
Yet even if they believed, we know that even some very smart people can nevertheless in fact be very gullible, especially if they are indoctrinated at an early age with particular beliefs.
The point is not that smart people believe religions; the point is, can they provide actual evidence for their beliefs? If their rationalizations can be reduced to: “Well, that’s what I’ve always believed, and that’s all I need for a reason”; or, “My religion makes me feel good”, or, “I had a wonderful experience that convinced me that God was real”, then they are certainly not using their intelligence to analyze their own beliefs. Even with all of their intelligence, they use fallacious reasoning, and ignore the point that the burden of providing evidence remains with them.
Actually, much of all the religious rubbish was clearly unreasonable back then, even before having significant amounts of the stuff we now call science. It’s just that very few people were in a position to notice – being too wrapped up in themselves, enslaved and struggling to survive at all, or already hopelessly indoctrinated (and having invested all their self-worth and social structure in holding to the lies).
There were atheists back then (and unfortunately I still don’t know where to re-find a copy of one particularly revealing inscription – but even the Bible gives the game away).
SEF:
I don’t think they’d have a problem with saying it’s a cracker for certain legal purposes, if it gets them something they want. (Just as they admit that legally a church building is owned by a corporation run by humans, while claiming that it’s really the property of God himself. They claim those humans answer to God, because he’s the real owner, but the law doesn’t worry about that part.)
They’ve always maintained two sets of books about what’s what and who it belongs to according to earthly law vs. according to theology.
In the case of the wafer, I suppose they would say that the law is only concerned with “accidental” properties of the Eucharist, so for some “legal” purposes it’s a wheat wafer, while theology is concerned with its “actual” essence, which is the Body of the Living God.
I have great faith in the Catholic Church’s ability to define things conveniently and situationally when it’s to its advantage.
I also have great faith in the courts’ ability to turn a blind eye toward that kind of bullshit. For the most part, the Church is not responsible in court for the claims it makes in Church.
Or, in other words: Even very smart people may use mental compartmentalization, such that “religious beliefs” are in a mental compartment that never is subjected to the careful analysis and skepticism that these very smart people use on their respective areas of expertise.
Oh I don’t doubt their ability to lie – to themselves and to others. They’re extremely proficient at lying. What I do doubt is their ability to get away with it quite so easily these days, eg without being roundly mocked.
Unfortunately, the smarter one is the better one’s self-rationalisations are.
I think intellectual honesty is a more important factor than intelligence, when it comes to rationality.
It’s funny. You people, most of whom are frequently using the “f word” and other profanity, who apparently know no other method of argument than insults and ad hominems, are accusing Catholics of being delusional??
All I see when I read the ramblings of atheists is hatred towards religion–Christianity in particular–without anything positive about why it’s good to be an atheist, except the ability to think that you’re intellectually superior to over 90% of the world’s population (even though, in most cases, atheists’ brains are too muddled by alcohol, marijuana and other drugs to even qualify as intellectually capable.).
It’s really pathetic. I’d like to see one ounce of proof that atheists actually make the world a better place (except, of course, by their promotion of self-defined “good things” like evolution and “population control”).
…know no other method of argument than insults and ad hominems…
(even though, in most cases, atheists’ brains are too muddled by alcohol, marijuana and other drugs to even qualify as intellectually capable.).
!
“JC”:
Ignore reality much?
Posted by: JC | July 20, 2008 1:35 AM
Being intentionally insulting to someone who ignores repeated attempts at logical explanation has absolutely nothing to do with being delusional. Believeing something for which there is no actual evidence is delusional. Posting dickish – and quite humorous – responses to such illogical and irrational argumentation is simply enjoyable, because you’ve proven that nothing will sway you from your unfounded positions. And in the face of that, derision is the best method of ultimate refutation.
As someone who regularly utilizes one of those substances you mentioned for the purpose of both mitigating constant pain and moderating the inordinate amounts of manufactured chemicals induced into my body for the same purpose at the peril of my oh-so-precious liver, along with being someone who values reason over mysticism, I can honestly say that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about when it comes to those substances you mentioned. Instead, you’re using such a comment about them to somehow conflate me with those individuals who use them illicitly and excessively for merely recreational purposes to the extent of stunting their capacity for intelligence. (And it is certainly clear that you need no such substances to achieve that level of restricted intellect…)
even though, in most cases, atheists’ brains are too muddled by alcohol (too expensive for anything that actually is drinkable), marijuana (not where I live) and other drugs…
suggestions?
//even though, in most cases, atheists’ brains are too muddled by alcohol, marijuana and other drugs to even qualify as intellectually capable//
Finally a rational well-thought out argument from a Christian !
//All I see when I read the ramblings of atheists is hatred towards religion//
Yes we know,trying to make you think about your delusions,critisizing pedo priests or the killing of the african population by proxy of their condom policy,is nothing but an expression of atheists hatred !
Dream on mate.It is obvious you are not in need of any drugs to muddle your thoughts.
JC is projecting wildly – and, in particular, with much use of ad hominems. :-D
Incidentally, one of the Bible give-aways, ie about the existence of atheists all along, is also an ad hominem attack, ie made in lieu of having any rational argument against them. Psalm 53:
Note how it can’t be intended as a definition of a fool. Rather it has to be a false and ad hominem description of atheists. Hence atheists already existed back then and the Bible-writers, even with their supposed pet god-in-a-box allegedly performing miracles, didn’t have a decent argument to present against them.
The fool says in his heart there is no god; the wise man says it to the world.
Not sure where that originates, but i like it a lot…
My own explanatory modification of another well-known(?) biblical quote is:
The meek shall inherit the Earth, for the bold will have gone to the stars.
Yeah, gotta love that.
‘Cos Papists* are so meek ;)
* That’s the pejorative term Calvinists use for Catholics.
Nice to see that people are trying to respond politely to JC. Personally, I think he should fuck himself with something with knobs on it.
Been a long trip on these threads and a good bit of personal growth. I started thinking Cook’s action was a stupid stunt and that it was being blown way out of proportion – by both sides. However, the utter asinine behavior shown by Donahue’s League of Ordinary Catholics and the pro-cracker posters on this thread have changed that view. This IS a battle worth engaging in. Sacrilege needs to encouraged so (insert religion of choice) learns that it is not in control in the US. There is also the hope that questions will raise doubts in the minds of believers and that they may toss off their shackles and learn to live without fear and without a god who is apparently to weak to protect a bit of unleavened bread – I guess Jesus really is not risen, eh?
Pax Nabisco
If it is not so important (Jesus in the Eucharist) why do you keep talking about it. Why dont you talk about your molecular B.S. Oh I know why because the “cracker” makes more sense then “splat we are here”.
