PZ Myers has gone and gotten himself embroiled in another one of those imbroglios. For those of you who don’t trouble to read any other blogs, the story began with the report of a student in Florida who smuggled a Communion wafer — the Body of Christ, to Catholics — out of Mass. This led to something of an overreaction on the part of some local believers, who referred to the stunt as a “hate crime,” and the student even received death threats. (You remember the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says “Blessed are those who exterminate those who insult Me,” right?)
PZ was roused to indignation by the incident, and wrote a provocative post in which he volunteered to do grievous harm to Communion wafers, if he could just get his hands on any.
Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage … but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can 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.
But the thing that took the whole mess to another level was the intervention of Bill Donohue, whose Catholic League represents the very most lunatic fringe of the Church. Donohue, who specializes in being outraged, contacted the administration at the University of Minnesota, as well as the state legislature. Later deciding that this level of dudgeon wasn’t quite high enough, Donohue soon after upped the ante, prompting a delegate to the Republican National Convention to demand additional security, as the delegates felt physically threatened by PZ and his assembled hordes. (The Republican convention will be held in the Twin Cities, about 150 miles away from PZ’s university in Morris, Minnesota.)
There is a lot of craziness here. People are sending death threats and attacking someone’s employment because of hypothetical (not even actual) violence to a wafer. Even for someone who is a literal believer in transubstantiation, threatening violence against someone who mocks your beliefs doesn’t seem like a very Christian attitude. Donohue and his friends are acting like buffoons, giving free ammunition to people who think that all religious believers are nutjobs. But it gets him on TV, so he’s unlikely to desist.
However.
We should hold our friends to a much higher standards than we hold our adversaries. 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. Alice and Bob have been friends for a long time. Several years ago, Alice gave birth to a son, who was unfortunately critically ill from the start; after being in intensive care for a few months, he ultimately passed away. Alice’s most prized possession is a tiny baby rattle, which was her son’s only toy for the short time he was alive.
Bob, however, happens to be an expert on rattles. (A childhood hobby — let’s not dig into that.) And he knows for a fact that this rattle can’t be the one that Alice’s son had — this particular model wasn’t even produced until two years after the baby was born. Who knows what mistake happened, but Bob is completely certain that Alice is factually incorrect about the provenance of this rattle.
And Bob, being devoted to the truth above all other things, tries his best to convince Alice that she is mistaken about the rattle. But she won’t be swayed; to her, the rattle is a sentimental token of her attachment to her son, and it means the world to her. Frankly, she is being completely irrational about this.
So, striking a brave blow for truth, Bob steals the rattle when Alice isn’t looking. And then he smashes it into many little pieces, and flushes them all down the toilet.
Surprisingly to Bob, Alice is not impressed with this gesture. Neither, in fact, are many of his friends among the rattle-collecting cognoscenti; rather than appreciating his respect for the truth, they seem to think he was just being “an asshole.”
I think there is some similarity here. It’s an unfortunate feature of a certain strand of contemporary atheism that it doesn’t treat religious believers as fellow humans with whom we disagree, but as tards who function primarily as objects of ridicule. And ridicule has its place. But sometimes it’s gratuitous. Sure, there are stupid/crazy religious people; there are also stupid/crazy atheists, and black people, and white people, and gays, and straights, and Republicans, and Democrats, and Sixers fans, and Celtics fans, and so on. Focusing on stupidest among those with whom you disagree is a sign of weakness, not of strength.
It seems to me that the default stance of a proud secular humanist should be to respect other people as human beings, even if we definitively and unambiguously think they are wrong. There will always be a lunatic fringe (and it may be a big one) that is impervious to reason, and there some good old-fashioned mockery is perfectly called for. But I don’t see the point in going out of one’s way to insult and offend wide swaths of people for no particular purpose, and to do so joyfully and with laughter in your heart. (Apparently the litmus test for integrity vs. hypocrisy on this issue is how you felt about the Mohammed cartoons published in a Danish newspaper a couple of years ago; so you can read my take on that here, and scour the text for inconsistencies.)
Actually, I do see the point in the gratuitous insults, I just don’t like it. Like any other controversial stance, belief in God or not divides people into camps. And once the camps are formed, the temptations of tribalism are difficult to resist. We are smart and courageous and wise; the people who disagree with us are stupid and cowardly and irrational. And it’s easy enough to find plenty of examples of every combination, on any particular side. There is nothing more satisfying than getting together and patting ourselves on the back for how wonderful we are, and snorting with derision at the shambling oafishness of that other tribe over there.
