Guest blogger Sastra:
When I log into Pharyngula, as a matter of habit I usually glance at the little Recent Comment bar on the side, to see who has just responded to what. It helps to show which threads are particularly lively at the moment. Every now and then there’s someone responding to an “old” post – one that’s been otherwise inactive for days, weeks, months, or, in very rare cases, years. Given the recent major fuss caused by “Crackergate,” we can still notice the occasional newcomer weighing in on the contents of PZ’s kitchen garbage can. Presumably they’ve followed one of the many links still hanging around out there. The cracker threads are not quite ready to die.
I don’t think the issue and its moral ramifications (or the interest in them) are quite finished and over yet, either, so – here ya go — I’m going to bring it up again. Those who are sick and tired of the topic may lightly skip to the next post.
I have, like most (though not all) of the regular Pharyngulites, been – by and large – supportive of PZ’s action, and the rationale behind it. However, I think it’s simplistic to see this as a simple issue, which is easy to explain or defend. There are some good, hard, and reasonable points on the other side, as well as arguments which sound reasonable, but are only superficially plausible. But, judging by the continued reactions, our replies and responses are not always getting through, and we can’t just assume it’s because the other guys aren’t listening. I don’t know — maybe a new approach might help.
So I thought it might be interesting then to take another stab at trying to explain the why behind it, by coming at it from a different perspective.
Context is crucial, and, as most of us have noticed, PZ’s critics often leave out the context, the whole Cook/Donahue thing that started it off. They seem to have this image of PZ standing up in class one day, poking a hole in the cracker, and thence declaring that there is no God after all – just like in the infamous “atheist professor and the chalk” story, but without the happy ending where God interferes and keeps the chalk from breaking, or, in this case, I guess, makes the wafer start bleeding. A few of the atheists appear to be framing it this way as well, as a refutation of the existence of God (approvingly, or disapprovingly.) No, it’s not that. At least, that’s not how I see it.
One of the most common methods of trying to convince someone they’ve made a moral error is through analogy: how would YOU feel in a similar situation, one that was only slightly altered to fit into your own feelings and prejudices? If you would not want it done to you, then you should not do it to others. This is usually a pretty reasonable approach which most people intuitively relate to. Unless you can put yourself in someone else’s place, you’re not going to understand why their reasons are reasonable, for you as well as them. And, of course, Pharyngula has seen more than its share of analogies from the Catholic side – some of them downright bizarre (cough*cough*Rooke*cough) and some of them simply inapplicable. Many of them miss the point by leaving out the context.
So I’m going to try out a new analogy – a hypothetical — which both focuses on the context, and takes the situation out of the comfort zone of the typical Pharyngulite. No, it’s not the same situation in many respects – there are significant differences – but it’s a similar situation with altered variables; in this case, a different sacred cow, and a different offended group. I’m curious as to whether the people here think it works, and agree with my conclusion. It would be especially interesting to see if anyone who was and is offended by the desecration now sees a commonality where they didn’t see it before.
What if it had been this way:
A devout Christian student at a public university named Winslow Cork goes to an on-campus meeting of the Gay-Lesbian Support Group. He accepts the rainbow pin they give him, and then, when they ask him to tell his story, he announces that he is a Christian, and he is going to support them by warning them that homosexuality is a sin, and that those who don’t repent will burn in hell. He contemptuously turns the pin upside down, puts it on, and leaves.
Reaction is swift – and intense. This particular gay support group doesn’t just call him a snot and yell at him to never come back. They swing into action. Cork’s name is publicized, and he is accused of being a bigot, and worse. His actions are compared to the murder of Matthew Shepard, and what the Nazis did. The argument is that people who are often victimized have been attacked, and therefore it should be treated as a serious attack. The campus gay rights activists demand that Cork be charged with a hate crime, and expelled from the university. After all, he violated the sanctuary of those who are understandably sensitive to such violations. Cork is inundated with hate mail, starts getting death threats, and returns the rainbow pin, hoping things will calm down.
Instead, a nationally syndicated gay rights columnist joins in, and, rather than expressing horror over the death threats, only escalates the matter. This kid and his disrespectful, hate-filled religious viewpoint should not be expressed in an America where all citizens respect each other. Religion should be a purely private matter, kept behind closed doors. Speaking out and hurting the feelings of those who prefer the same sex by telling them they’re damned to hell is un-American. It violates their rights. This incident will be used to send a message, and hopefully get the law involved.
In another university, a humanities professor named XY Nyers reads about this, and is appalled. He’s a Christian, and is furious at the over-reaction. Enough is enough. There is no right to not be offended by religion. Whether Cork should have gone into that room or not, informing gay people that the Bible condemns them should not be considered criminal hate speech, or treated like an act of violence. This point needs be made, and forcefully. He then vows on his popular website to film himself reading Leviticus out loud while he breaks apart a Gay-Lesbian Support Group rainbow pin – and he does it.
Cue more hysterical reaction from the same faction of the gay rights crowd. This professor clearly should not be teaching – how could he possibly be fair to his gay students? He needs to respect others, no matter what their sexual orientation – and that means keeping his offensive opinions private, both in class and in his personal life. There are death threats and brow-beating and people asking why, WHY this professor would do this? It’s gratuitously insulting, and only makes him look like a kook, and Christians look like bigots. He knew damn well it would hurt others, and piss people off, and result in death threats. Is pissing that many people off to make his point worthwhile?
I say yes. In this case, under these circumstances, it would be worth it. And I am an atheist who is in favor of gay rights, and want people to be sensitive and respectful to different sexual orientations. But I deliberately chose a protagonist and story I have less sympathy for, to illustrate that it’s not simply about rooting for a “side.” You have to take context into account.
If I didn’t think the over-reaction to Cork’s rudeness was unjustified, and if I could not support, understand, and even respect Prof. Nyers’ actions IN CONTEXT — then I would not be doing the same for PZ Myers. And if I accept that Myers can still be a fair and respectful teacher, then I would accept the same with Nyers. Absent other evidence, and given the situation, there is no reason to think otherwise.
And it should apply both ways.
As I see it, the fundamental matter is not simply a clash of “world views.” Professor Myers and Professor Nyers could theoretically both be Unitarians, with beliefs unknown – and still do the same thing, and still be right to do so. It should not be about which side is getting their ox gored, or who is getting their panties in a twist. The real issue at stake isn’t crackers, or gay rights, or religion, or the importance of showing ‘respect.’
It’s about the importance of not always showing kid-glove respect, and of keeping our sense of proportion, and knowing the difference between someone attacking what you do or believe, and someone attacking you. And I think that’s worthwhile, from every vantage point.
Moses@313
I think we established that the Federal law we were discussing did not cover crackers, but that there are laws against damaging crackers that are somebody else’s property.
In some jurisdictions, there are hate crime provisions that make damaging somebody’s personal property a fairly serious crime if it’s done “because of” their religion (or sex, or perceived race, etc.)
So for example, Minnesota Statute 609.595 says
https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=609.595&year=2007&keyword_type=exact&keyword=religion
Ok, a quick recap to get this back to a discussion. I’m saying that Myers could have done things differently, some people disagree. They believe, as I interpret it, that reason has failed and that it is now time for stronger meassures. I still believe that there are better ways of getting an opinion across.
Much of the things he has written about all this is excellent. I love the ending “Nothing must be held sacred.”. It is a precise and describing statement about how he sees this. Throwing a nailed cracker in the bin just isn’t. It says nothing about why he disagrees with them and nothing about how friggin strange he thinks they’ve acted.
I asked you a question because you clearly didn’t agree that he did this to stir things up. This is what I and the people I was discussing with saw, since that was what we discussed. If there could be a better way.
Now, to ask me to prove that I have done it better is just an atempt to belittle me. You can safely assume that I do not have any way near the same hit count on my blog as Myers do. I’m also not one of the “top-names” in the atheistic world. I’m no Myers, I’m no Dawkins or Sam Harris or… I’m not a doctor in any science (just a master in CS), nor am I a professor. I haven’t written books and wouldn’t get them published anyway. There’s no way I would get as much attention as Myers, even if I fucked a cracker and put it on full public display in Rome.
Finally, if you had read my previous comments you would have understood that I do not think that any treatment of Cook would have changed their minds. They are loons. And this is my whole point! You can’t reason with them but they will not listen more if you put a nail through a cracker. The only course of action is to make everyone else understand that they are loons, by reasoning with those people. Not by displaying once again that the loons are loons. Everyone not mentally challanged knew that those catholics where loons. Myers cracker-act did nothing but to put him in danger of being labeled a loon too.