Were is everyone, at Church
Sorry johnpreiss, assumed you knew your comment was not worth addressing, but you are apparently new here. You may go now.
Pax Nabisco
No been here before to and talked to the scholarly MAJeff.
I told him about this site: http://www.johnpreiss.wordpress.com
johnpreiss, we keep talking about it because wankers like you keep bringing it up.
Posted by: JeffreyD | July 20, 2008 6:41 AM
As a recovered Catholic, that one made me spit orange juice on the screen of my laptop – nicely done.
congratulations johnpreiss:
you are the 1,000,000th religiot to use a intellectually painful non-sequitur to shamelessly plug your own blog here at Pharyngula! You get a word of recognition as reward, but the catch is that truth machine gets to come up with it…
brokenSoldier – “As a recovered Catholic, that one made me spit orange juice on the screen of my laptop – nicely done.”
My work here is done. (evil grin)
BTW, I enjoy your blog and on your recommendation will try to see Dark Knight today. I very much enjoyed Hellboy II and recommend it to anyone.
Pax Nabisco
JC said:
I have never once used the F-word on this blog, and nor have many other posters. What you have done is only notice those who do, which is not a rare occurrence amongst those who seek out offense.
And what is wrong with a little colorful language, anyway? As Stephen Fry, one of the most intelligent and erudite people on British television, put it:
“The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or of a lack of verbal interest is just fucking lunatic,” he says. “Or they say, ‘It’s not necessary.’ As if that should stop one doing it. Things not being necessary is what makes life interesting.”
And it is often the case that people pick up on minor, rather irrelevant details, when they don’t really have an argument to defend — they just know that something offends them.
JC said:
Define hatred, and explain how that applies to the criticism of religion? So far you have been unoriginal in your complaints, to say the least. And they are complaints that we have answered, and shown to contain little merit, on numerous occasions.
It’s not easy to be positive about simply not believing in god. That is, after all, all that being an atheist entails. There are, however, plenty of positive aspects to my life. I am under no obligation to either disclose them to you, or to prove that I am anything whatsoever. Mind your own business.
And you last remark — “in most cases, atheists’ brains are too muddled by alcohol, marijuana and other drugs to even qualify as intellectually capable” — says more about you than it does about me. At the very least, you are a massive hypocrite. Of course, it’s a complete fabrication, which also makes you a liar. Quite revealing for one sentence.
JC said:
Well, how about the fact that, given that a conservative estimate of the number of non-believers in the US is roughly 10%, that same group only make up 0.209% of the prison population.
Atheists are massively under-represented in prisons, in other words.
Does not committing crime make the world a better place?
Or, how about the fact that 93% of the National Academy of Sciences and 96.7% of the Royal Society don’t believe in god?
Do the vast majority of scientific advances make the world a better place?
Posted by: JC | July 20, 2008 1:35 AM
Wow, that’s some intensely concentrated stupidity.
No been here before to and talked to the scholarly MAJeff.
I told him about this site: http://www.johnpreiss.wordpress.com
Why would I want to go hang out with and read the work of idiots? I mean, c’mon, bleading wafers and images of white dudes on pancakes? Come back when you’re ready to deal with reality.
JC, being a delusional fantasy-based religious type rather than a sane reality-based scientist type, failed to provide any statistical evidence to support his (ad hominem) claim of “most” anyway. I dispute the claim is even true (ie that more than half of the ill-defined “You people” group do it and that, for the point to have significance at all, this is more than in his control group (presumably the religous would-be cracker-defenders).
Not being a Stephen Fry worshipper, I believe him to be wrong in his view. I suspect there’s quite a high degree of correlation between prolific use of bad language and lack of education or of anything worthwhile to say. Furthermore:
that’s one big reason not to do it. It gives the irrational, emotional and/or dishonest people who are in the wrong a great excuse to ignore the substantive points and whinge instead (to anyone, especially an authority figure, who’ll listen) about how they’re being abused (conveniently ignoring all the abuse they themselves have been heaping onto the people who are in the right).
Not that it’s really enough to stop the artificially retarded folk, who are typically quite incompetent at even addressing let alone refuting anything honestly, in their dishonest whinging anyway. I never use profanities and yet they still routinely whinge away about how mean I am to have all the evidence and decent arguments on my side.
Good to hear from you again MA Jeff. Glad you got to check out the site. I am living in reality not you Alice.
You must be the Queen, thinking impossible things–like bleeding crackers! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
What’s next, talking snakes?
No , I do have a new article on my site you maybe interested in. Its on Homosexuality are you for it also.
I’m not interested in a word you say.
You’re really rather pathetic in your whoring for blog hits.
In other words, I’ve never been to your delusional little world, and I have no intention of visiting.
You seem to think I’m somehow interested in your idiocy.
Owlmirror@583:
Yeah, that was my thought too. Public disbelief didn’t exactly go over well in those days. Not sure about Pasteur, but Mendel and Pascal would have certainly been risking death for speaking out against the absurdity of transubstantiation.
Johnpreiss, that creepy peering half-faced Jesus picture on your site makes it hard to concentrate on anything else there. Also, remember that punctuation is your friend.
Did I touch on something sensitive towards you?MA JEFF, At Least I have a site and A life. I am not on here 24 /7 under PZ Myers site because I dont have the kahunas to have my own site. The Jesus picture is for you guys to reflect on.
Did I touch on something sensitive towards you?MA JEFF, At Least I have a site and A life. I am not on here 24 /7 under PZ Myers site because I dont have the kahunas to have my own site. The Jesus picture is for you guys to reflect on.
You’re a chew toy, a less intelligent version of the catnip toys I give Harriet.
john
You don’t have the first clue about anyone here.
Johnpreiss,
which century do you live in ?
what you write on your website is so ridiculous, it must be a joke :
How old are your children ? Any girls ? We’ll see how well they accept your “God given role”…
I have 1 girl and two boys and one on the way. My girls will be happy to live this life. You must of come from a family with a weak father and that has left you bitter. You can overcome this, are you married??
1. “According to Ovid the word comes from hostis, enemy: “Hostibus a domitis hostia nomen habet”, because the ancients offered their vanquished enemies as victims to the gods. … It was applied to Christ, the Immolated Victim, and, by way of anticipation, to the still unconsecrated bread destined to become Christ’s Body. ”
2. “Out of respect for the sacrament, some of the faithful would not consent to having the bread made by bakers, and took charge of it themselves. … At present many parishes apply to religious communities which make a specialty of altar-breads. This offers a guarantee against the falsifications always to be feared when recourse is had to the trade: unscrupulous makers have been guilty of adulterating the wheaten flour with alum, sulphates of zinc and copper, carbonates of ammonia, potassium, or magnesia, or else of substituting bean flour or the flour of rice or potatoes for wheaten flour.”