My hope is that humanists can not only patiently explain why God and any accompanying metaphysical superstructure is unnecessary and unsupported by the facts, but also provide compelling role models for living a life of reason, which includes the capacity for respectful disagreement.
I say all this with a certain amount of care, as there is nothing more annoying than people who think that professions of atheism or careful arguments against the existence of God are automatically offensive. Respectful dialogue cuts both ways; people should be able to explain why they don’t believe in the supernatural or why they believe. Even if both atheists and believers are susceptible to the temptations of tribalism, that doesn’t make them equivalent; the atheists have the advantage of being right on the substance. Richard Dawkins and his friends have done a great service to our modern discourse, by letting atheism get a foot in the door of respectable stances that one has to admit are held by a nontrivial fraction of people — even if they stepped on a few toes to do it. But stepping on toes should be a means to an end; it shouldn’t be an end in itself.
Well said. Worth the read.
“I’m not for anybody who tells me to turn the other cheek when a cracker is busting up my jaw.”
Malcolm X (1964)
Had to add that! 😉 Good post.
Sean,
An interesting point of view, but your analogy is wholly misleading. The rattle, a unique object to this woman, neither plays the same role nor has the same significance, as a wafer that is mass produced, freely given away, digested and excreted.
Whilst I would not dare speak for PZ, I feel sure that he would never advocate the destruction or defacement of the Shroud of Turin for example.
Secondly, I cannot see how a wafer, even if it is believed to be the body of Christ (making those who consume it some form of cannibal if they are correct), can have the same emotional relevance as a unique object such as a rattle, even if it isn’t the actual one used by the baby. If the wafer were that significant, then Catholics would hoard them, not eat them and excrete them.
A good attempt, but unconvincing.
Adrian
Amen.
Donohue will be safe – there is no way PZ can afford to drive the 150 miles to the twin cities on a faculty salary…
Good post. The problem of the lunatic fringe is that their voice is amplified by overrepresentation on the internet.
I am tempted to just say that people who “specialize in being outraged” like PZ and Bill deserve each other, but unfortunately these people end up representing others who are good at not being outraged.
I’m not sure I agree that good old fashioned mockery and toe-stepping are sometimes in order. You’ve given me something to think about.
I like the rattle story. Adrian doesn’t like it, but I think that if you appreciate the value of symbols — not empty symbols, but symbols carrying the meaning of that which they represent — then this story is a good analogy. My attempt (slightly different angle, and also flawed, but anyway):
For me nationalism is mostly silly, and sometimes even dangerous, leading to things like war. National flags are symbols of nations, and nationalists therefore see them as containing the essence of what they hold precious. I can see why they would get upset if someone burned their flag, or even dropped it on the ground. Because I don’t share their sense of value of the nation, I have nothing much against burning flags per se. In this case I think it’s obvious why I might consider (in some extreme case) to burn the flag of my own country, but also why it’s very unwise to burn the flag of another country — especially if nationalism is considered to be a major virtue over there.
Adrian,
The point (as I’m putting words in Sean’s mouth) of the rattle story is the power of perception. The emotional attachment to the rattle by both the woman and those around her is driven by their perception that it was the boy’s rattle.
Independent of the cracker’s manufacturing process, to those involved with that communion it’s very significant. The emotional attachment they have to that cracker is akin to that of the woman and the rattle, which consequently was also mass produced.
If you happen to be a horse lover, despite the fact there are hundreds of thousands of horses in the world, you would probably be offended if I made a documentary with laughter in my heart of my horse’s trek to the glue factory.
Lucky for the horses of the world I don’t own any.
~RZ
“It’s an unfortunate feature of a certain strand of contemporary atheism that it doesn’t treat religious believers as fellow humans with whom we disagree, but as tards who function primarily as objects of ridicule.”
exactly!
good parable too. but as i’ve argued on my blog and elsewhere, any rational person would know that a consecrated wafer is not just “a cracker” (at least to billions of Catholics around the world). no need for elaborate parables, just consider our treatment of flags as national symbols. threaten to desecrate a flag in public and you’d get similar responses from religious/patriotic/nationalistic nuts, as well as more matured and sane people.
thanks for this excellent post.