This is a case where I’d be happy to be wrong.
Re: mike @ #8
So, if the science comes in someday (or in an alternate universe) that sexual orientation really is a choice after all, then it will be OK to openly ridicule homosexuals? And if then, why not now? It’s conceivable that a sexual preference for children is also intrinsic; am I not permitted to be intolerant of pedophiles without being labeled a bigot?
No: the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia is that (we believe) only the latter is harmful. If it turned out to be the case that homosexuality really were the source of a whole host of social problems, we would be right to ostracize homosexuals and criminalize homosexuality.
tsg @498
“Really? So when a drug-crazed psychopath is coming at you with a machete, are you still going to try to reason with him? If your reason fails, will you just allow him to kill you or will you fight for your life?”
No, I’m going to give him the finger and call him a fucktard. Oh, wait! That doesn’t help, does it?
Your analogy isn’t applicable to this case any more than that they both contain loons.
So, if the science comes in someday (or in an alternate universe) that sexual orientation really is a choice after all, then it will be OK to openly ridicule homosexuals?
The analogy to religious beliefs still breaks down. In the alternate universe scenario, everyone would still have a sexual orientation, there would simply be a choice among limited options as to which one was yours. Not so with religion. There is no imperative on the order of the urge to reproduce compelling nearly everyone to have a “religious orientation.” You choose, first, whether to even have beliefs, and second, which beliefs those actually are, and as a corollary, to what extent those beliefs are going to influence your relationships and attitudes to others. Wing-nut Catholics have, first, chosen to have unprovable, avowedly improbable beliefs, second, they have chosen to invest small, worthless bits of food with all the power of those beliefs, and then further to use those beliefs as an excuse for their reprehensible actions.
It’s conceivable that a sexual preference for children is also intrinsic; am I not permitted to be intolerant of pedophiles without being labeled a bigot?
We should be intolerant of child rape, not pedophilia per se. If pedophiles have an innate tendency toward committing this antisocial and damaging act, we should have compassion for them, and do what we can as a society to see that they are humanely restrained from doing so. The same would hold for your counterfactual. If homosexual behavior were somehow antisocial or damaging, then it is this behavior that should be proscribed, not the state of desiring to engage in it.
That doesn’t answer my question.
I’m just trying to clarify your position. I asked if there was any point when reasoning wasn’t enough and stronger measures were required and your response was (paraphrasing), no, there isn’t. I found that hard to believe, so I presented a hypothetical extreme case to challenge your position.
If you would try to reason with the machete wielding psychopath, then I think you position is, at best, impractical and, at worst, foolish.
If you would resort to stronger measures, then your stated position needs clarification.
If you are attacked by a lion the reasonable thing to do is to try and survive, either by running (even though I think your pretty fucked anyway), playing dead or fighting back. The same thing goes for psychopaths that tries to kill you, You do something reasonable to get rid of the problem, not something unreasonable to worsen the problem (like giving him the finger and telling him he’s a fucktard).
I can agree with that.
Second question: when the people who are harming you in some way (something less than mortally) are being completely unreasonable, do you still attempt to reason with them? That is, when reason fails in this case, do you give up and let them continue harming you or do you find another way?
He wasn’t trying to reason with them (ie. the people trying to get Cook tossed from school).
And his point is that they were not treated as loons. If so, there would have been letters pouring in to the University, to the Catholic League, to Bill Donahue, etc, telling them that they were overstepping their bounds. Instead, there was *no* reaction to the news that Cook might get tossed, or that he had received death threats or threats of violence, while there was an enormous reaction to him taking the cracker.
You’d think all those loving, forgiving Catholics would have said something about how people were threatening Cook. Instead, they clucked their tongues and ignored the behavior of their fellow loons. Therefore, clearly, the rest of the world needed to be reminded that these people were insane, and reasoning with the world wasn’t going to demonstrate that. Their loony behavior did a fine job of it, though.
Per-Erik Svensson | August 15, 2008 2:13 PM, #502
You write: “They are loons…The only course of action is to make everyone else understand that they are loons, by reasoning with those people….Everyone not mentally challanged knew that those catholics where loons. Myers cracker-act did nothing but to put him in danger of being labeled a loon too. This is a case where I’d be happy to be wrong.”
Your thoughts are very similar to my own on this. I have compared PZ’s protest to the Black power salute at the 1968 Olympics. That too alienated many people. However I think that over time it and many other, much smaller events raised consciousness. Smith and Carlos were booed as they left the field and were sent home. Their careers and private lives suffered. But things changed because of them. In 2005 a 20-ft high statue commemorating their protest was unveiled at their alma mater. This time when the national anthem played they held their heads high, not bowed. This year they have been given the Arthur Ashe Courage award for their act at the ESPYS.
Unlike the high price Smith and Carlos paid, I’m inclined to think that PZ Myers (unlike many others) can ride this one out with ease, and that his action was necessary in the full context of the case.
I don’t think anybody would have done anything about this case had not PZ Myers acted. I think it’s quite probable that Cook would have been disciplined by his university–as PZ said in his first posting the University was acting in a very supine manner. The charges against Cook have been dismissed unanimously, and perhaps the light shed on the case by PZ’s action has helped that good outcome.
Sometimes you have to shout. It’s rude but sometimes it’s necessary.
Cook still may lose his position on the Student Senate, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. These toy governments are fun, but his time would be better spent studying.
Sastra,
I think it has something all the other analogies are sorely lacking: symmetry in how much we’d care about something we thought could suffer.
Here’s a simpler version.
I have a neighbor, a fisherman, who’s prone to putting small frogs on fishooks, alive and not anaesthetized, to use them as bait. They swim around for while and attract fish.
I think it’s probably like something to be a frog, so that’s torture and unconscionable. He thinks frogs don’t actually feel pain the way we do, so it’s a fine thing to do. He also knows my views, and thinks they’re ridiculous.
(This is not made up; I know people who do that and justify it that way.)
Like the wafer, there’s a disagreement about whether the thing in question is morally valuable and can be made to suffer. Only in this case, I’m the one who thinks it can, but can’t prove it. (By hypothesis; assume using live frogs as bait on hooks is legal.)
So far as I know, it’s not illegal for him to torture frogs that way, in general, and I can’t stop him from doing that with his own frogs.
Now suppose I’m giving out frogs for a galvanism demo. I hand people little bait-type frogs, and they quickly and humanely kill them, then zap them with a battery and watch them jump. I’m okay with this as long as the frogs don’t suffer. But I’m very much not okay with frogs being tortured.
This guy comes to my demo and acts like he wants to participate, holding the killing tool, so I hand him a frog, expecting him to kill it painlessly and zap it.
But he puts down the killing tool and starts to walks off with the frog. Now I think I know what he’s up to–he’s going to use the frog as bait on a hook.
I confront him and tell him to kill the frog painlessly, now, or give it back. He refuses.
I grab his wrist and try to get the frog away, but he resists and I relent, because I don’t want to get into a physical fight. He pockets the frog and leaves.
The next day he posts a picture of the frog, on a fishook and apparently in agony, and another picture of a fish he caught with it, to “prove” his point that it’s “just frackin’ bait!”.
As I understand things, he stole my frog. By his actions in context, he deceived me into thinking he’d use the frog for what I intended, and that’s the only reason why I gave it to him. That’s theft by deception.
When I grabbed his wrist, I think I was justified, both morally and legally. Morally, I had an obligation to protect the innocent frog from torture by fishook, whether I had the legal right to do so or not.
Legally, I think I’m probably in the clear. I was trying to prevent a theft in progress. Maybe not—maybe legally the frog isn’t valuable enough to justify my battering the man.
Maybe the frog isn’t monetarily valuable enough to justify that level of force, but I don’t think anybody’d prosecute it.
(Maybe there’s a law saying you can’t torture frogs that way, but for the sake of a thought experiment, it doesn’t matter. Let’s assume there’s not.)
Even if the frog is legally just trivial personal property, I suspect that a court would respect my motives for trying to recover the frog, to some extent. Whether the court agreed with me or not about the acceptability of using frogs as live bait, they’d give me leeway in determining a fit use of my property, and think that if the guy didn’t want me to try to stop him, he shouldn’t have come to my galvanism demo and stolen my frog, knowing how I feel about frogs.
I should probably clarify (again) that my thought experiment with frogs is not intended to be analogous to the Webster Cook thing; it’s supposed to be analogous to intentional crackerjacking, with intent to desecrate.
So far as I know, Webster Cook didn’t initially intend to “walk off with a frog,” and never intended to “put one on a fish hook.”