3.”According to Mabillon, as early as the sixth century hosts were as small and thin as now, and it is stated that from the eighth century it was customary to bless small hosts intended for the faithful, an advantageous measure which dispensed with breaking the host and consequently prevented the crumbling that ensued. … Eventually all hosts were made round and their dimensions varied but little. However, some very large ones were at times consecrated for monstrances, on occasion of the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. To-day in Rome the large hosts are nine centimetres in diameter and the small ones four centimetres. In other countries they are usually not so large.”
4. “About the ninth century, when anti-Eucharistic heresies began to appear, accounts of miracles multiplied in a way to convince even the most obstinate. … In olden times many cities possessed a miraculous Host, but the French Revolution destroyed a certain number of them, especially the one at Dijon where each year a Mass of expiation is yet celebrated in the church of St. Michael. In other places the miraculous Hosts have disappeared, but their ancient feast is still commemorated.”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07489d.htm
oh goody. He’s a misogynist. What a shock.
john makes a whole lot of assumptions about other people.
I bet he is going to be in for a big surprise someday.
People are making assumptions of me. I don’t take it personal. I know what I stand for. I just wonder when one of you guys start making some valid points or is this a chatroom?
John preiss writes
“I just wonder when one of you guys start making some valid points or is this a chatroom?”
A question arises in trying to understand the origins of the eucharist john. Exactly what are the words uttered by a priest that allows the transubstantiation to occur and where did the catholic church derives these words to use on the wafer to perform the act?
JC either does’t see fit to actually read the comments, or is perhaps the most dishonest commenter to stagger down the aisle here in at least… oh, three or four days. Epic fail.
Preiss is a waste of time. In a single comment, he pulled out the “I have a life, you don’t” and “I have a blog, you don’t” arguments that add up to “I have a very weak mind.” His content is as intellectually robust and emotionally compelling as kindergarten paste, and can be ignored.
jonhpreiss
Not yet married, planning to with my homosexual partner. It has been legal here in Spain already for the last 5 years and strangely almost everybody here, Catholics included, are now perfectly Ok with it.
My sister is married and has two chidren.
And we both had quite succesful academic studies and professional lives, so please do not make any unnecessary assumptions about my father’s education, nor my mother, and fyi, they are still happily married and are going to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this month.
btw my mother is an atheist, my father an anglican, and I was brought up in a Jesuit school.
Exhibit A:
Interesting??—- Is the mentality of the atheist negative towards society?
Is the mentality of the atheist negative towards society?
too fucking precious.
What are you blathering about john?
It appears that most in here are negative. How do you deal with Christians at work?
john preiss writes
“It appears that most in here are negative”
Check out and answer #628 John. I have placed a valid question there so put up already.
The Holy Eucharist is the oldest experience of Christian Worship as well as the most distinctive. Eucharist comes from the Greek word which means “thanksgiving.” In a particular sense, the word describes the most important form of the Church’s attitude toward all of life. The origin of the Eucharist is traced to the Last Supper at which Christ instructed His disciples to offer bread and wine in His memory. The Eucharist is the most distinctive event of Orthodox worship because in it the Church gathers to remember and celebrate the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ and, thereby, to participate in the mystery of Salvation.
“It appears that most in here are negative. How do you deal with Christians at work?”
I live in the UK. Although I am now freelance, when I was an employee I had no idea of the religious beliefs of most of my colleagues. On a few occasions I became aware because someone started to proselytise. They were simply informed that they should not do so.
You did not answer the question john.
john preiss writes
“The Holy Eucharist is the oldest experience of Christian Worship as well as the most distinctive. Eucharist comes from the Greek word which means “thanksgiving.” In a particular sense, the word describes the most important form of the Church’s attitude toward all of life. The origin of the Eucharist is traced to the Last Supper at which Christ instructed His disciples to offer bread and wine in His memory. The Eucharist is the most distinctive event of Orthodox worship because in it the Church gathers to remember and celebrate the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ and, thereby, to participate in the mystery of Salvation.”
I wrote previously
“A question arises in trying to understand the origins of the eucharist john. Exactly what are the words uttered by a priest that allows the transubstantiation to occur and where did the catholic church derives these words to use on the wafer to perform the act?”
Do you feel that you have answered my question here John?
The Eucharist is the most distinctive event of Orthodox worship because in it the Church gathers to remember and celebrate the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ and, thereby, to participate in the mystery of Salvation.
So, you are so evil that your actions require the murder of another man. Please do stay away from me.
THE EUCHARIST GIVES US JESUS CHRIST
The other Sacraments give us grace, the Holy Eucharist gives us not only grace but the Author of all grace, Jesus, God and Man. It is the center of all else the Church has and does.
As St. Mark records that, at the Last Supper, Jesus “took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them: “Take this, this is my Body” (Mk 14:22). That word blessed in Greek is eucharistesas, from which the Eucharist derives its name.
Three of the four Gospels record the institution of the Holy Eucharist: Matthew 26:25-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:19-23. St. Paul also records it in First Corinthians 11:23-25. St. John’s Gospels does not report this, presumably because he intended chiefly to fill in what the others had not written, for he wrote probably between 90 and 100 A.D. There are small variations in the words, but the essentials are the same in all accounts: This is my body… this is my blood.
In John 6:53 Jesus said: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you will not have life in you.” Of course, He did not mean to cut off salvation from those who through no fault of their own do not know or grasp this truth. It is like the case of Baptism: one must receive it if one knows.
The form, that is the words required for the Eucharist, are of course the words of institution. The matter is wheat bread (white or whole wheat) for the host, and natural wine (mixed with a very little water) for the chalice. Addition of a notable amount of other matter would make the material invalid.
Jesus is present wherever the appearances (species) of bread and wine are found after the consecration. Hence He is found even when the host is divided. The substance of bread and wine is gone, only the appearances remain. The Church calls this change transubstantiation: change of substance.
In John 6:47-67 Jesus did not soften His words about His presence even when so many no longer went with Him: had He meant only that bread and wine would signify Him, He could have so easily explained that, and they would not have left.
The Church has always understood a Real Presence. For example, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was eaten by the beasts in Rome around 107 A.D., wrote: “The Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ” (To Smyrna 7:1). St. Justin the martyr wrote around 145 A. D: “We have been taught that the food is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh” (Apology 1. 66. 2). The Council of Trent in 1551 defined that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist, body and blood, soul and divinity.
