Crackergate

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.

192 Comments

192 thoughts on “Crackergate”

  1. You know, I think I’m still not being very clear. And the reason why is that it’s actually very hard to draw a perfectly general line between things worthy of argument and things worthy of mockery. And the reason why it’s hard is that it depends not only on the question itself (does the wafer really become the Body of Christ?), but also on the person with whom we are discussing the issue. It’s not just that some questions are reasonable and some are not; some people are deserving of respectful discussion, while others just deserve jeering.

    Donohue, clearly, is in the second camp, as are the folks who overreacted to the original incident. But going out of one’s way to destroy Communion wafers doesn’t strike back at them — it’s just an egregious insult to Catholics everywhere. Which would be sensible, if one thought that all Catholics were just idiots who didn’t deserve anything better than mockery, but I don’t think that. (Edit: and neither do you, sorry, I shouldn’t be implying that.)

    I guess I just don’t see what is achieved by publicly destroying wafers, other than puffing up the tribe and patting ourselves on the back for how superior we are. It doesn’t convince any onlookers of anything, it doesn’t make a witty satirical point, it doesn’t expose any hypocrisy, it doesn’t make a rational argument, it doesn’t strike a blow for social justice. It just seems self-congratulatory and petty for no good reason, which rubs me the wrong way.

  2. Not that any of this is a big deal, of course. Threatening to destroy Communion wafers, even if I think it’s a bit egregious and unnecessary, is in no way comparable to death threats and all manner of religious craziness.

  3. @PZ

    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.

    I take you at your word. However, let me point out that many sympathetic readers who agree with you on the substantive issues of atheism find it hard to interpret your post as anything other than baiting or mockery for the sake of mockery. Perhaps we really are dissecting one single post too much. However, if you really did want to protest the persecution of the student, you might’ve indicated explicitly in your request for the wafers. I reiterate, I accept at face value your claim that you wanted to stand in solidarity with the student.

    As an example, a simple sentence or two of clarification might have sufficed. Something like, “In order to show to Donohue and the other crazy cracker worshipers that it is simply immoral to ruin a students’ life on this issue, I propose that we show them there is no difference between consecrated and unconsecrated crackers.” And then you could finish up your post with an offer to “desecrate” both crackers to end your tests or something like that. If you really think about it though, a simple offer to “desecrate” holds specific connotations that imply purposeful disrespect, period. If that isn’t what you wanted to say, perhaps you could’ve used a different term or somehow communicated better.

  4. Sean wrote

    I guess I just don’t see what is achieved by publicly destroying wafers, other than puffing up the tribe and patting ourselves on the back for how superior we are.

    There’s more than a little bit of goal-post slippage going on there. Who has publicly destroyed wafers? Who has done anything destructive to a wafer? Cook took one back to his seat (legal these days in some Catholic churches), showed it to a friend, and had to flee from the violence offered by the pious members of that congregation. PZ has received some wafers, apparently from lapsed Catholics who kept them as souvenirs, and as far as I know PZ has done nothing to them at all.

    Your original post was about your dismay at PZ’s post, but now it’s about destroying crackers that are, as far as we know, actually intact.

    In fact, the best and most effective use that PZ could make of them would be to simply keep them intact.

  5. The analogy may not be perfect, but the point is not to piss people off unnecessarily. I agree with Sean here, and was really interested when he decided to post something about PZ. PZ has always been like this, and the general acceptance is that he writes the way he does to attract readers. And the general defense for himself is that it’s his blog and he does what he wants. But the bottom line is, besides being an insignificant source of amusement, his rants are not productive to the rest of us, and instead of swaying non-atheists to his side, he creates frustration and anger. The only good feelings that come from his rants are usually those atheists who feel they are higher than those that deserve it (aka religious believers). This may be why Sean says it’s a superiority issue.

    And to attack Sean’s analogy is missing the point, so PZ still has not been convincing. I guess I wrote a lot because I was also uncomfortable with PZ’s writing.

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  7. @ChristopherM:
    Your implication that other people are not worth of respect if they aren’t as smart as you is also really creepy.

    I am not saying “as smart as me”. Nor I think to be smarter than the average. But I cannot respect someone so blatantly refusing to use reasoning in such matters. I just can’t. I can try, but it’s like trying to see black snow. It’s plain impossible to me.
    And I think it’s healthy, just like seeing snow white and not black it is.
    You say it’s creepy, but this is just your feeling. What’s really,technically wrong with that?