But, see, a cracker’s just a cracker but a frog‘s a frackin’ FROG!
@#502
So basically you’re saying that anything Myers would have done would have been wrong, but he could have done better by doing something he did not do, which you have figured out but the rest of us don’t know about?
It was a while since I saw such a level of conceit displayed in such a calm manner.
As to attempts to belittle; you are the one belittling what Myers did, and claiming you know a better way. I ask again; what did you do which is so much better?
And of course the intent was to stir things up by acting in a manner which anyone reasonable would consider reasoned. I certainly consider throwing a cracker with a nail in it in the trash to be perfectly reasonable – what else would you do with a ruined cracker? This is not a matter of abandoning a reasoned approach. On the contrary.
I have no idea where this insistence that throwing out a cracker is somehow unreasonable comes from. It reeks of insanity to me, of throwing out all reason and taking the side that the cracker, indeed, is not a cracker.
But that’s what it is. A cracker. And it’s perfectly reasonable to throw a stale cracker in the trash.
#511
When you grabbed his wrist, you committed battery, and acted well outside of your rights. He did not steal your frog; you gave it to him. If you didn’t want him to have it, you should not have given it to him.
The court may very well consider your emotional distress over a piece of bait, but that does not change that YOU acted illegally, while the man you handed free bait did not.
The Swede @ 515
Well, if you’re going to argue by assertion, I’ll just say this: you’re wrong.
Whether something is legally an actual gift depends on whether it is obtained by deception.
If you want to make an argument about what constitutes deception under law, go for it, but stop just asserting the same stuff I’ve made detailed arguments against, which you don’t appear to understand.
Re-read the stuff about affirmation of a misconception by an action, at least.
Swede,
Paul W. schooled you. Dumbass.
I was shocked to see John Pieret’s analysis. I didn’t think atheists, what with their daddy issues and poor hygiene, were capable of critical thinking. Who would’ve thunk it.
I did. You’re still giving the frog away. Your loss. You don’t like it, then don’t give frogs away. Or crackers. Or peanuts. You’ll end up very disappointed when people don’t do what you thought they would do with them.
You can argue deception all that you like, but unless there is both intent, material gain or loss (and neither frog nor cracker is enough to make a court take notice), and actual deceitful activity, you’re stuck with that you’ve given something away freely and then committed battery when trying to steal it back.
I can’t believe I’m seeing self-professed lawyers arguing over “theft” of a piece of unleavened bread. The theft issue is a red herring.
Of course there is a law saying you can’t torture frogs! At least in all civilised places I’ve heard of. It’s a bit dishonest to use a frog in your example (or a puppy) and to ask us to disregard the obvious legal issues against animal cruelty. What if you had been handing out earthworms?
It would be much more sensible to say that you were trying to prevent the crime of torturing the frog. Then it doesn’t depend on whether the frog was still your property or not.
Per-Erik Svenson #492 wrote:
I think PZ chose to display a strong, offensive image to make it clear that non-Catholics have no obligation to defer to Catholic beliefs, and the more outrage they show over trivial matters, the easier it will be for their outrage to be provoked — and it will lessen. It has to. The “worst” happens, and … nothing changes, nothing really happens. It only matters in church.
I’m not sure that rational argument could do this as effectively. “Here is your worst-case scenario.” We don’t care: keep your blasphemy crimes in your religious community. Don’t expect the secular world outside to hush their voices and play along with the “crime” by pretending your belief is real because it’s real to you. We treat a cracker like a cracker. Look. It’s not so bad.
Personally, I think the best argument against PZ’s act was the one Dawkins made, obliquely, when asked if he would take part in the “Blasphemy Challenge.” He said “No, I’m an Oxford professor, and Oxford professors don’t do that sort of thing. But I think it’s splendid to see so many young people etc. etc. etc.”
That, by the way, is not a strong argument. It’s simply a matter of taste.
Windy,
Civilized? I live in Texas. :-/
When I was growing up in Texas, I was taught to put minnows on hooks, with the hook far enough inward to clear the spine, so that the minnow would not come off the hook easily. My grandfather did the same thing with small frogs that came out of the ditch in front of his house. (Or maybe they were tiny toads.)
My brother used to regularly go frog-gigging with his friends. That is, catching frogs by stabbing them with barbed prongs on a pole. Seriously. If that was or is illegal, I haven’t heard about it. It’s a traditional way of securing frog legs.
That was common practice, and I assumed then that it was legal. Utterly barbaric, but legal.
It may be illegal, and I think it should be, but I would not be surprised if it wasn’t then, and isn’t now. I would guess that the animal cruelty laws do not apply to bait, or they’re not enforced with respect to bait. (I would be very happy to be wrong about that.)
Either way, that’s irrelevant to my thought experiment. Just assume for the sake of argument that baiting hooks with frogs is perfectly legal, and the courts have no opinion on whether it’s torture.
For the purposes of a thought experiment, that’s no more dishonest than Einstein talking about riding on a beam of light. He never did that, and never could, but it doesn’t matter to the point he was making.
Likewise, I’m just talking about a situation that’s the reverse of the cracker situation.
I confess I did pick frogs rather than puppies this time, to get around your objection. Clearly puppies would be covered by animal cruelty laws, and that brings a red herring into the analogy.
Whether frogs actually are covered by animal cruelty laws in baitfishing situations or not, it’s not so farfetched to imagine a world in which they aren’t. (It looks a whole lot like East Texas.)
That would mess up the thought experiment. I think it’s perfectly kosher for me to assert that in the thought experiment, frogs are not protected from being put on hooks and used as bait.
BTW, please don’t accuse me of dishonesty. I might be wrong, ignorant, or even stupid, but I’m not being dishonest.
Windy,
Check out this page:
http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CFPage?storeId=10151&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&&mode=article&objectID=30594&catID=&subcatID=0
I think many U.S. sportfishermen assume that using live frogs on hooks is legal, and I’d guess they’re right.
Windy,
Apparently live frogs on hooks are used for commercial bass fishing in Canada as well.
This report says that it may be illegal, if frogs are construed as “animals” for the purpose of animal cruelty laws:
http://www.animalalliance.ca/article.phtml?article=frogs3&dir=projects&title=Frogs+in+Ontario%3A+Report+-+Ontario+Government+Report+on+the+State+of+Frogs+in+Ontario
Apparently it isn’t a settled point of law, and I’d guess it’s generally not considered illegal, or the law is not enforced.
Grim stuff.
Oh yeah. It’s legal to torture frogs in the US. Where does windy live?
Finland. I don’t know if it’s the level of civilization, or just that it’s harder to find frogs for icefishing.
Paul, I don’t think you are being intentionally dishonest but the example is, if that makes sense – it appeals to other sensibilities than the use of your property. Thanks for the information on bait fishing, I wasn’t aware that there was such a grey area in use of frogs as bait in the US and Canada. But in that case I would ask the hypothetical you, why are you so upset that your frog was used as bait, and not so much about the thousands of other frogs? It’s not like it was a personal pet.
On second thought I do agree that the situation is quite analogous to the wafer example, in that both situations the “theft” angle is used as an excuse to fight something else that you don’t like. You, or the Catholics, don’t really care who’s property it is.
Thanks to a bit of wrestling with Google News I have located a couple of blog entries tangentially related to Crackergate.
Larry Moran on his Sandwalk blog gives Matthew Nisbet a good telling off. Timothy S. McDougald also has a go at him on his Afarensis blog.
Sastra @#521
My impression was that he wanted both to draw attention to an example of the lengths some believers will go to defend elements of their faith which non-believers find utterly absurd and the demonstrate his rejection of the concept that anything is “sacred”.
What else, if anything, he hoped to achieve is less clear.
If it was part of an atheist campaign to eradicate religion – which I believe is a hopeless cause except in the very long term – then it was arguably counter-productive. Although it might conceivably have nudged a few believers teetering on the edge of apostasy into taking that final step into atheism, it is more likely that it strengthened the resolve of believers to defend their faith.
If it had the more limited and attainable goal of helping atheism to become not just acceptable but respectable in American society then only time will tell. While some will have dismissed it as a sophomoric stunt, history suggests that such stunts were instrumental in advancing the causes of women’s and black rights in the past.
Of course, all this is probably nothing more than a rationalization of what was actually a much more visceral response to Wafergate. Scientists are just human, after all – or possibly human/cephalopod hybrids in some cases.
Windy you still don’t get it. The delivery of the property is contingent upon the use it may or may not be put to. Why are contingent dispositions such a hurdle for you people? Is the concept really that difficult? The answer, of course, is no. If you don’t get it, it’s because emotion is clouding your judgment.