Obviously, this divine presence deserves our worship. Really, someone who believes in it should be much inclined to come before the tabernacle often. Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament seems to have started in the 15th century. The Church also promotes Forty Hours devotion. In some places there is perpetual adoration.
We can correctly speak of other kinds of presence of Jesus. (On this see our discussion on the Ascension in the sixth article of the Creed, and Vatican II, On the Liturgy #7). But none of them compare to that in the
Nice cut-&-paste job, there, John. Without attribution. That’s called “intellectual dishonesty” and it’s not going to improve your reputation around here (hint: we all think you’re a dumbass).
Say, what part of “Don’t fill this one up!” is unclear to you people, anyway? (he said, posting comment # six-hundred-and-something)
That’s twice. You really are a loser.
Plagarism by Preiss. I guess being a Christian he gets a free pass on that because he was doing it for Jesus. Back in the real world the rest of just think it is dishonest, and something if you tried at university should get you expelled.
We can not expect john to think for himself can we?
What can he do but quote his masters?
The above article was written By: Father William Most. As you see his name was cut off at bottom of article. I did not know exact dates so I let Fr. Most explain it to you.
I suspect I deal with Christians at work the same way you do. I don’t differentiate co-workers as Christians, Jews, Hindus (I work with one), Muslims (I work with two), atheists, or whatever. I look upon them as being either likeable or unlikeable, and being productive or unproductive. The likeable ones I’m friendly towards, the unlikeable ones I treat in a purely professional manner. As a manager, I’m much more interested in productive and unproductive. The productive people I encourage and publicly praise. With the unproductive ones I attempt to discover why they’re unproductive. I teach, motivate, and do whatever else seems appropriate to make them productive. I won’t discuss how I deal with equals and superiors, but only because I don’t want to be too longwinded.
Sorry, but religious belief has nothing to do with how I interact with the people I work with.
Hey JoJo
I understand some Christians are not Christ-like in the way of treating people equal and I realize this, so what you say makes sense and a good approach.
“The above article was written By: Father William Most. As you see his name was cut off at bottom of article. I did not know exact dates so I let Fr. Most explain it to you.”
So you were just incompetent.
Twice.
I am with JoJO. Religion plays no role in how I deal with people at work.
JohnPreiss wrote @635:
Probably much better than you deal with coworkers who are openly gay or atheist (or both). And also probably better than you deal with your female coworkers.
Alot of assumptions in here. I treat my employees great. My wife is the queen of the castle. What more can I say. True happiness if you live in your God intended Role.
John,
Do you steal other people’s work in your business ? Or do you just do that in your spare time ?
It is the height of arrogance to think you know what role god intended for everyone.
Matt what is it to you I am not even discussing anything with you. If you have something constructive to say then fine.
johnpreiss @653:
Of course, she’s not a “co-regent” of the castle, now, is she? As long as she knows her place (under yours), all is well, eh?
Well, if that’s what makes both her and you happy, so be it. I am just as happy not living in any manmade or phony Scripture-mandated “role” as my husband’s equal.
Ack, garbled that last bit. Should have said, I am just as happy not living in any manmade or phony Scripture-mandated role as a “submissive wife”. I’m fully my husband’s equal, and we are extremely happy.
The Bible discusses roles of Husband and Wife Esphesians 5
Not Me, GOD
Johnpreiss: Men (and maybe some women) wrote the Bible. Not God.
John,
You lied to us. You posted something, passing it of as your own. It was only when you got caught you owned up.
Such behaviour does not speak well of you. Someone who does that sort of thing clear has problems understanding ethical standards. And you claim to run a business. Unless shown otherwise I will assume you apply the same ethical standards in that as you do here. In other words, you are likely to lie and be dishonest in that as well.
You lack even the grace to apologise for your plagarism.
Thats fine Adrienne and I am glad you have a good marriage
It is the height of arrogance to think you know what role god intended for everyone.
Actually, since gods are the product of human social activity, it’s entirely to be expected that humans would claim to know what those deities want. Their gods are simply reflections of themselves.
I was thinking more from a Theists perspective but I see your point Jeff.
Ok I apologize, I just wanted to get something to yall fast and truthfully did not leave Father’s name off on purpose. I am a honest man and run my business to the T.
If I cannot explain something well enough and you seriously want to understand it. What more than have a Priest do it.
John Preiss writes :
So he writes this, but he doesn’t ask himself, how come the Church corrupted this important message into Eucharist = bread = “body of Christ” ?
John Preiss any idea ? Any explanation you can offer ? Can’t you see the obvious contradiction in what you write ?
“This is My Body This is my Blood” do this in memory of me. . We receive His actual Body and Blood present at consecration as a memory of Him.
Got to go eat see you guys
Nope. As I said: Kindergarten paste (but less palatable, not that I would personally, errr, know that).
How do I deal with Christians at work? The same way I deal with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and everyone else: in a cheerful and civil mannner, with no regard whatsoever to their religion. (Is there some other way to treat people?) Nobody ever pushes their beliefs on me, and if they did, I’d smile and nod, and if necessary tell them that I’m Not Really Very Religious. The Hindu stuff is interesting, though. Very different from what I was raised with.
“We receive His actual Body and Blood present at consecration as a memory of Him.”
How do you know that ? I know you think it, but how do you know it ? Have you had a DNA test done ? And even if you had, and found real human flesh and blood, do you have a control sample from Jesus to compare it with ?
Do not confuse what you believe with reality, unless you are not afraid of embracing mental illness.
Johnpreiss,
when he said, this is my body do this is memory of me, it was quite obvious that it he was refering to a symbol of his body, otherwise, he wouldn’t have said, do this is memory of me…
BTW, this is also was is clearly meant by :
So, you do not answer the question : where is the evidence in the sacred scriptures, for transubstantiation, which is most obviously an invention from the church which only appeared approximately 1000 years after Christ ?
Comments #667 and #668, taken together, are pretty amusing.
“This is My Body This is my Blood” do this in memory of me.
A cannibalistic orgy.
If it was meant to be literal wouldn’t Jesus have bled into a cup and cut off some of his flesh to give the disciples?
He was sitting right there!
No need for transubstantiation.
john preiss writes
“If I cannot explain something well enough and you seriously want to understand it. What more than have a Priest do it.”
If you cannot explain something then it is likely because you yourself do not understand it very well. If such is the case that you do not then why such a defense of that which you do not understand? Ignorance is not a virtue.