    @other sean
    The burden of proof is not on me because I’m not trying to prove it to you.

    You have a burden of proof when you demand respect for that.
    You cannot think of respect as a free ticket. If you want me respecting your beliefs, show me some solid reason to have me respecting that. Otherwise you cannot complain if people laugh and prank them.

    @ChristopherM the fact that some Catholics launched death threats or whatever against Myers really doesn’t make it okay to spit in the face of every Catholic in the world.

    Death threats are just the tip of an iceberg.
    The big, lurking, deadly iceberg is that those people actions are moved by irrational beliefs in bronze-age deities.
    People capable of resigning their intelligence this way can be expected to go berserk anytime, anywhere. They simply cannot be trusted, on average.

    @Sean
    but to piss people off solely in celebration of your own superiority seems unnecessary to me, and not much fun.

    It’s more than that. It’s showing them “hey, we don’t have fear of you morons.”
    It’s a symbolic act. It’s making them clear that they cannot ever demand universal respect for such things.

    @ChristopherM
    If a little kid believed, and told you, that a favorite stuffed animal had magical powers, would you grab the animal, spit on it, and tear it to shreds in front of him? So maybe religious believers are, when it comes to rational understanding of the world, not much better than little kids. It’s still creepy to get your kicks by pissing other people off.

    If a grownup adult behaves like a little kid and asks me to respect his little-kid-like beliefs, yes, I am happy to piss him off.
    He does not deserve my respect, simply.

    @Neil B.
    Basic consideration for other people’s feelings should be enough reason to avoid offending them

    I have no basic consideration for other people’s feelings, unless they show to deserve this consideration.
    Religious people -when adult, educated, and grown in an advanced first-world society- do not show me enough skills to deserve this consideration.
    It’s as simple as that.

    Worse, they indulge contradictory ironies like doubting a First Cause beyond the universe, but casually throwing around “multiple universes” as excuses for not needing God.

    Excuse me?
    First: Many worlds is not a “casually thrown” belief. It is a serious scientific interpretation of quantum theory. Of course it’s still unproven as such, and may well prove false in the future. But at least it has solid math and facts behind itself and it is worth investigating. Supernatural first causes have none of that.
    Second: I was an atheist even before becoming aware of many worlds theory. I would continue to be even after many worlds being rejected. To let me stop being an atheist, all you need is showing me compelling evidence for God. That’s my “excuse”.

    @Kai Noeske
    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.

    This is interesting. For me, turning atheist was something natural. I was too educated as a Catholic, in Italy -and you know how deeply Catholic Italy is.
    I remember I was a devout catholic as a child, because everyone else was and I thought that if they teached me these things, they had good reasons to believe that. But day after day, I found no one gave me sound explanations.
    One day (I guess I was 10-11 year old) I went to my mother -a Catholic philosophy teacher, but that never gave me any philosophical teaching as a child- and asked “So, what is the proof of the existence of God?”
    My mother stared. “Proof of -what?” “The proof. The logical proof. There must exist a logical proof, or evidence, otherwise how can all those people believe that?” My mother answered “There is no definite proof. It’s something you believe in.” I just couldn’t understand. I repeated asking, trying to get myself clear, until I understood what she meant. I cried “People believe THAT without evidence or proof?” -And I was an atheist (Actually, I also begun to read books on the subject, but the conversation started me on the right pathway).

    And that’s why I can’t respect those people (And no, I don’t respect even my mother on that, and she knows that very well). If me, a normal, average, 11 year old, can understand the deep ridicule of that, I can’t respect grown up people that still cling to these beliefs.

  8. There is a problem with analogies – if you have to make an analogy to get your point across, then your point is probably wrong. The analogy you give is an incorrect comparison for many reasons already mentioned. The baby was real, whereas a lot of us believe that these church people are deluded. A better comparison would be sitting next to a drunk on a bench, and the drunk decrying that you have sat on his imaginary friend. Then out of principle, you not leaving and getting into an argument where the drunk threatens you, and you laugh at him even more. A poor analogy sure, but most of them are, yours especially.

  9. The problem with arguing with religious people is that we are coming from 2 different, incompatible worlds. We come from a world were we value truth and fact above all else. They come from the world where their god is the most important thing.

  10. I don’t know if someone has already said this because I am not going to read all of these replies, but I think that in the abbreviation of the act, we have lost it’s cause.

