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.
Good post. This is why I don’t read PZ’s blog (and to some extent Bad Astronomy either). I am a strong agnostic (what most people would call atheist), but I look down on assholes more than on the indoctrinated.
I can understand and sympathize with those who, like jre (#32) think that emotional distress should not be caused without real justification. However, in order to do so and live as an ex-pat here in the deep south of the US would be impossible. I have very good friends who, since my knowing them, have become deeply devout Christians (as far as I can see, there is no correlation between their conversions and them knowing me!). My being an atheist clearly and evidently causes them emotional distress (as evidenced from their remarks and actions). What is one to do? Should I convert?
As for the value of ridicule, I make full use of it (along with healthy doses of science) whenever a student in one of my classes challenges evolution or any aspect of the paleo-sciences. I realize that I’m not going to convince that individual that they are patently wrong. But, I may convince some of the quieter students who are sitting on the fence, or those who are having doubts about their faith. And yes, I have evidence that this happens in the fact that people have come up to me later and thanked me for showing how ridiculous some of these beliefs are; they had thought similarly, but didn’t realize that others thought that way.
Lastly, as is obvious from his writings, PZ was reacting to the patent insanity of those making threats against the Florida student. As others have pointed out on this forum, context is everything.
Many have a strong feeling that being nice and discussing things on a rational level is the more “humane” way to do things – anything else is just not cricket. Well, that might have been true in the days of Jeeves and Wooster (though I suspect not). Just today I see in the news over here that Bush Jr, Trent Lott and their ilk are claiming that not one drop of oil was spilled during Katrina. I see that the HHS is re-defining the time of conception based on the results on a Zobgy poll!!!!! The former is being used to argue for allowing off-shore drilling. The latter may have the effect of making the pill, IUDs and other contraceptive devices harder to get. And no one in the mainstream media calls these people on these patent lies and ridiculous methodologies.
So, I’m sorry if it offends people’s sense of decency, but if peoples beliefs lead them to make major decisions that affect not only themselves, but also those around them, and those decisions are based on sheer craziness, lies or a lack of ability to cope with reality, then yes, I will cause them emotional distress. And whilst on the subject, what about the emotional distress the likes of Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, Trent Lott, Bill O’Reilly and many more locals here in Athens cause me every time they try to force their irrationality on me. Sorry, I fight fire with fire, though only after I’ve tried the more “humane” approach.
Adrian
p.s. In the name of full disclosure, I was once Christian, my PhD supervisor was (and presumably still is) a devout Catholic.
Luzid,
Yeah, I thought about the fact that atheists, by definition, don’t believe in anything (as far as God is concerned), when I wrote my first post. But I thought that making that distinction would be unnecessary because everyone would know my intention, plus it would have made the post even longer.
But I’m glad that I was able to give you something to be smugly right about.
However, you are “wrong, wrong, wrong” in saying that PZ is attacking a belief, not the believers. If you want to attack a belief, you say it’s untrue, and maybe you point out the reasons that you think it’s wrong. You don’t mock it and threaten to do things that would emotionally distress the believers. That’s not going to do anything other than rile people up.
Furthermore, if you attack someone’s deeply-held belief as something that only an irrational tard unworthy of any human respect would believe, then yes, you are attacking that person.
Sean,
As a regular reader, I appreciate this post. You remained self-consistent while exemplifying respect for others.
Was the analogy perfect? Hardly. Then again, they seldom are.
Some who have commented seem to disregard the different meanings for the word “respect”. Respecting intelligence denotes esteem or admiration. However respect as you have outlined is not borne out of esteem, but is inherent in each person. I can disagree, I can think someone foolish, but respect is a deserving social convention that smoothes out many wrinkles.
Just as many here (likely rightfully so), consider intellect the pinnacle of human abilities, there are others who would say kindless, generousity, empathy trump intellect. To such, they might have little emotional or social respect for many of us. But that should never give them the right to disrespect us for our founded beliefs.