And how does everyone (here) feel about prayer shawls? If someone close to you dies, and you are given a prayer shawl, what would you think? What if the yarn and color was not to your liking, but, for some reason you find yourself thinking about it? What would you tell yourself? Just think how much more there is for those who believe that a Host becomes the Body and Blood of Christ. The shawl becomes more than a “ugly” shawl, it gives one comfort. So, in other words, other qualities can exist in an object. In the case of a consecrated Host, God dwells there as the one person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. The Consecration, takes it further then being prayed over and blessed, as Protestants may do before offering Communion to each other. But Protestants and Catholics can agree that something prayed over, shawl or host is blessed, and certainly there is respect for that. Check out the Methodists, when they have communion: Except that they are without the Real Presence, the Holy Spirit may be there … They have the comfort of the shawl, the memory, and the love and care for each other. Why, not just say they are consuming crackers. You cannot, rationally say that about them just as you cannot say that that shawl only keeps the cold air off.
… A sin against the Holy Spirit is the only one that cannot be forgiven.
… A sin against the Holy Spirit is the only one that cannot be forgiven.
blah blah blah
WTF are you blathering about Sharon?
Yes, Sharon, ordinary objects can have symbolic value. However obvious this may be, it does not prove or even convincingly suggest that the value is inherent – quite the opposite, in fact. It’s in the mind of the beholder.
Photographs of my deceased mother, her writings, and other keepsakes do comfort me in times of darkness and despair. However, I do not believe that any of these things are actually imbued with any aspect of her physical (or, if you like, spiritual) being. Her image is there, her words are there, my memories of her are there – but the meaning and the value are in me, not in the objects.
Sometimes only a small handmade square is given, rather than a whole shawl. It is prayed over, and thus, here we have an analogy: The utilitarian aspect is even gone, but it still gives comfort!
This reminds me of the cause of Pro-Life, when (the elderly, the dependant, and …) the fetuses are considered less than the adult person who is contributing to society by working and so, they are expendable.
Those “little” consecrated Hosts, those “little” pieces of knitting or crocheting that are called Prayer squares, those “little” people. All more valuable than you can imagine!
and yet no human is as valuable as the made up holy spirit or magic cracker.
I am not attached to material things of my parents. And, I do think that the photos are utilitarian, as they help with memories. A shawl given to you by a stranger, after it is prayed over that is not something that your parents touched. God did.
A shawl given to you by a stranger, after it is prayed over that is not something that your parents touched. God did.
whooooooooooosh!
Jeff, I think Sharon is just trying to tell us that Size Doesn’t Matter.
I could “give a hoot” about the symbolic value of things. Symbolism is something that one finds in everyday life, as it is found in art, novels, movies. I would not save something for the symbolic value, but it is useful for educational purposes?! Blessed items, are quite different.
Sharon
Inanimate objects do not give comfort. People may take comfort from them but I doubt you are capable of understanding the difference.
Linking the elderly,the dependent, and fetuses is dishonest.
Blessed items, are quite different.
IT’S MAGIC!
“Blessed items, are quite different.”
I bet you lack the ability to tell them apart from non-blessed.
Sharon:
Sharon again:
Therefore, the prayer shawl, regardless of size, is also utilitarian, as it provides comfort.
You’re really good at contradicting yourself.
You’re right, I don’t take comfort from objects. There is a story in one of the old Catholic Anthologies, about a woman who dusts her collection of porcelain. Like little idols, they seemed in the story. The Church was down the street from her, but, her ritual on Sunday morning was not to attend Mass, or any Church, but to fill her time with these things … if I remember the story. A Priest visited her.
The little tiny prayer squares will not keep you warm! That’s utility! Comfort comes from the Holy Spirit!
Is it just me or is Sharon not making a lot of sense?
The woo is strong with this one.
“Comfort comes from the Holy Spirit!”
Goodie for you.
Are you done?
Sharon. You missed the point completely.
What is your point? That God made me different than you? I make sure that objects used for prayer are blessed. It doesn’t prevent them from being damaged, though. They are just for Holy use. I’ve sent some old blessed Catholic objects to India, when they were requested. These things belonged to my Grandparents and, I should have had kept them for myself? I guess Catholics go overboard with charity. I know someone with her cupboards filled with appliances that she doesn’t use. What I get from my Parents and Grandparents is my Faith. One aspect specifically is charity.
“I make sure that objects used for prayer are blessed. ”
How exactly do you do this?
I’ve sent some old blessed Catholic objects to India, when they were requested.
Were the recipiets safe from the boogy man after that?
I think Sharon’s been huffing the Holy Furniture Polish™.
I don’t want to be the person who will respond to a lot of questions about Catholicism. I’m just a Eucharistic Minister, who came back to post a little bit in defense of Our Faith. Catholics have their symbols of the Faith blessed by a Priest, if they are used for prayer. Symbol is a very well used word in Catholicism. One of the first things we learn in elementary school is to find signs and symbols of our Faith in our everyday life.
I think Sharon’s been huffing the Holy Furniture Polish™.
She’s mainlining that shit.
Sharon, we know what you believe (we’ve heard it ad nauseam; perhaps that’s karma in action) and we know you believe it.
Thing is, we neither believe it nor care that you believe it. We think your beliefs are irrational and worthy of mocking. If you and your ilk kept your beliefs to yourselves then you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone making jokes about them.
But you don’t. You try to get special privilege for yourselves by claiming that your god is real and has said you get to make the rules – about gays, about contraception about morality.
That is why we’re mocking your beliefs. What you’ve done is the equivalent of sticking your head out of a window wearing a silly hat and yelling at the kids on your lawn – are we not supposed to laugh at you?
I just took a dump and now I’m worried that an itinerant Priest might have wandered by before I got there and Blessed the TP…I’m guessing that would make what I did with it a sin.
Sharon, if I accidentally wipe my ass with Blessed TP, symbolically smearing the Holy Ghost with shit, is that forgiveable?
Please get back to me; I’m really prety worried about this.
Sharon wrote:
So of course this old lady with her porcelain deserved hell for all eternity. Lovely story.
So she actually spent her time in a way that was useful and pleasurable to her. Smart lady.
I hope she told him to go back to his church and let her finish her dusting in piece.
The fellow Catholics that I know, who I have been told are gay, are celibate. My brother and my nephew are two of the men in my life who thought I should know these things. I don’t think it was necessary to know if someone is gay or not. You can have the Catholic Faith and be homosexual. Celibacy is easy if you use some self control, and have the right friends. Proverbs has some help with right friendships. The truth is, one must be careful about friendships from the start. I doubt that the relationships that people have with the same sex, are anything else but a developmental phase that a person gets stuck in. The same with with a lot of personality problems. I’m no expert, just my thoughts. Relationships with one’s own sex, need to be kept on an even keel. They should not be encouraging each other to be promiscuous. Mocking or teasing … leads to young people being hurt. Obviously, the Catholics who respond here are much older than the atheists. For one thing, most all people who have born children, believe in God. I won’t be back to post. I have posted too much!