    While PZ Myers may well have raised this call to arms with the intent of giving the entirety of the Catholic church a collective apoplexy, that is not the only reason.

    This story has been truncated from its original form into: “Boy steals cracker, church gets mad, boy sends cracker back.” While that alone might even be ridicule worthy, there are some characteristics of this story that are being left out. The first and most striking point is that the kid that did this had his life threatened over it. The second is that the Catholics in the United States used this incident to go bat shit so they could get in the news. The third is that with this air time, they decided that taking a cracker is a hate crime being perpetrated against them. They also claimed to be oppressed. You know, hate crimes, like when the football team ties a gay kid to the bumper of a pick up truck and drag him behind it until he’s dead. Like that. Hate crime. Just tossing that out there…

    Where to begin?
    I think PZ Myers had a gut reaction, and that gut reaction went like this:
    “I know where to begin! FUCK YOU!”

    The Catholic church has believed in transubstantiation for something like eight-hundred years; and while this is not the only such record of anyone desecrating a host, it’s the only one in recent memory. This is not a conspiracy nor is it a part of an ongoing campaign of oppression. It is a direct response to the Catholic church and their histrionics.

    I agree with your article for the most part, and I do think that we need to be the bigger people in this clash of ideals, but at the same time… sometimes they need a kick in the ass.

    This was one of those times.

  11. @Kea:
    “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.”

    You may be grossly offended by simple things in life. If you want to be offended by the Bible you most certainly will be, if you don’t want to be you most certainly will not. There isn’t anything that a “religious Christian person” can do to change that about you, therefore will be unable to interpret in a way that doesn’t offend you.

    @devicerandom:
    You may not read this as I have not gained your “intellectual respect” quite yet, I probably never will. That being said, living a life that basically revolves around only respecting those that have met some criteria in your head must be a lonely, angry existence. You shouldn’t want to toy with people, purposefully offend, disrespect them on highly emotional topics etc because it’s the right thing to do. You are a part of the species just like everyone else. To pretend that you are anything special, someone that deserves to be thrust above others is just ego (more likely a self esteem issue). You should respect people because they are people, it’s quite easy to completely disagree with others while maintaining high levels of respect.

  12. Sean,

    I think that you are almost exactly on the mark here. I do think your analogy on disrespecting the communion wafer is wrong though. Tribalism is the point here, not sentimentmental attachment. What PZ did is more akin to a white person walking into a predominantly black tavern and shouting “n*****s stink.” It’s a calculated insult to a group, and a challenge to the group’s identity and self-respect. It’s a tribal insult and it provokes a tribal response.

    PZ’s insult, like that of our (unfortunately not totally hypothetical) white racist, does no objective physical harm, but it is intended to shame and humiliate.

    PZonce wrote a pretty good blog, but he discovered this one gimmick that brought him noteriety and has ever since pumped it for all it’s worth. He is a bully, and a public nuisance.

  13. @RationalZen:
    That being said, living a life that basically revolves around only respecting those that have met some criteria in your head must be a lonely, angry existence.

    It’s not.
    I am actually a quite peaceful person, and I have friends and a sentimental life.
    But I carefully choose my fellows. I don’t like to be in a company just for the sake of being with people. I like to be with intellectually interesting people, that make me laugh and feel well and make me think too (These things are actually well related).

    You are a part of the species just like everyone else.

    I don’t understand why being a part of a biological species means I have to think everyone else belonging to this species is equal to me. This is a very rough approximation. Things are different. People are different -a lot different- from each other. So I accord them different treatment.

    To pretend that you are anything special, someone that deserves to be thrust above others is just ego

    I am nothing special. I am an absolutely average person, I think.
    My ego has nothing to deal with that. It’s not me being right the problem. I am surely wrong on a lot of issues. I, however, strive as much as possible with my limited skills to maintain a rational and unbiased approach to understanding the world. I surely fail a lot of times, but I try and I want to recognize my errors.
    Religious people do not even start to try. This kind of intellectual laziness, how can I respect that? How? Please tell me how, because I simply don’t know.

    it’s quite easy to completely disagree with others while maintaining high levels of respect.