Neal B (#74)
I love the characterization of Russell as a “gentlemanly doubter”. For his day, he caused considerable outrage. So did Huxley. And neither were above spicing their writings or debates with ridicule when they felt it was deemed necessary. The founders of this nation also made it quite clear how they felt about religion, especially as it was practiced in their day – again, they were often less than polite. Some of the more well-known US writers are known for their brilliant use of ridicule, sarcasm and wit.
So, I’d be curious to know if the general consensus is that Russell, Huxley, Adams, Paine, Jefferson, Twain, Mencken etc should be regarded as adolescents and snooty brats?
Genesis 2:23 – And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
That’s pretty early on in the bible. I’d love a religious Christian person to explain to me how the bible, as the Word of God, can be interpreted in a way that I don’t find grossly offensive.
Symbols are objects, acts, events, qualities that serve as tangible formulations of beliefs, longings, judgments, attitudes of an individual. When dearly held symbols are derided, owners of such symbols may react any which way. What PZ did was a symbol of derision of Donahue’s symbol. Donahaue made sure he went a notch higher and “specialized some more in being outraged”. Man will go to war for the destruction of one’s symbols. Anyone argue with jihad? I learned religion is a system of symbols that establish powerful and pervasive motivations in men. It formulates ideas of an order of existence. When such order of existence is threatened, anything can happen. And any discussion on the integrity of one’s actions is rendered moot and academic.
By the way, the symbolism in the cracker is at one end of the continuum while that of the rattle is at the other end. The former is a symbol of one’s Creator and the latter a symbol of one’s created, if I may create a binary. One can decide which destruction of which will yield the greater imbroglio.
You have a great post. There is always a “political unconscious” in every text, so F. Jameson said.
Other Sean:
Nope. You’re still wrong. He’s attacking the ridiculous belief about the wafer itself, not the believer – no matter how deeply-held that belief is, it is NOT a part of that person except by choice (unlike, say, one’s ethnicity or sexual orientation).
As an aside, I don’t feel smug. I was just correcting a common erroneous claim believers make about nonbelievers. We have no faith, and we don’t choose to not believe.
Great discussion. I put a link to it on the Harvard Humanist group blog.
I find it interesting, although not surprising given CV’s demographics, that most commenters are atheists or critical towards religious beliefs.
I both agree and disagree with Sean. Disagreement first:
Alice’s delusional rattle is a harmless symptom, and forcefully taking it from her only causes damage. It is not going to help her get over the grief that is the true origin of that delusion. In the case of organized religion, and the share of fundamentalist activism that it invariably comes with, the delusion is dangerous to the extent that it attacks our lives and freedom, can doom our civilization, and us as a species – the rattle is an icon that they try to make us worship by all means, sizing the educational system, the government, the police, and finally all free thinking, to chase us right back onto the trees (the stone age actually had some – behold – science), probably through a few devastating wars along the way.
That being said, the rattle/cracker is a mere symptom and desecrating it does not solve the problem. It is an efficient way to create necessary controversy by drawing attention to outrageous acts committed by religious zealots, and tear down their masks of righteousness by coaxing them to show their true face. Maybe there are better ways, not sure.
In the case of moderate religious people, I agree with Sean. There are legions out there who are decent, intelligent, and are religious because they received the same kind of unfortunate brainwashing that many of us received when we were little. It’s probably not far off to assume that if you approach a decent, mature person with aggressive, disrespectful, arrogant behavior that resembles teenage rebellion, you slam the door and lose them. Apart from the fundamental issue that this behavior is contrary to humanistic principles of human interaction, we would forget that these people are not religious because they are stupid, arrogant, etc. – I believe many have just not made the leap out of the religious cage yet. I was brought up Christian myself – turning atheist was not an easy step, and one of the achievements that I am now most proud of, because it took courage, and probably exposure to the right experiences. Moderate, thinking religious people are probably the best candidates to eventually abandon their beliefs and join the secular part of humanity, but they will certainly be much less likely to do so if atheism comes across as an aggressive anarcho crowd. Actions like desecrating crackers, or blasphemy challenges on YouTube, probably have a place among the noisy publicity battle, maybe you can reach kids this way. Mainstream secularism, though, needs to be decent and respectful.