“I won’t be back to post. I have posted too much!”
One post was too much.
Posted by: Sharon | July 20, 2008 8:39 PM
Idiocy.
Sharon,
It’s not that you have posted too much – it’s that you have said (in meaningful terms) far too little.
Posted by: Sharon | July 20, 2008 8:39 PM
Bigot. So it is only acceptable to be gay as long as you don’t practice your homosexuality? Doesn’t religion say something about being true to yourself and refraining from putting on false pretenses for anyone, even God?
Congratulations, you’ve shown us all that you both an idiot – “most all people who have born children (as if there are any other types of children) believe in God” is so nonsensical that it really is hilarious – and a liar as well, because you’re far from the first religiobot to say that you’re not coming back. (For the record, I hope you actually prove me wrong on the second one.)
So it is only acceptable to be gay as long as you don’t practice your homosexuality?
Well, yes. According to the RCC–and Popes JPII and Nazinger–engaging in same-sex sexual activity is “objectively evil.” Now, we can’t be blamed for that desire, since it seems that we are “inherently disordered,” but we must refrain from engaging in that evil lest we be tortured for eternity (loving god, remember).
However, even though we cannot be blamed for our orientation, to place children in our care would be do to “evil” to them as well.
Remember, this is all love…and all coming from a loving deity who required the murder of the son he produced by raping a teenager so that I might not be tortured for eternity for disobeying one of his arbitrary rules by having sex with a guy.
Sharon, it sounds like you are very young, niaf and inexperienced. Read the bible all the way thru, every page, and see if you still think there is a nice god behind it.
My daughter is 29 today, she knew from the time she was 5 that the stories in it were contradictory and impossible.
I hope you grow up soon.
Thank you kindly
Britomart, Sharon IS all grown up.
Physically.
Unfortunately, she never learned to think, so she’ll never know what it’s like to live as an adult out here in the real world.
Sharon, my point was…
. . .
On second thought, why bother?
Thanks for the comments Owlmirror, Paul W., and Adrienne on my references to Blaise Pascal, Louis Pasteur, and Gregor Mendel who all believed the “cracker” to be Jesus.
I did a little more research: the famous mathematician Pascal was a real believer, not faking it, actually wrote some spiritual things and came up with Pascal’s wager(about what he saw as the logic in choosing to be a god believer)- but he lived in the 1600’s so that might explain it.
Mendel, who is known for his contributions to the science of genetics, lived in the 1800’s and was actually a monk. Don’t know what to think about that.
L. Pasteur is tough to figure also because he also lived in the 1800’s in France during an anti-church time but was said to be very religious, even prayed the beads.
So it seems like all three were real god believers but maybe just compartmentalized that part of their lives as separate from everything else as someone on this thread mentioned. Could it be possible, however, that an intelligent person could be a god believer and still be one after using their intellect to investigate it? Could they have intellectually come to the conclusion that it was a rational decision to be a god believer?
imsosrmt,
One of the main problems with using historical figures is that they’re not around to ask why they did (or appeared to do) anything.
I also think part of it is about hope. In some ways I’d like there to be a god; unfortunately, I can’t make myself believe – at least, not in any depicted by the religions I’m familiar with. That they’re all human contructs is patently obvious as far as I’m concerned.
imsosrmt @714:
Yes and yes. But still, so what? This doesn’t mean that everyone would agree with the theist’s reasoning process on this matter or the conclusions the theist drew from that reasoning process. Smart people can disagree on things. Even on “the big” things like whether it’s rational to believe in a god or gods.
And let me turn the question around to you: Could an intelligent person be an atheist after using his or her intellect to investigate the question? Could a smart person have intellectually come to the conclusion that it was a rational decision not to believe in a god or gods?
I think you already know the answers.
How odd. Someone using a female name claims to be a Catholic Eucharistic minister (= glorified waitress, not being allowed to hold any serious position of power in that misogynistic cult) and claims to have the advantage of greater age (either for herself or for other Catholic posters) and yet is clearly barely literate and posts a lot of prejudiced nonsense. She probably imagines she’s doing her side a favour instead of, in reality, demonstrating further just what retards (mentally, educationally, morally and emotionally) they tend to be.
imsosrmt@714
You should read Carl Zimmer’s book Soul Made Flesh for some historical perspective.
Pascal was the last brilliant gasp of of people who took theology seriously, during the earlier part of his career. During the latter part, he did little of merit and wasted his time going around in theological circles.
Meanwhile the natural philosophers (what we would call scientists, more or less) were kicking ass, by ignoring theology and actually figuring out how things work.
For example, Pascal was conservatively coming to grips with the increasingly obvious fact that the heart was not the seat of the passions, and that the brain had a lot to do with cognition. So he shifted the seat of the soul from the heart—which is just a pump—to the pineal gland, which he thought was the best candidate for an interface between the brain and the soul.
The natural philosophers, especially the Oxford Circle, were meanwhile finding out that basically evertything people “knew” about the natural world was wrong.
The Oxford Circle—Hooke, Boyle, Wren, Thomas Willis, and a few others—systematically demolished the conventional understanding of many things. They were not atheist revolutionaries—they were Christians of various degrees of orthodoxy, some Protestant and some Catholic. They took pains to distinguish themselves from atheistic philosophers like (most notably Hobbes), largely sincerely because they though they were “reading God’s other book” (the book of Nature); it was also partly for political reasons (so that they’d be left alone to cut up corpses and whatnot).
Willis especially was very important, because despite being a devout Christian, he increasingly realized that the Catholic Church and its Aristotelianism and Thomism were just obviously wrong about how the brain and mind worked. He was the first serious neuroanatomist, and over the next two hundred and fifty years, a lot of stuff would fall into place, given the groundwork he laid. In particular, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists would come to realize that Willis was righter than he knew when he disagreed with Pascal—not only does the brain do much of what Pascal assumed the soul did through the pineal interface port, it does nothing at all that anybody can figure out; it evidently doesn’t exist.
Much of the work done by the Oxford Circle over a few decades in the 17th century is like that. They took advantage of a relatively liberal theological climate to do science pretty much as we know it, and made great strides.
Much of what they did reached a plateau that didn’t really pay off until the 19th and 20th centuries, when a whole lot of dots connected up and things fell into place. They did not consider themselves atheist materialist revolutionaries, but in effect they were despite themselves—their discoveries kicked the legs out from under the conventional wisdom and orthodox Christian theology, but it took hundreds of years before the edifice actually collapsed. Atheists like Hobbes and his predecessor Democritus had been right all along, and Thomists and their predecessor Aristotle were just wrong.