    Actually, I agree with that.
    I disagree with a lot of people every day (heck, you probably already know that 🙂 ), but I almost always maintain respect. Think politics, for example. I have strong political opinions on a lot of subjects, but I keep in utmost respect other opinions, even ones I feel completely opposite to mine, as long as they come from a sincere attempt at understanding the world and make it better. I am a left-wing person, but I strongly oppose laws in Italy and Europe that shut up politically uncorrect talk and neofascist opinions. That’s shutting down free speech, and even if I dislike a lot what those people say, it’s no reason for shutting down their mouth. And I respect many of those people.

    And, take care, I would also strongly oppose any law preventing religious people to freely express their religion. Laws should never, ever touch free speech or personal expression.

    But there is a line between opinions based on sincere attempts to understand the world/make it better, and opinions based on nothing. The first I can respect, and I respect a lot even when I think they are harmful or plain wrong. The second I cannot respect. I am all for them being free to express them, but so I am free to laugh at them and play innocuous pranks to them. As I told before, it’s not their opinion the problem. It’s the method, or rather non-method they use to arrive to this opinion, the problem.

    Note that, despite my utmost disrespect for religious people, I would never, ever call to physically harm them, let alone threat them of death. This should tell you something.

  14. Sean @94

    “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.)”

    Where do you draw this distinction between harmless and harmful ones? Consider the following real case. I live in Georgia and we’re in the second year of a very bad drought (as are many other states). Just before Christmas 2007, Athens was within 5 weeks of having no water. Our governor was elected in part because of his religious beliefs. When informed by our state climatologist that there was a near certainty of having a major drought, our illustrious leader did …. nothing. Once we’re in the middle of a bad drought, our leader has a day or prayer. This is a man who apparently believes that prayer can make it rain and will do that before making statewide contingency plans for a large scale drought in the face of strong evidence that this will occur. Apparently, this mans religious views distorts his perception of reality. To me, this makes him a dangerous person.

    So, if he prays for the well being of friends and family, that’s ok. But if his world view is such that prayer is to be preferred over action, that makes him dangerous. Likewise, if someone believes that a cracker magically becomes the flesh of their god when a priest mutters some magical words, that’s ok. But I would lay strong odds that that mindset also leads one to believe that things like the morning after pill cause abortion and that such folks will prefer to elect leaders who will fly in the face of scientific evidence and reality and enact laws banning these things.

    So, I do not see where you draw this line. How do determine not to attack belief A when the state of mind leading to belief A also leads to belief B which causes harm to many others. To me, it seems to make a lot of sense to attack the root cause, not these many disparate symptoms one at a time. To me, that’s what PZ and those like him do.

    As I see it, the danger of taking the “humane” approach is that you get shouted down. The current state of public discourse in this nation (the US) does not allow the views of the gentleman debater to be heard. This may have been different in times past and may become different again, but I see little evidence that it will. So, to me there seem to be several options:

    1) Keep on as normal, being nice and respectful – and I will admit, this is always my first course of action. Ones views will not be heard above the braying of those louder and more strident than oneself. But almost always I find I have to move to stage 2

    2) Be strident, like PZ and Dawkins etc. and fight fire with fire – without losing sight of the science and rationality.

    3) Give up and go live on a desert island and hope that the rest of the world doesn’t screw things up so badly that it affects your little secluded paradise.

    The bottom line seems to me to be that is people feel free to trample on rational discourse and scientific fact (let alone the law of the land) to force their point of view across, then they shouldn’t be upset when others trample on their irrational and unsupported beliefs.

    Adrian

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  16. I’m new to this blog, and I have to admit I don’t know who PZ Meyers is, but I was struck by the disingenuousness of his reasons for not getting a communion wafer himself. I mean, if he thinks it’s an important statement to be made, get the freaking thing yourself. For all his bluster about what he’d do with it once he gets a hold of one, he seems like a bit of a chicken. He seems to lack the courage of his convictions, as they say, so that makes me wonder what this is really about for him. Again, don’t know the guy.

  17. @Stacy
    PZ Myers is a well known atheist blogger. He is a public figure. Most probably he wouldn’t be able to get a communion wafer safely -someone in the church would recognize him.

    However I agree I would at least try, if I was him. But I think that inducing other people to smuggle wafers is better for him, because could lead all churches nationwide to feel insecure about their precious wafers. It brings more havoc 🙂 (Unsure, however, how is this useful or not)

  18. The Alice parable is incredibly misleading. Are you actually comparing being mistaken about a rattle’s sentimental value to believing that a cracker magically transforms into the body of a dead Jew?