No matter. You are in the main clearly idiots and incapable of reason unclouded by your various daddy issues. The expectation of reasoned responses is a failing on my part. I thought that it might be that atheists could be people. But you are monkeys. Turd throwing, masturbating, bug eating monkeys.
This by Ian is worth commenting on. No doubt the PZian horde thinks that some how the scientific discoveries of the last 70 years have made authentic human experience superfluous. Even in the long term term you monkeys will not eradicate religion. It is an intrinsic aspect of the human condition. Were you not idiots you would note that for as long has man has existed, religion has existed. Not always true religion, no doubt, but even dirty pagans, like yourselves, are, in the final analysis, religious. The truly anti-religious (and most of you, by the way, are actually pagans) have always been a very, very, very small minority of the human experience. Like serial killers. In fact, the class probably overlaps. My recommendation is that you get over your daddy issues, save your souls and join the human condition. Or not. Consider it the beauty, or tragedy, of free will.
In all seriousness, I recommend that each of you attend a Catholic Mass. Not once. But several times. And not to disrupt the Mass or to “score” a Host or otherwise be a shithead. But to experience what billions of men and women have experienced prior to your minor sojourn among your brothers and sisters. The experience that billions upon billions will experience after your brief light is extinguished. Or not.
A Catholic accusing atheists of denying reality and indulging in magical thinking? Never heard that one before. That was almost worth staying up for.
Almost.
Oops, forgot to mention the “daddy issues” – fabulous, coming from someone who worships “the father” and shivers in sodden, infantile fear at the mere thought of having done something to displease his skypappy.
This is great stuff!
Kseniya,
Don’t forget the Blessed Virgin Mommy.
Nobody beats Catholics for parental issues.
Was it a Christian who came up with the idea of torturing an innocent creature to get back at a man with a beard?
Paul #522 “That would mess up the thought experiment. I think it’s perfectly kosher for me to assert that in the thought experiment, frogs are not protected from being put on hooks and used as bait.”
Then you might as well have used puppies or indeed babies in your thought experiment. You should have really have chosen an animal that was not protected anywhere in the world. (NB: frogs are protected species in the UK, I’m happy to say). How about worms, or would that reveal the vacuity of your thought experiment?
Paul W, I think the problem with your analogies is that it really is arguable that frogs suffer pain and distress when tortured.
There is no rational argument in favor of the idea that throwing a wafer into your kitchen waste bin is worse than eating it and letting nature take its course. Some Catholics have either shown their ignorance or played on the ignorance of non-Catholics by using the image of God being abused by such an action. The Catholic God is omnipotent, and the theological concept of transubstantiation specifically rules out mere physical presence–in substance theory the substance is the true essence; physical manifestations are called accidents and do not impinge on the substance, which is timeless and unchanging.
On mere philosophical grounds the Catholics are wrong. If they use the transubstantiation theory as an excuse to bully people, it’s appropriate to call their bluff.
With respect to “absolute truth” ponder this: God either exists or He doesn’t. There’s no relativism there. Jesus is His son or he is not. He either humiliated himself on the cross for our bad decisions (i.e., our many, life long choices not to love him or his children) or he didn’t.
If he humiliated himself on the cross as a man…if God can be consubstantially present in man, in Christ, why is it beyond God to also be transubstantially present in bread (the essence of bread is changed, not its “accidents”)? It’s just more humiliation done for our sake.
A God who chooses to be humilated on the Cross, or in bread, is either teaching us something about Love or he is not.
That was deep man. Whew.
Was that Matanuska Thunderfuck in your bowl this morning?
You assume that this Jesus character actually chose to be crucified. He could have been nailed up there like thousands of other criminals, political problems and vagrants…… if he ever even was.
To find equivalence to PZ’s “crime” we need to find an object that fits the criteria: not owned by any individual but distributed by an organization exclusively to its members at ceremonies that are open to the general public (how often do priests ask for proof of membership-in-good-standing before issuing communion?); and believed by same to be sacred as a result of having been part of a ceremony also believed by members of said organization to be sacred. The object must have no monetary value but ultimate sacred value, as it contains the Deity Itself. Nope, frogs and rainbow pins don’t qualify.
There is no good analogy for the non-event.
This was much ado about a story, by people who seem to enjoy thinking of themselves as oppressed because, well, I’m not sure why. Something that happened in Elizabethan England or Saxony in the 16th Century maybe. And how about them Catholics chucking each other out of windows in Prague over whether or not communion required both the wafer and the wine or whether the wafer alone was sufficient? The famed Defenestrations! Tossing a wafer in the trash is worse than their own behavior toward each other and non-Catholic or non-Christian human beings over the centuries?
This gets more and more ridiculous the more one thinks about religious history.
Well it’s obvious why they feel oppressed. They are a member of the one of the largest groups of people in the world who have wielded immeasurable power for centuries and are the single biggest land owning entity in the would.
Duh. I’d feel oppressed too.
Oh and don’t forget they also get to hold silly beliefs and have odd ceremonies and then claim that these beliefs are above scrutiny.
So when a small minority of people call them on it they are of course being oppressed.
Rev. BDC,
Either, could have, if.
When you reflect on great acts of love, great acts of self-giving, Olympic-levels of free-choice for others, what rings most true to you? What really catches your eye, your imagingation…
…a God as presented above (“ever how” we’ve misheard/misinterpreted his message over the years)….or PZ’s way?
Eliza | August 16, 2008 12:09 PM, #539, “Tossing a wafer in the trash is worse than their own behavior toward each other and non-Catholic or non-Christian human beings over the centuries?”
Yes, it’s yet more proof that PZ Myers’ motto is “What Would Stalin Do?”
Oops, before things get hot I’d better call “Poe” on that. Sorry, I forgot the smily.
Loudon is a Fool, 530
Because, fool, contingent dispositions don’t mean anything unless they are clearly agreed upon between the parties, and there exists a system to enforce them. If you don’t understand that, maybe this simple example will help:
if you propose to distribute 1$ notes to people saying “this is for you to buy bread”, then start distributing, people come and take the notes that you are giving, and later you find out that some have bought soda cans with the money, you can go and talk all you want about the contingent disposition, nobody will give a fucking shit about it.
Does your pea brain understand that ? It may have been your property before you gave it to someone, it’s not anymore after you gave it, and unless you have found a way to enforce your contingent disposition, you can go and put it up your A** !
If you feel that too many people are abusing from your distribution wrongly, you can stop with it, or try to find ways to control and enforce whatever dispositons you like, but you can’t just “assume” that people are going to adhere to it, and then keep whining if they don’t.
Benjamin Collard, Webster Cook’s non-Catholic colleague who was present in the church service, was later charged alongside him and has also been cleared by the University authorities, has sent a long descrription of his ordeal, and his feelings on it, to Greg Laden.
Are you suggesting that the mere idea of good makes it factual?
Um i don’t hold PZ up as some sort of deity, but I also know he exists. He makes his own choices in how he acts.
But more importantly, what a lame false dichotomy you’ve created.
“Olympic-levels”?
Are you secretly a worshiper of Zeus the thunderer?
PZ’s way, of course. Because a God that was real could speak for himself, and not require you, or any other human, to tell me that I have to “imagine” it.
It really is just a cracker. Anything else is just an imagined, made-up story.
How do you know PZ exists? I have more evidence that Jesus exists than PZ.
I think most people who go to the trouble to desecrate the Eucharist know with more certainty that the Lord is truly and fully present than some lukewarm Catholics.
How much risk, violence, and animus (just look above and around on this site) is given to “bringing down” New Age beliefs (crystals, etc. etc. etc.)?
Much of this site reads like amateurish “field reports” from Wormwood written to Screwtape.
You have a photograph of Jesus? Did he appear in a piece of toast or a wall stain? Or maybe in a banana peel?
Don’t be silly. There is no God in the cracker, or anywhere else.
Woo envy! I think that’s a new one!
Yes, PZ denigrates New Age woo, especially the sort of vague meaningless nonsense from Deepak Chopra.
Yes, CS Lewis is another one who wrote made-up, imagined stories. The Screwtape Letters were OK, I suppose.
Say, did you ever read The Last Battle? It occurred to me that the depiction of Shift the Ape, wearing a crown and claiming to be one controlling access to “Aslan”, and demanding tithes, I mean, nuts, so that Aslan wouldn’t get angry, was meant to be a direct parody of the pope.
Do you think that’s a reasonable interpretation?