A key factor was that the natural philosophers tried to explain everything they could in terms of material causation, if only because that was the only clearly-understood kind of causation. They didn’t have much use for the four kinds of causation that Aristotle and the Church favored for theological reasons. (Formal and final causation are pretty useless for actually making the rubber meet the road.) They found alchemy and its occult nonsense mostly useless, and invented chemistry.
Darwin followed in their footsteps, showing that the best examples of funky Aristotelian causes—from biology—were actually better explained by the same material causation that explained the motions of the planets, the refraction of light, molecules being built from atoms, etc.
In the 17th century, it wasn’t obvious just how revolutionary this was—that by the 21st century, we’d would understand cosmology, life, and minds without reference to gods, vital essences and souls. Many of the participants assumed there’d be important stuff left unexplained by their obsession with material causation, and simply realized there was a lot of work left to be done in that vein, before running up against the hard problems that require souls and God to explain.
Scientists have often exhibited this kind of failure of imagination—the inability to see just how incredibly powerful their own theories are.
A good example of that is Darwin. Darwin’s theory of evolution predicted the discovery of nuclear power, but Darwin was not confident enough to believe it.
Lord Kelvin, the preeminent physicist of Darwin’s time, argued against Darwin that the solar system couldn’t be more than 100 million years old. It was assumed, based on 19th century physics, that the heat of the sun was created by gravitation, as the sun formed from a gas cloud and shrank. (Squeezing moving particles into a smaller space makes them bang around harder.) Kelvin showed, using simple math, that there just wasn’t enough energy to keep the sun hot for nearly as long as Darwin believed things had been evolving. The solar system just wasn’t old enough for things on Earth to have evolved as Darwin said.
That freaked Darwin out, and in later editions of Origin he backpedaled and hedged in ways he shouldn’t have. He was right in the first place—the geological record and evolution showed that the Earth was very old indeed, and if Kelvin’s physics said otherwise, he needed to look for a previously un-thought of form of energy far more powerful than any known one.
That’s easy to say in hindsight of course. In real time, things are rarely that clear.
But that’s the point. What Pascal and Pasteur and Willis believed about religion in their time is irrelevant. We know many, many things they did not—Pascal didn’t know shit about the brain, Pasteur didn’t know shit about microbial genetics and evolution, Darwin had no idea of nuclear fusion or modern genetics, etc., etc., etc.
I can’t prove it of course, but I’m pretty confident that if those guys could see what’s happened in the last two or three hundred years, almost none would believe in God, much less a cracker God, for the very same reasons that top scientists now generally don’t. The materialist paradigm has been vastly more successful than they’d have thought possible, and the Christian theological paradigm has been such a colossal failure that their reasons for believing have been thoroughly discredited.
If you look at the few top scientists who are orthodox believers, you’ll see that they mostly don’t buy the arguments that Pascal et al. bought. Most understand that many of the earlier reasons for religious belief have been shown wrong, and resort to things like fideism to salvage belief in the face of absolutely underwhelming evidence. So even if we look at believers, Pascal et al. are mostly irrelevant for telling us what to believe. The very few who still buy some of the old “rational reasons” for belief are pretty clearly crackpots and sloppy thinkers when it comes to theology. (Francis Collins is no Blaise Pascal. Nowhere close.)
L
Well, gee, Jeff, when you say it that way you make it all sound so wrong. 8^)
When someone like Sharon says you can be homosexual as long as you don’t act on it, they’re implicitly admitting what so many of their coreligionists try to deny: That homosexuality is an inherent state of being, rather than a matter of choice. Now, if we stipulate (only for the sake of argument) the existence of a Creator, then presumably our individual states of being — including those of gay folk — are attributable to His “perfect” will, no?
So how is it that God made people whom He forbids to behave like the people He made them to be? This is the sort of question that made smoke come out of androids’ ears on old Star Trek episodes, yet anti-gay Christians seem to be able to contemplate this absurdity with impunity.
Sadly, I think the Catholic church (and most Christian churches to some degree or another) is not just anti-gay, it’s anti-sex. They tolerate what the late, lamented Carlin called “man on top [of woman], get-it-over-with-quick sex” for the sake of its obvious necessity, but they pretty much condemn every other expression of sexuality, and anything that tends to insulate people from the consequences of their sexual behavior (e.g., shame, unwanted pregnancy, disease, premature death).
And all of this is just a reflection of the absurdity that lies deep in the heart of Christianity: The notion that a perfect, infallible, and loving God created a physical world that is, in nearly every detail, corrupt and depraved and deserving of eternal punishment. [SmokeFromEars]
Thanks all for the insights. Time for me to move on to a new thread, takes too long to scroll down now on this one.
Paul W.- I’ll have to find the Zimmer book you mention. You sound like a former Jesuit or something with your background on theology and philosophy.
Adrienne- Good thoughts although intellectually I have trouble with atheism rather than agnosticism. Atheism seems to me involves proving a negative which doesn’t work. The agnostic, I think, has an easier time of it logically.
That’s probably because you have faulty definitions of those things and haven’t thought it through carefully enough.
The original agnostics were people who firmly believed in god but who declared god’s specific nature to be unknowable. These days it tends to mean people who are determinedly sitting on the fence and who aren’t honest about the way they actually live their lives – which is on the default position that no gods exist (ie as atheists) rather than by trying out every possible religion (and a few they’ve just invented) to try and work out which might be real.
The original atheists were typically people who might believe in some gods but not worship the specific one the accuser wanted them to worship. Modern atheists have to not believe in any gods at all in order to qualify, now that so many cultures are aware of the existence of other cultures (and even individuals) each with their own version of god(s). Even so, that’s typically just the default position of not bothering with any gods because nary a one has even been bothered enough to exist so far. Hardly any atheists (particularly among the non-stupid ones) take the “strong” atheistic position of claiming definitely nothing could ever exist which might get labelled a god. They’re prepared to review any decent evidence of such beings were there ever to be any.
Most modern agnostics are either really atheists in their actual behaviour or are rather dishonest (and apathetic) in their claim to agnosticism. They have in fact decided not to bother with gods because they don’t really believe any gods are around – just like the atheists do – but merely like the pretence and conceit that they haven’t, for all practical purposes, already made up their minds on what the most likely situation is.
That and of course a lot of them are cowards who don’t want to be black-listed with the scary label of Atheist when they can wimpishly weasel out of nearly all the demonisation, persecution and prejudice by pretending to be Agnostic instead. It’s not more logical at all, just pragmatic – and typical in a theist-infested society where they’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that atheists are evil and lack the moral fibre and critical thought to question the false characterisation.
imsosrmt:
Have a read of this: Atheist or Agnostic?, by Richard Carrier.
