July 16, 2008
Sean Carroll on the PZ Myers Wafergate Controversy
Recently, a student in Florida took a consecrated communion wafer to show some non-Catholic friends. Some local believers took this to be a "hate crime," and the student even received some death threats (yes, death threats!). PZ Myers then asked his readers to "smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address." This in turn has led to a response by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue that can only be characterized as wacko. Donohoe contacted the administration at the University of Minnesota and the state legislature to get Myers fired. He then got a RNC delegate to secure extra security for the Republican Convention for protection from PZ and his incitement to wafer-steal.
Sean Carroll offers an interesting take on the whole affair:
There is no way in which PZ is comparable to the folks sending him death threats. I completely agree with him on the substantive question — it’s just a cracker. It doesn’t turn into anyone’s body, and there’s nothing different about a “consecrated” wafer than an unconsecrated one — the laws of physics have something to say about that.
But I thought his original post was severely misguided. It’s not a matter of freedom of speech — PZ has every right to post whatever opinions he wants on his blog, and I admire him immensely for his passionate advocacy for the cause of godlessness. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And there’s a huge difference between arguing passionately that God doesn’t exist, and taking joy in doing things that disturb religious people.
Let me explain this position by way of a parable, which I understand is the preferred device in these situations.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 02:56 PM | Permalink
Comments
"And there’s a huge difference between arguing passionately that God doesn’t exist, and taking joy in doing things that disturb religious people."
Unless taking joy in doing things that disturb religious people (eg, supporting gay marriage, great unmarried sex and the rational thinker's right to openly *refuse* to show "respect" to silly, cartoon-like, wholly imagined superbeings) is, you know, part of your Belief System.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jul 16, 2008 3:12:11 PM
Our capital in the DR is named after Santo Domingo de Guzman (1170-1221), architect of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, the one the current Pope headed until his accession to St. Peter's throne.
In that church --- the Holy Catholic Church, that is --- those guilty of the sins of apostasy or sacrilege will pay with their lives.
So what's wrong with that?
God loves you!
Amen
(I'd only wish we could change the name of the city for something nicer as Philadelphia or Filadelfia instead of Ciudad Trujillo).
Posted by: Felix E F Larocca MD | Jul 16, 2008 3:14:32 PM
I have to disagree with Sean Carroll's construal of this. There is indeed no redeeming value to the paragraph of text Carroll quotes from Myers' blog post. If that paragraph existed in a vacuum it would truly be an ugly, juvenile display of contempt for ones fellows.
Context matters though. Here that context is calls from the Catholic League for the expulsion of a student for not eating his wafer, and mad claims that the student committed a hate crime for his actions amount to kidnapping. The boy's even received death threats.
There is indeed a need to be sensitive and courteous. There is also a time to stand up in solidarity: I don't share Myers' apparent revulsion / hatred for religious symbols, but this isn't the time for THAT debate. This is the time to say 'I refuse to discuss religious tolerance with a thug and a bully like Donahue.'
*I* am irritated enough by the behavior of Donahue's thugs that I'm half tempted to buy a wafer on ebay, masticate it thoroughly then mail the results to Mr Donahue. He has no bloody business demanding a student's expulsion for trivialities like these.
Once moderate Catholics have taken up the cry to marginalize the Catholic League on this matter I'll gladly join them in criticizing PZ Myers for his occasional boorishness on matters religious.
Posted by: D | Jul 16, 2008 3:47:19 PM
In a world running out of cheap energy and clean water and farmable land and harvestable oceans, the stakes are too high to accord any respect to intellectual and moral laziness in any realm of knowledge.
Sure, we all believe in a wafer of some kind to make sense and meaning of the world, and I’m incredibly fortunate that my bulwark against the darkness is science.
I thank you [Sean] for writing this post, because it’s impossible not to be part of this conversation (although many mistakenly imagine they are “above” it), as it is the invisible undercurrent of every conversation and touches every public and private decision.
This is the principle conflict of our time, and we better figure out that this is the real enemy (not teenage terrorists in pajamas in a desert 12,000 miles away) before the lights start going out.
The recent New Yorker cartoon lampooning the right-wing’s portrayal of the Obama’s as secret revolutionaries and closet Muslims — should be shocking in its accurate portrayal of the right-wing as utterly un-American in its values, let alone un-human. But this isn’t what the current conversation on the cartoon is remotely about.
Even in its simple-minded mythology of broad-brush homilies, America was built by revolutionaries seeking religious freedom who had no respect for nationalist impulses, standing armies, aristocratic exceptionalism, corporatist thugs, or a specific flavor of god. For a while we were those ingenious Yanks.
I’m beyond tired of the inroads made by right-wing and religious fanatics who can’t perform basic human functions, like write a song, solve a quadratic equation, tend a garden, love a partner, steward even their own small portion of the world without utterly savaging it, and raise children to do the same.
I have revolution in my blood and I think you should, too. I’m not going to give the world to thugs in uniforms (police state or church) with wafers and magically-written texts who’ve spent the last decades (I’m thinking of Jimmy Carter’s 1979 speech) ensuring that the basic science we needed to be doing to get to energy independence, with efficient solar cells and fuel algaes and fusion, would be here now.
It’s not merely that these people are not on our side. They’re committed to a path that destroys the enlightened parts of the world and impoverishes what’s left. They send women home. They kill gays. They burn libraries. They close schools. They believe god should be in government, shellfish are an abomination, and anybody who disagrees should be stoned.
Jung wrote a great deal about the religious function. It’s time you scientists (I am pointing at you) started to understand, as the economists are finally beginning to understand, that we are not a rational species, and absent considerable assistance, we make lousy decisions.
PZ Meyers gets this, and is willing to step outside the ivory tower of soft-toned academic-elitist disagreement and go toe-to-toe, on an almost daily basis, with these ignorant creeps in the language they understand.
Somebody has to fight the slime mold in the basement or it takes over; we can't all be "above" taking out the garbage.
Both of your voices are needed, but please do not add your voice to those who hit him from the rear.
Posted by: /ehj2 | Jul 16, 2008 6:47:13 PM
Somebody has to fight the slime mold in the basement or it takes over; we can't all be "above" taking out the garbage.
Honestly said.
It's time to break some windows?
I'm writing RC on my shirt as we speak.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 16, 2008 7:17:14 PM
Isn't Myers inciting theft? Does he have the legal right to do that?
Posted by: Sagredo | Jul 16, 2008 7:18:37 PM
Actually PZ is involved with cannibalism and body snatching--
The Psychopathic Space Daddy will look down on this, as it goes against his extraterrestrial moral code on cannibalism.
I hope Ram and his Army of Monkey's doesn't attack PZ also, as they may be need for bridge building.
Anyone up for reading comic books?
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Jul 16, 2008 8:46:23 PM
OK now let's talk about circumcision.
Posted by: Roy Belmont | Jul 16, 2008 8:51:32 PM
"It’s time you scientists (I am pointing at you) started to understand, as the economists are finally beginning to understand, that we are not a rational species, and absent considerable assistance, we make lousy decisions"
"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this"
Bertrand Russell
Posted by: Jared | Jul 16, 2008 10:18:18 PM
> Isn't Myers inciting theft?
I'm not a lawyer, but I would think in the absence of a contract stating otherwise, once they give you the cracker you are free to do with it as you please -- including mailing it to Myers.
Posted by: John Hascall | Jul 17, 2008 8:46:11 AM
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