Bill | August 16, 2008 1:53 PM, #549
“How do you know PZ exists? I have more evidence that Jesus exists than PZ”
Existence isn’t the point. Jesus doesn’t count because he doesn’t blog.
Paul W:
I think the problem with the frog analogy is that the Catholics didn’t react as if the consecrated wafer was going to suffer physical pain. It was a matter of disrespect — what “pain” Jesus would suffer was on the emotional level. The Catholics can be lamentably literal, but I don’t think they really imagined the cracker sobbing and whimpering as it was carried off in the baggie, or flapping around in pain spasms on the end of the nail.
As it was, in the above post I didn’t try to find a secular equivalent for transubstantiation: as others pointed out, there is none. The closest analogy to something secular being “sacred” — meaning not open to criticism, mockery, or disrespect — was a hypothetical p.c. mindset gone wild. I was hoping to find a way the Catholics could relate to someone being unnecessarily treated as a criminal simply for insulting the “wrong” group of people by saying the “wrong” thing — despite the fact that their whole argument is that it’s the “right” thing. The fact that both they and us would agree in one similar situation, might be ground for mutual understanding, if not agreement.
Professor Nyers was reacting to secularists telling the religious what religious statements they could make, lest they be guilty of criminal insult. Professor Myers was reacting to the religious telling the secular world what secular statements they could make, lest they be guilty of criminal insult. Both professors were demonstrating that there should be no such thing as “criminal insult.” They were protesting a protest.
I think that’s supposed to be ‘they and we.’ Better yet, “we both.”
Episodes of delusional hallucinations do not count as evidence.
That’s laughable. Had you spent any time doing a little research on this you’d know that is far from the truth. But if repeating that little fantasy makes you feel better, go right ahead.
yawn. The search field above is your friend. Are you next going to ask if PZ has the balls to criticize Islam?
Something that I think gets lost in all the noise is that PZ, while being aggressively anti-religious, is also aggressively pro-academic-freedom and pro-freedom-of-speech, even to the point of expressing support for a fellow academic who was supporting ID and was in a certain amount of trouble with his (as I recall, private religious) institution.
The assumption of a lot of the people coming here — including moderate religious folk and concerned non-religious folk — is that PZ is only interested in bashing religion. I think it might be necessary to emphasize his support for the free expression of ideas, including religious ideas. It’s just that the idea that he himself wishes to most express about religion is that it’s all nonsense and self-deception, and absolutely should not receive any privileges, and that giving privileges to religion is harmful.
To put it another way, while “No one has the right to not be offended” is pithy, I think it would be better expressed as “No idea should be free from criticism, even if that criticism causes offense”.
Note, by the way, that PZ went to certain lengths to permit criticism of himself and his actions on his own blog. After all, he didn’t have to throw open new threads after closing the old ones, and could well have turned on moderation of all comments, or just turned off commenting.
“I think most people who go to the trouble to desecrate the Eucharist know with more certainty that the Lord is truly and fully present than some lukewarm Catholics. ”
No. We don’t. Why is it so hard for you to believe that we don’t accept any of it? The cracker, the ressurection, all made-up stories. Simple as that.
“In all seriousness, I recommend that each of you attend a Catholic Mass. Not once. But several times. And not to disrupt the Mass or to “score” a Host or otherwise be a shithead. But to experience what billions of men and women have experienced prior to your minor sojourn among your brothers and sisters. The experience that billions upon billions will experience after your brief light is extinguished. Or not.”
I did that for eighteen years. Didn’t take.
Whoa negentropyeater. Calm down. Take a deep breath. For folks who believe in nothing you guys sure get hot under the collar.
As a Catholic Cook was aware of the agreement. Admittedly there are enforcement problems associated with a contingent disposition. Which is likely why the extraordinary ministers stopped Cook before he had returned to his flexible seating. Because it appeared he was violating his part of the agreement.
Your last paragraph is telling. What is it about Atheists and force? I take it you’re the pitcher. Something can’t just be right or wrong regardless of the ability of the ability to enforce rightness or control wrongness? An interesting opinion. Good luck with that, Stalin.
We will know the answer in eight years.
Rey Fox
So you speak for the majority?
If you don’t accept any of it…why do you go to the trouble to desecrate it.
Do you attack crystals? If so, why. If not, why not?
ITS A FUCKING HUNK OF METAL, FOR CHRISSAKE!
Wrestler who discarded medal expelled from Olympic Games
(CNN) — A Swedish wrestler who discarded his bronze medal in a protest during the presentation ceremony has been stripped of the award and disqualified from the tournament in Beijing.
The International Olympic Committee said it was also officially disqualifying Ara Abrahamian, 35, from his event, Greco-Roman wrestling.
Abrahamian was beaten in the 84-kilogram class by eventual gold medal winner Andrea Minguzzi of Italy. He complained that “blatant errors in judging” caused him to lose the match and said he felt that he deserved the gold.
The Swede shouted at the referee before confronting the judges. During Thursday’s presentation ceremony, he took off his medal and left it in the center of the competition mat before walking off.
The IOC said Abrahamian violated two rules of the Olympic charter, one that bans any sort of demonstrations and another that demands respect for all Olympic athletes.
“The awards ceremony is a highly symbolic ritual, acknowledged as such by all athletes and other participants,” the IOC said.
“Any disruption by any athlete, in particular a medalist, is in itself an insult to the other athletes and to the Olympic Movement. It is also contrary to the spirit of fair play.”
Abrahamian never expressed regret or offered an apology, the IOC said. The international weightlifting federation was asked to consider further sanctions against him.
His medal was the third stripped at the Beijing Games.
On Friday, North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su had his silver and bronze medals taken away after failing a doping test. Also expelled for doping violations have been Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno and Vietnamese gymnast Thi Ngan Thuong Do.
Abrahamian’s case is not the first of its kind.
A weightlifter at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics was stripped of his bronze medal after rejecting it during the medal ceremony.
Ibragim Samadov, competing in the light heavyweight category for the Unified Team of the former Soviet Union, was upset with his performance and refused to have the medal placed around his neck and only accepted it in his hand. He then put it down and walked off.
Samadov later apologized, but the IOC decision upheld its decision to disqualify him, and he was later banned for life by the sport’s governing body.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/16/olympic.wrestler/index.html
Rey Fox.
18 years…hmmmm. Reminds me of someone who said that “mass is too long”…and the response back to him was “maybe your love was too short”.
You clearly think you need to be entertained. But mass isn’t about you. It isn’t about entertainment. It’s about participating in the Divine Mass which is going on 24 hours a day, around the world, and in heaven. Its been going on for two thousand years across the globe.
The Bible and the Christian Tradtion were the “first blog”.
PZ…is just a little human..like the rest of us. Will this little blog be going on for 2000 years? Sure.
Will people 2000 years from now be able to PROVE that PZ ever existed..and that it he wasn’t some manufactured digital disturbance that lasted a mere year or two?
Will PZ have the following to show for his existence….new institutions that survive at least 1000 years…like the university (Thank Catholicism for that), rules of evidence (Thank Rome), the idea and example of a hospital (rome), orphanages (rome), etc. etc. etc.
PZ will die one day, and the next second, and it’ll be like taking your hand out of a 3 gallon bucket of air. Like all the rest of us.
What the hell are you talking about Bill?
Length of time people believe a story makes it more likely?
PZ is a professor with a blog who is fun and informative to read. NO ONE here puts him on some pedestal above that.
Are you ok? You seem to be losing it.
Has to do with how we evaluate truth these days, nothing more. How do you even know that there’s a PZ…that he’s really a professor? How do you go about doing that? Have you done it or just taken the blogs word for it.
That there was an historical shift in how people lived more than 2000 years ago…changing the lives of billions of people is “evidence” (among many other things…historical documents, etc.) that Jesus, the Christ, lived.
A dead man crucified can not account for what happened 2000 years ago among the people and governments of those days. Christ lived, died, and was resurrected.
Bill how do I know you are for real? You may just be a parody of some delusional person.
This line of argumentation is ridiculous. Comparing a living person who we can verify vs. someone 2000 years ago is frankly a bit insane.
And then you throw in the resurrection. Seriously. Seek help.
“So you speak for the majority?”
For the majority of commenters on this blog, yes, I do speak for them when I say that we don’t believe in Christian myths. So when you say that if God can manifest as man, why can he not manifest as a cracker, it means nothing to us, because we don’t believe in the god in the first place.
“If you don’t accept any of it…why do you go to the trouble to desecrate it.”
You haven’t read a single word about this story, have you?
“Do you attack crystals? If so, why. If not, why not?”
Because no one has gotten threatened expulsion from his public university for disrespecting a crystal. That’s the short answer.