Luzid,
I guess neither of us is going to convince the other that they are wrong.
I tend to think that the more important part of a person’s humanity is that which they have chosen: their beliefs, their thoughts, the way they choose to live their lives. I identify myself more strongly with my religious beliefs, my worldview, and my intellect much more strongly than I do with features that I was born with, such as ethnicity and sexual orientation. My beliefs and thoughts are what distinguishes me from all the other heterosexual, white, American males out there. But if you’re not working from this same assumption, then I guess we will tend to disagree.
And even if he truly is attacking the belief and not the believer, I don’t see “a world of difference” as you apparently do. If you call one of my core beliefs ridiculous, I have to assume that you are calling me ridiculous, or irrational, or something along those lines, for holding such a belief.
Your parable fails in the following way. Alice’s belief in the provenance of the baby rattle is harmless, as they involve nobody else The beliefs of the Catholic church are not harmless as they do involve lots of people and have lots of consequences.
If one doesn’t want their beliefs ridiculed, one ought to refrain from having ridiculous beliefs. The price of ridiculousness is ridicule.
There are a couple of big problems with your parable, Sean.
For one, it is readily extensible to far more than just communion crackers. If we’re going to stand back and avoid criticizing the belief that pieces of bread turn into magical god-meat when a priest waves his hands over them, then perhaps we should offer similar respect to the idea that the earth is only 6000 years old, or zero-point energy, or homeopathy, or The Secret, or telepathy. Your rationale for avoiding point out the lunacy of transubstantiation seems to be that it would offend wide swathes of people…but if that is the justification, then we would also have to avoid attacking creationism.
For another, the real flaw in the analogy is that I haven’t stolen Alice’s rattle. She still has it, she can do what she want with it. I have been given generic rattles by a few people who willingly sent them to me. Alice doesn’t get to complain that I’ve broken her rattle — she is instead trying to dictate to others what they can do with their rattles. That is a level of absurdity that has to be addressed.
Sean: I was wondering when you would comment on this. I sort of suspected that this would be your take on the whole affair. I appreciate your reasonableness.
Kea: This is really off-topic, but here is one of the standard interpretations of that section:
Adam doesn’t really mean “man” in the sense of a “male”. It literally means “earth” and is a play on the word “dust” (adamah). That is, God created “Adam” out of the “Adamah”. At that point, the standard interpretation doesn’t consider “Adam” to be male, but to be only human. After God removes the rib and shapes Eve from it – after this, Adam is said to be male and Eve female, as the proto-human was divided into two natures. Interestingly, while Adam means earth, Eve comes from the word meaning life.
So while medieval scholars took this to be a declaration of the subordinate position of women, the text doesn’t include anything in it to suspect that they original authors had that in mind. There are several mythological explanations going on simultaneously – it explains why the words for man and woman (ish and ishah) are so similar, and it explains why men and women seek each other out – man and woman are earth and life and are only fully human when combined.
When you look into what they were actually doing with the story, it’s really a rather clever story. There are many similar word plays throughout the book of Genesis – anyone who wants to understand what the people writing it were intending would do well to read a good commentary explaining the Hebrew.
Sean, I disagree that the Mohamed cartoons should be the litmus test for consistency. I think you’re free to make up your mind based on their considerable differences. I have to say that any direct comparison between them while ignoring these differences is dubious at best. I’ve read (I think) all of the posts here regarding the analogy between the cracker and the cartoons and here is my 2¢.
First, to be fair, I acknowledge that the two incidents have some important features in common. Stealing a crumbly-wafery bit of Jesus goodness and doodling about Mr. Mo are both materially harmless events (victimless crimes, to use Dawkins’ coinage) that nonetheless run afoul of irrational doctrines. Nevertheless, such events still infuriate a non-trivial proportion of the adherents to those doctrines.
However, in the case of the cartoons, the primary function is to communicate ideas that are independent of baiting the believers. For example, the “bomb-turban” cartoon seems to be communicating the cartoonist’s belief that Islam is frequently a violent religion, a thesis that, right or wrong, at least has anecdotal evidence supporting it; notably bombings carried out by at least some of Mohamed’s followers.