~C
I didn’t read all the replies, so I apologize if something similar was already posted but… my thoughts below to which I conveyed to a friend in the discussion of this post…
“interesting post, but i don’t think the analogy fits… the ‘respect’ that that woman deserves in reference to the loss of her son (as the parable suggests) is different than ‘respect’ a religion deserves because of a belief in an imaginary entity… see, her son was REAL… and his DEATH was REAL…”
anyway, love the blog, just my 2 cents 😉
I agree with the thrust of the post, and disagree with Adrian. I came up with a similar parable which I think reinforces your point.
Imagine Alice goes to the cemetary and sees men digging up graves to look for valuables. The bodies they’re disturbing are dead, and so the corpses don’t care. There’s millions of graves around the world, so the robbers aren’t destroying anything of rarity or intrinsic value. The robbers don’t want to be detected so they replace everything as it was found, minus the valuables. And finally, if Alice doesn’t tell anyone then the families of the dead will never miss whatever was taken.
Is Alice justified in being offended nonetheless? I think so. For PZ to do something like insult Alice and say “Hey, send more bodies to me and I’ll dress them up in party hats” is not very nice.
It does remind me a bit of junior high when some of the bullies used to bait the tards riding the bus on the way to school. I suspect there is more than a bit of cruelty motivating them in this instance: Watch the tards get all worked up when we steal their crackers!
(A different Adrian 🙂 )
I too find the analogy very misleading.
Cook originally took a wafer which was special only by virtue of having a magical incantation. There are millions of other crackers identical to it, and he only took what was given to him. The rattle is unique, it wasn’t given away and it was smashed not returned (as the cracker was).
Further, PZ only steps in after the big emotional upset. If we take your analogy and instead of thinking Bob was being an “asshole”, Alice and her friends issued death threats, said his act was worse than a hate crime, compared him to a kidnapper and then launched a campaign to harass him at school. Thinking Bob was an asshole would be minor, the incident would be forgotten, everything would be fine. PZ only enters the picture after the armed guards had to get involved. His crime is to say “you think rattles are nice, if someone can score me a rattle, I’d smash it on television!”
Yeah, it’s nice to get an analogy that tries to share the emotional depth the Catholics may feel, but it’s so far off as to be deceitful, in my humble opinion. The fact that we can’t think of any analogy which would have both the sheer triviality of the offence yet provoke the insane response reinforces the need to expose this sort of lunacy.
OMG! What’s wrong with CV and it’s readers today? Most of you seem to be agreeing with the post??? Whats wrong with you all?
Correct me if I am wrong, but by extension of this post, the cartoonists who drew comics of the Prophet Mohammad were wrong. The Prophet is the Muslim rattle after all. Creationism is the Christian rattle after all. In fact if I apply the humanist principle outlined here in it’s ridiculous extreme, then belief in God is the real baby rattle of the majority of the religious folks. So, are we now suddenly not supposed to not question religion now?
Come on, Sean! Pardon me, but I have been around here for quite some time and I find this rather shallow and unexpected coming from you. Creating emotionally charged Bob and Alice analogies doesn’t change the fact that the core issue here is whether we should or should not challenge stuff that is considered sacred. Is this really your position on that issue?
It seems to me that the default stance of a proud secular humanist should be to respect other people as human beings, even if we definitively and unambiguously think they are wrong.
I disagree.
First and foremost, I don’t think anyone deserves intellectual respect as a human being. Belonging to the same biological species I belong to, automagically does not demand intellectual respect.
Intellectual respect is something that you actually have to deserve. And religious people actively pursuit beliefs that make impossible for me to intellectually respect them.
It’s not they are wrong in the conclusions, the problem. The problem is that they are blatantly, utterly wrong in the methods (or lack thereof) they arrive to the conclusion. They simply stop thinking and give up to faith. That’s something I simply cannot even begin to think to respect.
And there is no thing like a “religious nut”, because all religious people are basically nuts in the same sense: they found their metaphyisical conceptions and daily life on completely unproven (or even positively disproven) supernatural claims. The “nuts” just display more integrity to their beliefs, at least.
Sean,
I think your parable misses the mark somewhat. It seems less like the poor woman is attached to her single rattle which someone desecrates, than that she’s insisting in very heated and aggressive terms that everyone treat every rattle of this same mass-produced and widely-available brand with the same reverence she shows her own.
Matt,
I don’t think Alice in your example would be justified in taking offense. The ghouls would just be recycling a valuable resource. Why should we treat dead bodies with reverence? Tradition, because for religious and historical reasons it’s the norm in our society? That’s not a good reason at all.