“18 years…hmmmm. Reminds me of someone who said that “mass is too long”…and the response back to him was “maybe your love was too short”.
That’s really precious. You should write greeting cards. But yes, my love for pointless ritual is indeed short.
“You clearly think you need to be entertained.”
Entertained, educated, or paid. I do value my time, yes.
“But mass isn’t about you.”
Then mass can bloody well jog on without me. It’s better for everyone involved.
“It isn’t about entertainment. It’s about participating in the Divine Mass”
So…Mass is about Mass. Gotcha.
“which is going on 24 hours a day, around the world, and in heaven. Its been going on for two thousand years across the globe. ”
Then why would I need to go to a particular building at a particular time?
If he was a human who lived, then he did indeed die.
But there are plenty of stories about people who never lived.
There are also stories about people who did live, that are not believed. As I mentioned one of the previous times this came up, we accept that Julius Caesar lived. We don’t believe that he became a god after he died.
But hey, maybe he did.
A dead man stabbed in the senate can not account for what happened 2000 years ago among the people and governments of those days, eh?
So how about it? Burn a sacrifice to old Julie?
So the made-up, imagined stories say. Oddly enough, I have not seen any 2000-year-old men wandering around. I refuse to believe something so extraordinary without evidence.
Besides, the real reason that the Catholic church has lasted so long is very simple, and very ugly: They quite literally murdered the competition.
“Besides, the real reason that the Catholic church has lasted so long is very simple, and very ugly: They quite literally murdered the competition.”
Now that’s putting the cracker in context!
Loudon is a fool, 557
Oh I’m very calm, I’m just using the same kind of language you are using in your posts, thought that’s the only thing you seem to understand. Do you need me to point you to it ? Hey look I was just replying to your post #530:
-“You are in the main clearly idiots”
-“But you are monkeys. Turd throwing, masturbating, bug eating monkeys”
-“Like serial killers. In fact, the class probably overlaps”
Sure, he was just going to go back to his seat and consume it there, in the same manner as hundreds of millions of Catholics do everywhere in the world. Have you really never been to a Catholic mass ;-) ? I have, many times (I’m not a Catholic but I’ve been there many times, never took part in communion as I’m not even baptized, but I know how it takes place, many people do that, you know !).
Its’ just that these two twots “assumed”, for a reason of their own knowing, that he was going to use it for black magic and reacted stupidly.
If they really had doubts, they could have simply gone to Cook, and instead of attacking him, simply ask : “excuse me young man, why aren’t you consuming the Eucharist ?”. Most probably a dialogue could have taken place, as is always recommended before one starts with making the wrong kind of assumptions and over-reacting stupidly as they did.
But no, you wish to see things differently. You wish to convince yourself that their attack was somehow justified and assume that Cook really wanted to do something bad with this Eucharist. You have absolutely no evidence of this, but you’ll just keep repeating yourself that this is the case.
Sastra said
First of all, let me say thank you for trying to put this into context again. I do agree and understand what you are saying with your alternate example, but the rub remains. I’m not here to criticize motive, or to give the Catholics a pass. No law was broken by PZ and although he had every right to do what he did, his theatrical display was more like watching my children fight than of how I expect intelligent adults to behave. One doesn’t have to act like a child if they are fighting with a child.
From an outside perspective both PZ and your ficticious Prof Nyers just look like they lack the type of creativity to deal with idiocy in a way that can be seen as mature and respectful. I don’t mean respect by the opponent (that may never happen), but by outsiders like myself who have compassion for all sorts of people and beliefs.
In this case, both sides in the matter have behaved poorly. The situation may have warranted a less-than kid glove approach, however, it doesn’t act as a pass for behaving like an arrogant jerk. I still feel this even after understanding the context. I don’t believe what he did should amount to anything but harsh criticism for plain boorishness, but then again, I’m not part of the group he insulted and one should never underestimate the craziness of their opponent.
Loudon is a fool,
BTW if you want to read this thread at Greg Laden’s blog,
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/08/benjamin_collard_speaks_out_on.php
you will discover that ;
and…
and…
Now, unless you have any clear objective evidence to counter this version of the facts, this is what you should assume happened that day, and not your unfounded, biased, wishful thinking.
Rev,
so, using your comparison, when PZ dies, you’ll be unable to know that he existed?
You might want to read a bit on Epistemology. Or at least think through more than at a superficial level how you think we acquire and evaluate knowledge.
Mass (part of the Divine Liturgy which goes on 24 hours a day) will jog on long long after your decision to say no to Him who gave you life, and to Him who showed the world how to convert humiliation into Love.
At least, if we’re honest, we deserve all the humiliation we get.
What I get out of the tenor of comments in here…is no sign of real love (self giving, self-sacrificing)… instead I see invective, impatience, pride, vanity, emormous ill will, lack of real community, and a lot of insubstantiality.
In fact it reminds me of CS Lewis’s description of hell in the Great Divorce.
That’s not at all what I am suggesting and I have no idea how you would come to that conclusion except you trying to put words in my mouth to further your own goal. I’m not denying that there may have been a Jesus what I’m saying is that it’s frankly ridiculous to claim that you have more evidence of his existence than what can be provided on PZ.
The resurrection on the other hand is hilarious.
And, can you point me to a catholic blog with several 100s comments per thread where one finds self giving, self-sacrificng signs of real love ?
How do people like you reason ? With a brain that is so incredibly biased ? How do you manage ?
Yes, you really should think through the acquisition of knowledge. Religion is a direct failure of reasoning and epistemology.
Science is knowledge of the world combined with reasoning.
Religion is a made-up, imagined story asserted to be true by those who have no way to demonstrate the reality of the story, and transmitted against all reasoning, that is, via indoctrination.
For example:
The above is a perfect case in point.
And this is just meaningless.
Oddly enough, that is exactly what we see in the religious. Now, at least among the unbelievers, there is an obvious explanation: We are all imperfect humans.
If there were some real message of true knowledge of love being transmitted from a real entity, then that message should never have been able to be changed, warped or corrupted; the community of believers should never fight or have internal power struggles.
Instead we see exactly the opposite: Imperfect humans acting like imperfect humans.
Again with C. S. Lewis. Yes, The Great Divorce was an interesting story. An interesting made-up imagined fiction.
You know, Lewis wrote in both The Great Divorce and in The Last Battle about mean and contemptible people ignoring the wonder and glory that was right in front of them. He could do that, in a work of made-up imagined fiction: Describe something beautiful, have the protagonists see it as beautiful, and then have some other character or characters not able to see it, or declare it ugly, and have the latter ones shown to be wrong.
Here in the real world, it doesn’t work like that. If there are differences in perception, they can be traced back to differences in the sensory systems of the different individuals, and even then, there are ways to demonstrate by other physical means the presence or absence of something.
Religion demonstrates nothing but the indoctrination of the believers.
PS: Speaking of ignoring what is right in front of you, are you going to address my question about The Last Battle?
Two men walk into a 7-11. One has a gun. Man with gun walks out with $200. His buddy when talking to reporters after the fact claims that they thought the 7-11 was a gun cleaning shop. When he friend pointed the gun at the person behind the register his intent was to request that the gun be cleaned. The person behind the counter freaked out and threw money at them and told them to leave or she would call the cops. So they left.
Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe it’s not. But the circumstances are a bit fishy.
Exhibit 1: Both Cook and Collard, by their own words, believe that receipt of university funding by a student group with a religious purpose violates the First Amendment. This is crackpot atheist thinking, causing me to doubt the story that “we were just there so Cook could receive Communion.”
Exhibit 2: Although there has been a lot of chatter about Cook being raised Catholic, there has been a strange silence about whether or not he is currently a Mass attending Catholic. The emphasis on “raised Catholic” (this description from his father) suggests that he and his family do not consider Cook to currently be Catholic. This fact also puts in doubt Cook’s claim that he was only at Mass to receive Communion.
Exhibit 3: The only people I have seen claiming that Mass attendees regularly take the host back to their flexible seating are atheists. That strikes me as a bit odd, given that I would not expect atheists to be frequently Mass. Although, no doubt, their consciences call them to the frequent reception of Communion, I would expect that instead they would be kicking against the pricks. Given that it is contrary to my experience (a Catholic) and the experience of every Catholic I have asked, you’ll forgive me if I doubt your experience. However, if you are a Boomer it is possible you have seen such a thing. In the 70s and 80s there were certainly dioceses where all sorts of abuses were taking place given the general freakiness and disobedient nature of some of the men and women populating the pews in those scary years. But as Cook is younger than me and as the Church over the last 30 years has taken great pains to bring the freaks to heel, I would very much doubt Cook’s experience with this dissident tradition (if it ever existed).