The cracker story is entirely different. PZ (dog bless his sole) appeared to be doing one thing and, and one thing only: communicating his disdain for cracker worshipers. This isn’t a simple case of refusing to let offense interfere with delivering a message. In this instance, the message is offense. While I’m very committed to supporting the ability for anyone to continue this type of behavior, that doesn’t mean I endorse it. I believe PZ lawfully did something rather d!ck!5h. I would also add that, if one’s only message is offense, then that person might question whether the message is worthwhile delivering. If they still want to say it, I won’t advocate abrogation of PZ’s right to continue to spew such pointless commentary. Freedom of speech is too valuable.
In the end, I think the only utility of PZ’s offer to desecrate a silly cracker is that it binds together a community of like-minded thinkers. In that narrow sense, PZ was being constructive. However, if an identifying characteristic of that particular community is appreciation of messages designed only to offend, then I’m pretty sure PZ’s exercise was only a negative one.
A couple of NB:
1) the standard Catholic line on biblical interpretation is that the bible isn’t to be taken literally. If that’s your beef with it, you’re really mad at someone else.
2) In case anyone is wondering, I’m not trying to be cute by using Adam as my handle – that’s my actual name and not related to the bit of interpretation above.
Give me a break. I’m supposed to believe that standard Catholicism is not patriarchal? Yeah, right. By the way, I do know some Catholics, so you can’t get away with outright lies.
anshul:
Those cartoonists did the wrong thing.
Don’t get me wrong: There shouldn’t be a law against what they did (and, it turned out, there wasn’t). Those who issued death threats and engaged in actual violence were far, far more wrong. Even so, they escalated an already bad situation, and that was wrong.
Having said that, the situations aren’t even remotely comparable. The Jyllands-Posten cartoons were a comment on the rise in self-censorship after the murder of Theo van Gogh. Crackergate was a comment on some kid with a cracker.
And having said that, I guess the situations are comparable. The Jyllands-Posten cartoonists made an inflamed and violent situation even more inflamed and violent by being provocative. PZ made a stupid situation even more stupid by being stupid.
Not sure if this point was made or not; lots of posts on this one, tried to read them all. God doesn’t need defending. I am pretty sure that He/She/It (really could be a super smart alien, right?) can handle himself. Attack away… However, the institution(s) (and their practices) that have been built by people as interpretations of what God wants will always need to be defended by design. God teaches (through the Bible- written, interpreted by man) that only he is perfect. So any thing of human construct will be flawed and so therefore be open to criticism, mockery and CONFLICT.
Depending on which side of the pulpit you fall, the institutions were created to either teach people to deal with conflict or create the conflict that binds the minds of man. My own opinion is that it is designed to create the conflict. Don’t forget, human development lost about 1000 years after the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of the Renaissance as far as Western Civ goes. The feudal lords and the clergy were really cozy during that time period; something about the meek inheriting the earth or bust your ass for your feudal lord now and you shall get what’s coming to you when you die. Kinda convenient for those in power.
As far as I am concerned, the whole argument is a leftover vestige from the dark ages. I am not saying religion is the Jessie Ventura crutch for the weak minded but it sure acts as a modern day ‘attaboy’ when the world is kicking you.
PZ, come on. I have no objections whatsoever to pointing out the lunacy of transubstantiation. Pointing out lunacy is a good thing. My whole point was that there is a substantial difference between offering an argument against something (good!) and egregiously mocking it just to make your friends feel superior and adversaries feel hurt (bad).
I understand your other point even less. Even Bill Donohue, crazy as he is, is not trying to tell people what to do with their own unconsecrated crackers. You asked people to get you some consecrated wafers — swiping from Alice, in terms of the analogy.
All of which is picking at irrelevant aspects of the analogy, anyway — my attempted point was about how we should deal with deeply-held but completely irrational beliefs of people we respect (or don’t know, and therefore have no reason to disrespect). I’m happy to offer arguments against them, but don’t personally take any joy in mocking them. (Harmless ones, that is, of which this is a perfect example. Harmful ones should obviously be dealt with separately.)