Sean, the original story is often extremely distorted. The student did not “smuggle” a communion wafer out of mass. He’s a Catholic. He received communion in the hand and took it back to his seat to show a non-Catholic friend who was curious about it. The student claims he was then going to consume it. However, some of his fellow Catholics saw that he still had the wafer and physically attacked him. The student didn’t so much smuggle the wafer out as he ran with it, one step ahead of the people who were pummeling him. It all went severely downhill from there.
As for PZ’s over-the-top satire: He is, unfortunately, no Jonathan Swift. A more carefully written diatribe (although one seldom thinks of “diatribes” as carefully written) might have been more obvious to those who thought PZ was actually planning a three-ring communion wafer desecrationthon. Both the student in the original incident and PZ have now received multiple death threats from ostensible Christians. Some people take their religion too seriously — except for its tenets of peace and forgiveness.
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I think the rattle analogy doesn’t quite apply here. In that example, you are talking about stealing and destroying a one-of-a-kind object that cannot be replaced.
The crackers are not behind glass. No one is going to steal anything, they are given freely by the priests. Granted, the priest expects you to eat the cracker, but I don’t think that not doing so amounts to thievery.
Moreover, the cracker itself means nothing – they’re mass produced in factories. It’s not comparable to a sacred icon (like the rattle). It’s the desecration of the ritual, not the object, that is the cause of outrage.
You can still argue that it’s unnecessarily cruel for PZ to advocate taking crackers, but it’s not at all the same as covertly stealing and destroying a valuable object.
This was really well written, and you made excellent points. I’ve been thinking about posting on this issue, but I’m sure I have anything to add.
I really PZ. I read his weblog before he became an atheist superstar. We’re fellow cephalopod lovers. He doesn’t death threats, or that idiot Donahue. Neither does the student who wanted to smuggle out the cracker, though I think the old saw on sides to a story applies here: there’s the student’s side, there’s the church’s side, and there’s the truth.
Returning to PZ, sometimes he reminds me of the extremists in the religions, including the Catholic league. As you wrote, every “category” of person has extremist representatives, and unfortunately, PZ is an extremist among the atheists. He’d probably agree with me for saying this.
What’s sad to me, though, is he doesn’t seem to respect when a fellow atheist disagrees with him on these issues.
Excuse me, “I really _like_ PZ” and “He doesn’t deserve death”
Sorry
PZ is the Howard Stern of science, although I don’t see all that much science in most of what he does – it’s all about religion. He has done, and will continue to do, outrageous things to get more attention and further his career and influence (which seems to be what many science bloggers actually are after – if you don’t write papers, write blog posts). You’re helping him by paying attention. The question though, is whether or not all this noise helps to fight religious extremism, and more importantly, advance science in the public eye.
Well said, Sean. (As always.)
Well, I’ll agree that Donahue is a tool, and that people are making a big deal out of it. But I feel that P.Z. Meyers is in the wrong for an entirely different reason than discussed here. Whether we agree or disagree with the rationale behind ritual, it is still an important aspect of community whether it be as informal as drinking beer and watching the game, or as formal as legal due process. Soliciting people to disrupt a Catholic communion doesn’t strike me as that much different from soliciting people to disrupt a same-sex marriage or the funeral of a gay man.
Aloysius: The value of ritual and symbols have very little to do with the underlying value of the physical things used by them, and a lot to do with the values of share community that create those symbols.
Sean,
I find myself in general agreement with you.
However, I will say that the woman in your parable is a thoroughly sympathetic victim. There is no equivalent in the reality that is the cracker story. Not Donahue and not the crazed Jesus-freaks who threatened (and apparently beat!) the young man and are now after PZ’s blood. Nobody.
The problem is, what it has to be fought is not religious extremism.
It is religion itself.
If you believe that the Bible (or Quran, or whatever) is the Word of God, the only logical consequence of that -given the kind of god therein described- is to follow that book literally and ruthlessly. Religious extremists are actually the most logical and self-coherent religion followers.
Until religion won’t be eradicated, religious extremists will unavoidably sprout.
And even if you don’t buy that view, even religious moderates can be harmful. Here in Italy, our legislation on civil issues like same-sex convivence, euthanasia and stem cell research is pushed blatantly back by the influence of secular (non-ordained) politicians that nonetheless follow the Church teachings on the subjects. This happens in both the mainstream right-wing and left-wing coalitions. These are not extremists -there are peaceful, polite people that would never threat anyone and sometimes are not even strictly religious. Nonetheless, they actually keep dying, conscient people agonize in their beds because they refuse to make euthanasia legal due to a Christian view of “life rights”, for example.