Exhibit 4: Cook did not immediately return the Host. This behavior is bizarre in the extreme. It suggests that Cook may be a crazy man. Perhaps even an atheist. Again, it is appropriate to doubt the myths and fables constructed by crazy men/atheists.
The only counter evidence that I see (other than the claims of Cook and Collard) is in the defense of Cook by his father. If Cook is an atheist we would expect him to have a strained relationship with his father. On the other hand, that Cook’s father loves him and would defend him doesn’t necessary mean that Cook is willing to accept that love. So while interesting, it’s not dispositive. There are plenty of deranged men and women that reject love that is offered. Who knows why? Maybe free will.
In sum, I think your (negentropyeater’s) accusations of bias are aimed at the wrong target. Consider giving those deep insights about bias and emotion a 180 degree turn.
“Mass (part of the Divine Liturgy which goes on 24 hours a day) will jog on long long after your decision to say no to Him who gave you life, and to Him who showed the world how to convert humiliation into Love.”
You’re still not giving me one single reason to care about your silly weekly ritual. In fact, I’m not sure just what you’re getting at at all.
“What I get out of the tenor of comments in here…is no sign of real love (self giving, self-sacrificing)… instead I see invective, impatience, pride, vanity, emormous ill will, lack of real community, and a lot of insubstantiality.”
If you’re trying to appeal to my Catholic guilt, it ain’t working. I don’t need any of what you consider “love”, because to me it is just pointless supplication to a phantasm. I’d rather be able to respect myself.
Sorry..while there are a few cases above of clever retorts (although laced with unnecessary acid) and one or two interesting points…I think I’ll give more weight to Aquinas’s ability to reason than to anyone above.
There’s not a powerhouse in sight. No one’s writing here will endure beyond a month.
“Two men walk into a 7-11
Owl.
Sorry I missed the earlier question on the Last Battle.
No, I haven’t read it but, based on your brief description and suggested parallel, I think I will probably take a pass on spending time on that book, too many true classics to still get through. It sounds like it may be about half as well thought out as the Davinci code…which was itself a joke.
Did anyone else find this to be one of the funniest/scariest parts of this whole sordid affair?
Rey Fox,
Be happy to help. I can give you a whole set of reasons for attending Mass, but it’d help narrow down the post if I knew better where you stand.
Do you still believe in a first cause? (i.e., “no supposedly INFINITE causal chain coming from the past could ever actually lead to this present moment in time” per Aquinas).
Do you believe in a personal God?
Do you believe that that God wants you to be united with Him forever?
Where are you on the journey?
Loudon is a fool,
Exhibit 1
Sorry, no, ths is secularist thinking. Many practicing Catholics are secularists.
Evidence = unvalid
Exhibit 2
Sorry, but after all what happened he might have given up on being a Catholic !
Evidence = unvalid
Exhibit 3
Can you show evidence of what you are saying, sorry that I have doubts about your affirmation that taking a pew to consume the host is an extremely rare tradition all over the Catholic masses nowadays.
Evidence = doubtful
Exhibit 4
Or that he was really pissed off ! And as a Catholic he knew that as long as he kept the host safe and returned it, he would still be in line with the catechism of the Eucharist. He might have changed his religious convictions after this, once he saw the lunatic reactions from so many Catholics. Nothng strange here.
Evidence = unvalid
Conclusion = one doubtful claim, still no objective evidence of what you are asserting.
Have you heard of “reasonable doubt” ? Do you have any evidence that is such that we can affirm, beyond reasonable doubt, that Cook didn’t have the intention to simply consume the Eucharist at his pew ?
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica:
I note that Aquinas makes several arguments following those statements which allegedly “prove” God’s existence, yet all are logically flawed…
Oh, and they are also mostly ultimately stolen from Aristotle and Plato, who were in point of fact neither Christian nor correct.
Well, then I’m glad that you agree that CS Lewis was not the be-all and end-all of theology and literature.
You’re obviously not familiar with how logical arguments are laid out.
Please lay out the flaws in his logic..but you’ll need to do better than this.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument
“Do you still believe in a first cause? (i.e., “no supposedly INFINITE causal chain coming from the past could ever actually lead to this present moment in time” per Aquinas).”
Not really. If God can supposedly be eternal, I see no reason why the universe can’t. Anyway, this is mostly a question for physicists and cosmologists who are smarter than me and have the resources to actualy probe this matter. And it’s not terribly relevant to my life anyway.
“Do you believe in a personal God?”
Nope. And that sort of renders the rest of your questions moot.
*snort*
Aquinas:
Flaw #1: His final conclusion “to which everyone gives the name of God”, in the sense of being the God of Christianity, does not follow logically from any of the other arguments. It is simply asserted. This is assuming one’s conclusion, or begging the question, as it is known more classically.
Flaw #2: His primary conclusion “Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause” contradicts his first premise “There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible”
Flaw #3: His second premise “Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity” has not been demonstrated to be true; indeed, his phrasing implies that he does not actually understand what “infinity” means. Again, he simply asserts it.
Flaw #4: While it is not exactly his fault, given the time he lived in, modern physics and cosmology do in fact allow the possibility of the universe itself as being simply uncaused, or as an alternative, self-causing. Again, real and actual uncaused causes and/or self-causing causes in the physical world would contradict Aquinas’ first premise.
You could also read the same article you pointed at, paying a little more attention:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Objections_and_counterarguments
Wow. This really takes me back to sophomore year! Thanks, Bill!
MH@539:
I think that’s right. I thought my puppy analogy was actually a valid one, just unnecessarily difficult to set up in practice; the glaring unrealism of the premise makes it too hard for some people to get past that and see the validity of the analogy.
Frogs are only a better example because the logical possibility of the situation (where frogs are not protected from abuse) is trivial to demonstrate. (With an actual existence proof.)
I don’t see that. For setting up the thought experiment, I only need an imaginable situation—preferably an easily imaginable one—not an argument that it’s actually true anywhere, much less everywhere. If the premise is actually true in the contexts we’re talking about—in the U.S.—that’s a practical bonus, but it’s way more than I need for a valid thought experiment.
(If we go outside the U.S., a lot of other stuff changes too; for example, we can’t talk about First Amendment rights of free speech and free exercise.)
Actually, I think that’s the strength of my “analogy” or thought experiment. I wanted a real shoe-on-the-other-foot situation where:
(1) we would be morally certain that an abuse was being perpetrated, but
(2) many other people might not be, and
(3) and the courts would not be likely decide that issue for the purpose of resolving the case at hand.
In the case of a wafer, it’s hard to imagine a court ruling that a communion wafer is not God, and that desecration is a non-issue, and that Catholics are just a bunch of kooks. No way is that going to happen.
Catholics have a constitutional right to believe crazy things about crackers, and in certain situations, to act on those beliefs.
I entirely agree. The hitch is that they don’t need a rational argument for their religious views, in court. (Or in the court of public opinion, in many situations where the dominant spin is sympathetic to them.)
The frog example is meant to be analogous in that I don’t think a court is likely to decide whether fishooking frogs is animal cruelty just to settle the particular case I made up.
For the sake of the thought experiment, we can simply assume that—assume that there are prior decisions that generally leave frogs unprotected from that sort of thing. The only protection my frog is going to get, if it gets any, is going to hinge on my right to control what happens to my property.
I don’t think that’s dishonest, and in fact I was intentionally creating an emotionally loaded situation where the property crime per se, if any, is trivial in monetary terms, but the message it sends is very strong and the reaction to it is very emotional, for reasons that many people can relate to.
That’s what I like about the example—it’s messy in ways analogous to the wafer situation.
I would guess that in a situation like that, my neighbor wouldn’t have fishhooked a frog that day if it wasn’t to send me a message. For most thought experiment purposes, I think we can just assume that—i.e., that because I give my galvanism demo, my neighbor chooses to make a point by going out of his way to obtain one of my frogs and to do things to it that I find abhorrent.
In that kind of situation, I would be pretty put out, even if many other frogs get treated similarly elsewhere every day.
(And in point of fact, many animals do die horrible deaths, in the wild and under other people’s control, but that doesn’t free me from feeling responsible for the captive animals under my control; I feel obligated not to be cruel to them, or to let anyone else be cruel to them.)
If my neighbor chose to go hook some other frog, for some other reason, it would be abhorrent to me, but it wouldn’t involve me in the same way. He has chosen to involve me, responding to my biology demo by obtaining one of my frogs and torturing it.