There are plenty of religious people who I both respect enormously as individuals, and admire for their intellect and thoughtfulness. I just think they’re wrong, and am happy to explain why in enormous detail. But I don’t see what is gained by pretending that they’re all idiots.
and enough about Sean’s analogy. The compare/contrast he made perfectly was that of emotional significance, regardless of truth vs fact and the payout associated for stating the truth for truth’s sake is just not worth it sometimes. Sometimes it is enough to right but not have to get up on the soapbox and announce it obnoxiously.
Good job Sean.
*stepping off my box now.
Kea: I never said the Catholic church isn’t patriarchal. I am a Catholic, and I went to Catholic schools – What I wrote above is a fairly mainstream intrepretation of the second creation story. The fact that the second creation story wasn’t about instituting the patriarchy doesn’t say anything about whether or not the Catholic church incorporated the patriarchy into its structure. It did, and that is obvious.
However, the way things change in the Catholic church is if someone can make the argument that this or that practice is contrary to Tradition or scripture. Seeing as many of the scriptural arguments for the patriarchy are largely bunk, I could forsee the Church changing its mind about some of its stances. The fact that the Church has decided that evolution makes a lot of sense and has admitted that homosexuality is inborn and not a choice (though it still asserts that homosexual sex is a sin) means that the Church is capable of taking in new information and updating its opinions.
@ Adam. I went to Catholic school for a very long time. Herein lies the issue with the Church. It has always positioned itself as the purveyor of truth (in dogma, and in practice). As the ultimate guide for what the truth is, how can it say here is the truth but only until it decides that particular truth serves it needs. Then it trots out another truth. As is the case in your example. I am calling shenanigans, just like I did in third grade much to the consternation of the clergy.
I question your claim that this is a harmless belief. You might think otherwise if you saw my email: the people who are upset about this are telling me the most amazing stories about bleeding eucharists and the wrath of god smiting people who don’t eat their crackers. I’m seeing a whole new level of looniness I had not even imagined before. Although, there is another piece of the story I’ve known about for some time: these tales demanding utmost respect for a bizarre scrap of Catholic dogma have a long, sordid history, most often used as pretexts for pogroms.
I have no interest in mocking communion crackers for the sake of simple mockery, either. However, that isn’t what this is about: it’s a protest over the ridiculous persecution of a student at UCF over these crackers. Remember, what prompted the whole kerfluffle was a Donohue press release demanding the expulsion of Webster Cook because he didn’t swallow his magic cookie.
There is no difference between consecrated and unconsecrated crackers, and there is certainly no right to demand what people must do with the consecrated ones. Most of the consecrated crackers I’ve received have been from lapsed Catholics who, while still Catholic, had kept a wafer as a memento. This notion that the crackers have to be kept inviolate and protected is only held by a subset of Catholics — there is apparently a fair number with a less dogmatic tradition. Somehow, this has been translated into an unwarranted deference to the claims of ownership by the most demented subset of Catholicism, the kind of people who heed Bill Donohue.
So this is actually more like a group of Alices who have outgrown their silly beliefs and have asked me to smash the relics of their old dogmas for them…while another group that still clings to them demands that I and they can’t do with our freely given crackers as we will.
And wait…”pretending that they’re all idiots”? Where have I done that? Have I somewhere claimed that all Catholics are idiots? I certainly don’t think that, nor have I written it.
I think you’re buying into Bill Donohue’s propaganda there.
Adam, the point isn’t that there exists some dubious gender neutral interpretation of any given passage in the bible, or that the bible does not have literary merit. In fact, I think it has great literary merit. But I’m sure you agree that I could find THOUSANDS of biblical quotes, and more importantly religious quotes by a church, that are LOGICALLY more consistent with a strictly patriarchal interpretation. Your hand waving on the issue sounds like serious brain washing to me. My mother was brought up as a Catholic, and in her day nobody would have questioned the patriarchy because everybody believed it. Now, you want me to believe, in opposition to all the evidence, that the church has changed so radically in the last 20 years that its official position on biblical interpretation is gender neutral. Perhaps you could ask your priest to clarify this point, and get back to me with his response.