He argues that it is logically impossible not to be both an atheist [a-theismos, without theism, i.e. without a belief in god] and an agnostic [a-gnostikos means “without knowledge”], depending on the god that is posited.
He uses two examples to show this to be true: (1) a god that makes sure that you never have any reason to believe that he exists [it is therefore necessary to be an agnostic with respect to this god], and (2) a god that makes sure that there is more than enough evidence to convince everyone of its existence [it would be perverse not to call yourself an atheist with respect to this god — the absence of evidence pretty much entails its non-existence].
All other gods fit on a continuum between these two. All that we are left to argue about is which gods we outright deny and which gods we merely disbelieve in.
I usually go with agnostic atheist anti-theist myself (since I would additionally oppose the evilness of the sort of gods most people posit were they actually to exist at all).
imsosrm, one word: zeitgeist.
The thread is filling up! PZ said “don’t” right in the title! You’re–aaa! we’re!–in big trouble now ’cause PZ’s going to be “very, very cranky” when he sees the 1000+ comments in the “rolls eyes” thread. So watch out! I foresee banninations, purges, vulgarity…
Actually, what I really wanted to point out here is the starkly beautiful contrast between the cogent, interesting, knowledgable, and well-written posts from people like Paul W., SEF, and Bill Dauphin, on the one hand, and the typically [sarcasm]worthwhile[/sarcasm] contribution from johnpreiss (#719) on the other. Hand.
Bill Dauphin:
You may have had an unhappy marriage with a Catholic, or, have you some “other” experience to base your claims on? Your statements are completely false. I mentioned celibacy, for one thing, which has nothing to do with what you said. Further, a Catholic may think that someone who considers themselves homosexual may have an aberration in their X’s and Y’s. (Mom.) I, myself lean toward the developmental theory, and also the peer group behavioral idea. You may be confusing Catholics with what has been reported about a group like the Shakers, Baptists or Puritains. In any case, baptized married Catholics have a lot in common with Adam and Eve … before the fall. I believe that the last Pope has an Encyclical about our bodies, and the current Pope, about Love.
In any case, baptized married Catholics have a lot in common with Adam and Eve … before the fall. I
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Wait. Ok…
…I think I’m back….
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Teehee. At least Catholics can be really damn funny. Even if it’s un intentional.
You’ll be confounded to learn that I’m happily married to a Catholic woman, and in preparation for that marriage (almost 25 years ago, now), I converted to Catholicism (aside to Pharyngulans: I got better!). Because I studied catechism as a young adult (and a graduate student in literature, no less), it’s possible I have a more mature understanding of Catholic doctrine than many who got their catechism in Sunday School as grade-school-aged children. I make no broad claim to being an expert on Christian doctrine, but in addition to my sojourn in the Catholic church, I was raised in a liberal protestant church (Episcopal) and at various other times attended a moderate protestant church (Methodist) and a fairly conservative evangelical church (Church of the Nazarene). So it’s not as if I’m some recent Hindu immigrant who’s totally clueless about what Christians think. That said…
…my “statements” are matters of interpretation and judgment, rather than assertions of fact, and as such they cannot be “completely false.” They might be misguided or based on incorrect understandings… but in general I don’t believe they are. I’ve commented on well established, mainstream (by their standards) public positions taken by Catholics and other Christians. Do you deny, for instance, that Catholic doctrine condemns not only abortion but also contraception, premarital sex, extramarital sex, postmarital sex (i.e., sex with anyone other than the ex-spouse after a [non-Church regognized] divorce), homosexual sex, heterosexual “sodomy,” and masturbation?
At this point, you may be nodding along, thinking that it’s a good thing the church opposes all those nasty, immoral practices. But here’s the question: Other than the bald assertion that God hates that icky stuff, on what basis can they said to be immoral? You do realize, don’t you, that many people enjoy those activities in healthy, happy ways (aside: extramarital sex could be adultery, which is shameful not because of sex per se but because it involves personal betrayal… but many polyamorists and swingers enjoy “extramarital” relations with no sense of promise-breaking)… and many more would do so if only they could free themselves of the shame laid upon them by their religious background?
I don’t pretend to know what a priest might counsel a married Catholic couple about the acceptability of marital sex acts other than “regular” intercourse, but the usual explanation for the church’s opposition to contraception — that every “act of marital love” must be open to God’s will regarding procreation — strongly suggests that they probably take a dim view of oral sex, anal sex, and other nonprocreative forms of sex play, even within marriage. Since you think my view of the Catholic church — and Christianity more generally — as sex-negative is “completely false,” can you make the alternative case? Can you show us that Christianity is sex-positive? That Christian doctrine approves of any expression of human sexuality other than monogamous, heterosexual, procreative marital intercourse?
In fact, there is a deep thread running through Christian doctrine generally that at least devalues, when it doesn’t outright condemn, human physical pleasure of all sorts. Notwithstanding the sensual delights that run through the Song of Solomon, Christian teaching generally holds that the things of the world, and specifically the things of the flesh, and most specifically fleshly pleasures, are inherently corrupt and opposed to the ways of God. As I mentioned above, I’ve attended a wide selection of Christian churches over the years, and while they vary considerably in terms of tone and level of tolerance, all of them have taught some version of the depravity of worldly things.
So why did your presumably perfect Creator make such an imperfect, sinful world? And more to the point…
…try to follow the logic on this: I never denied that it’s possible to live a celibate life (regardless of whether you’re gay or straight, BTW), but that was tangential to my point. Since you agree that it’s possible to be homosexual without engaging in homosexual behavior, you’re implicitly agreeing that gayness is an inherent aspect of a person’s fundamental being, rather than a matter of behavioral choice. I happen to think you’re right about that, but you must know that many other Christians deny that position (witness the many Christian ministries that promote “recovery” for gays).
To bring it back this thread, MAJeff is gay because he is gay, not because he’s made a conscious decision to violate your notion of the sexual “rules.” Since you believe in an omnipotent God, presumably you believe MAJeff is the way he is because God made him that way! So my question to you (again!) is this: Why would God forbid Jeff to behave in the way that God Himself made Jeff to be? Wouldn’t that be just gratuitously cruel?
IMHO, this God you believe in sounds more like Loki than the loving father we hear about on Sunday morning.
Clarification:
In re-reading my post @731, it occurs to me that it’s possible to (mis)understand this…
…as including abortion. In fact, I meant it to refer to the activities listed after the words “but also”… which is to say:
In no way did I mean to suggest that anyone “enjoy[s]” abortion in “healthy, happy ways”!
The rest of that stuff, though? Rock on!
S