I think that crosses some line that normal frog-hooking does not. If my neighbor simply wants to catch a bass and buys or catches a frog and baits his hook with it, that may be appalling to me, but it doesn’t put me in the middle or make me an accessory to his deed.
If my neighbor responds to my biology demo by fucking with me and with my frogs that way, I have to care in a different way—my neighbor is doing something similar to holding a hostage and torturing it, making me an accessory, and punishing me for giving my galvanism demonstration.
He may not mean it that way or have terrorist-like intent, but it may affect me similarly either way.
I would feel violated, and fear for my frogs whenever I gave a galvanism demo. I have to worry that somebody can get away with that, and other people might copy his actions, so I have to fear for my frogs and act accordingly whenever I want to give a demo.
That’s not really kidnapping or terrorism, but it’s not exactly a simple matter of abusing a piece of trivial property, either.
It may not be a big practical problem for me—I can get people to sign something saying they will only do certain things with the frogs, and definitely not others, but it does affect my “free exercise” of science; it encumbers it somewhat, making it less free.
In the frog case, maybe that wouldn’t have any overt legal weight. Science teaching is not a specially protected activity, so there might not be any official reason to penalize my neighbor for fucking with my head that way—it’d either be a petty property crime, or no crime at all, and my feelings about interference with my biology demos might not matter.
Unofficially, though, I think it might matter if I got a sympathetic judge and/or jury. Whatever grounds they have for nailing the guy, and whatever leeway they have in sentencing him, they’d be more likely to punish him, or punish him more severely, for being such a dick as to fuck with my head that way when I’m harmlessly doing biology demos. If they think he’s not just making a point, but taking it upon himself to punish me for my perfectly legal and harmless behavior, that could count against him.
I do think there’s something right about that. Certainly, I would be inclined (at least initially) to use whatever argument I could to get people not to torture frogs.
And as I just said above, I wouldn’t be surprised if sympathetic judges or juries used whatever leeway they have to nail the guy, whether they legally “should” or not.
One thing that’s weird here is that I think a lot of people here on Pharyngula have different intuitions about free speech than some judges and many juries.
To us, it’s easy to see free speech as something absolute—no matter what you say, nobody has a right to punish you for it. Speech is presumed to be a good thing, or at least neutral; it can’t be morally wrong in a way that the law can be concerned about.
I think a lot of other people have a very different intuition. They think that a lot of speech is morally wrong, and in a better world, it “should” be illegal—the only reason why have such general free speech is that it wouldn’t be practical for the courts to be involved in deciding who the bad guys really are, “who started it” in particular cases, etc.
For us, when somebody is exercising their free speech and happens to cross the line into a non-speech offense such as petty theft on the way to making their point, it may seem that the theft is just petty, and should be ignored. To worry about something like a two-cent cracker would be ridiculous because the free speech issues are so much more important.
To the others, though, the kind of speech we’re talking about is generally considered a bad thing, but technically legal because it’s impractical to catch people for being antisocial, negative assholes. But once they cross the line from pure speech into a property crime, BAM!, you’ve got them.
That’s one of the bad reasons for support of hate crime laws. (There are good ones.)
Hate crime laws amplify the severity of minor offenses and let you really smack it to somebody who just barely crosses a clear line into something besides a purely speech offense.
So for example, antisemites might protest outside a synagogue every sabbath, holding hateful signs and saying hateful things, and make it not worth going to that synagogue, but be legally in the clear.
But if somebody who’s not actually hateful or antisemitic makes a civil, rational dissenting theological argument in indelible pen on a painted synagogue wall, she can go to federal prison for up to a year.
In the former case, the actual damage could be enormous. A very expensive synagogue may become effectively unusable, and a lot of people may be greatly inconvenienced. In the latter case, the damage may be trivial—a few minutes painting over the “damage” to a painted wall. (With matching paint that’s already lying around for touch-ups.) But crossing that line from pure speech into a “trivial” property crime is asking for a whole world of trouble.
That’s the kind of thing I’m worried about if a court were to deem crackerjacking to be petty theft by deception.
The fact that it’s in service of a larger, valid point may seem to us a mitigating factor, such that the case should be thrown out or result in nothing more than a token slap on the wrist.
I suspect that to many people, the “larger point” would be an aggravating factor.
Suppose my neighbor tricks me out of a frog because he’s indifferent to my views and just wants a free frog for bass fishing, and a court decides that’s petty theft. That would make him an indifferent thief, but not a malicious one.
On the other hand, if he goes out of his way to trick me out of a frog and put it on a hook because he knows I won’t like it, that’s malice.
Likely there’s no actual malice—maybe he just wants to get my attention, and other people’s attention, and make his point very vividly. But even assuming that’s true, I wouldn’t count on a jury or the public seeing it that way.
That’s one reason I’m not comfortable with our side being involved in crackerjacking and desecration. I see the valid points being made, but it’s very easy for the valid points to get lost and for the whole thing to seem like malicious fucking with people.
Re: CJO @ 505
(a bit late, but I’ve been travelling..)
And yet, I suspect that more people are religious than reproduce. (And not even all the difference is made up for by monks and suicide bombers!)
The human mind is unfortunately inclined to mysticism. I am a committed atheist, but must frequently remind myself that the overriding sense of awe that confronts me when faced with the boundless complexity of the natural world is, after all, an emotion rather than an argument.
There are only so many remotely consistent mystical positions on offer. You could try and make up your own, I suppose, but probably with comparable success to someone who tried to invent a new sexual orientation. I do not mean no success: compare, e.g., furries.
—
Agree. But I was not concerned with proscription. My point was that craig had the opinion, roughly, that it’s OK to mock religious types because they have chosen a harmful belief system, but not ok to mock homosexuals because, harmful or not, they did not choose. My response, in essence, was: suppose they did choose and suppose that choice was harmful; would it then be ok to mock?
Your response, as I understand it: why mock? Love the sinner, proscribe the sin. But if that’s how we should treat the counterfactual homosexuals, can you consistently advocate that we mock the religious people? (You didn’t previously, of course, but craig did and I presume you are defending him.)
My own view, for the record, is that mockery is appropriate in both scenarios, as a relatively painless vehicle for social change.
It is all about context. Myers has the right to say and do whatever he wants; as should anyone; however, it don’t work that way. If a sociology professor at UofMM regularly posted to a blog discussing society and economics, then posted an article about how the Jews control the economic system of the US (fact: Jews comprise 80% of the Board of Governors and the majority of Federal Reserve Bank Presidents are Jews). And, he also stated that the primary negative impact to the economic and educational system in the US is African Americans culture of out-of-wedlock births and that no matter how much money is spent, this situaion will not change. This professor would be censured by the University, etc. etc.
While I disagree with the actions and positions of the example professor and the actions annd positions or Myers, as individuals, they have the right to such positions were they expressed without reference to their jobs – i.e. I support Myers right to speak as an individual if he does not reference himself as a professor, as I support the example professor’s similar rights. As educators, both have the responsibility to remain impartial to opinion in their classrooms (Myers is not impartial in his classes). Speaking from the position as a college professor, in either example is unprofessional and appears to be with an over-arching ego feeding aspect.
In Sastra’s example – the student has all rights; however, if the scenario were changed from a student to a professor performing such actions – the situation is unacceptable.
Your analogy falls way short.
1) A gay support group is not a religion. Therefore has no constitutional protection. Is gayism a religion now? If so, then it is a choice, not a pre-disposition. Catholicism is a religion and has constitutional protection. It is a choice to belong.
2) A pin is a mere symbol to be worn externally. They were handed out unconditionally to anyone who attended. The Eucharist is more than a symbol, it is a shared meal to be consumed, and it is only distributed conditionally among qualified Catholics. If you fail to meet the conditions, that gives the host the new status of “stolen property”.
In both cases the attendees misrepresented themselves to intentionally defraud the “enemy” group of it’s property. In the case of the pin, if they were handed out unconditionally, so there is no crime. In teh case of the Eucharist, there is a contract that was broken, and a crime was committed.
J, your apologies fall way short too. The cracker is gift. Period, end of story. As with any gift, once possession passes, it is the property of the possesser.
So another Liar for JebusTM on an old thread. This seems to be a character fault for godbots.
The Eucharist is more than a symbol, it is a shared meal to be consumed, and it is only distributed conditionally among qualified Catholics.
So, do you need to be tested and issued an ID card which states you are qualified to get a cracker.
BTW, nice link; Roman 6:22. Death is a natural event, not a supernatural punishment.
Your comments about “Gayism” is too absurd to comment on.