    Here’s a better analogy, inspired by one of Sam Harris’ talks. Bob is a great admirer of Elvis Presley. For some reason, he believes that speaking a few Latin words over his breakfast cereals will magically turn them into the body of Elvis. Miranda watches Bob do this a few times, concludes he’s lost his mind, and dumps the alleged Body of Elvis in the trash.

    Is Miranda an asshole? Do you think that instead she should have sat down with Bob to carefully, politely explain to him why there is no good reason to believe that cereals can magically turn into Elvis? Because the problem with that second approach is the same problem there is with refraining from ridiculing a ridiculous belief in any situation: You risk giving the impression that the belief isn’t ridiculous. Showing respect for a belief that doesn’t deserve it grants power to that belief (and its believers) that it shouldn’t have: At the very least, the power to demand respect, at worst, the power to oppress those who refuse to show respect. This is how the various religions retain their influence in 2008.

  19. Thank you.

    Moderation on both sides is much appreciated. I’m not sure about the analogy, but having basic respect for what another human being holds precious is a place to start. If we were talking about destroying Buddhist temples or torching libraries then it might make more sense to others.

  20. Adrian Burd (the first Adrian 8-)): re Russell, et al First, just because I mentioned BR doesn’t mean I should have to include everyone roughly similar in views, like Huxley. It’s a matter of degree anyway, as you should realize since no one is perfect or exemplary. As for Russell himself, maybe did spice his writings with some putdowns but I don’t think he wrote about religious folks like PZ Meyers does: graphic example, actually soliciting commenters to his blog to come up with insults to a pitiful crank like Ken Ham. I can’t imaging BR doing something like that, which is unbecoming anyone having the title of “university professor.” Russell was not a brat, Mencken and Twain may have been but put themselves forth as humorist/satirists and didn’t have pretensions of being academics or scholars as such. A lot of the commenters here certainly come across as snotty brats.

    devicerandom:

    I have no basic consideration for other people’s feelings, unless they show to deserve this consideration.
    Religious people -when adult, educated, and grown in an advanced first-world society- do not show me enough skills to deserve this consideration.
    It’s as simple as that.

    It isn’t really that simple except to a breathtakingly arrogant figure who appoints him or herself to apportion moral worth and basic respect on the basis of his own prejudices. If you were talking entirely about clearly disprovable issues, such as beliefs contradicted by known facts and not those which are debatable precisely because we can’t get an empirical handle either way, it would still be a tacky attitude – but you haven’t even got that much. You’ve gotten mixed up about the current focus of “multiple worlds” anyway: not the old quantum splitting idea (which involves the same laws of physics, but alternative paths of “wave function collapse.” Current focus on MUs is more about variation in laws of physics (mostly in order to pretend to explain away why the physical constants are finely tuned for the existence of life) for which there is no rigorous, demonstrated basis whatsoever (or show me.)

    Like many others, you talk about evidence for a First Cause/Creator but there’s no evidence one way or the other – as Paul Davies explained in his 1992 classic The Mind of God – The Scientific Basis for a Rational World. We have to consider various arguments in the vein of ultimate abstraction if we aren’t following “religious traditions” (and I don’t either, so I don’t give a crack about cracker arguments etc.) That means you have to think about questions like why is there anything at all, why this possible world and not others (if there are others – consider the incredible argument of “modal realism” from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism:

    Modal realism is the view, notably propounded by David Lewis, that possible worlds are as real as the actual world. It is based on the following notions: that possible worlds exist; possible worlds are not different in kind to the actual world; possible worlds are irreducible entities; the term “actual” in “actual world” is indexical.

    It is ambiguous even whether the natural/supernatural distinction makes sense when we wonder “how much exists totally”, since there’s no reason for other worlds to be like ours, or even to be “worlds” instead of say, “beings” quite independent of our physics etc. What is the basis for a dismissive (versus simply the moderate skeptic saying, I can’t find any so I’ll be an agnostic) of “the supernatural” in such a context? IOW, not specific entities dwelling in our world but of different nature, but rather something completely outside and causally responsible.

    BTW my complaint was about an overall attitude among certain people and your complaints, right or wrong about whether you deserve it is totally irrelevant to the point and not likely even a representative expression.

    Finally, the sentiment that you can separate ridicule of persons from ridicule of beliefs is faulty, since such persons define themselves so deeply by their beliefs that the two issues become the same.

  21. I’ve only skimmed this post and this professor’s post. The professor sounds like an angry teenager. Why is he so angry? Perhaps he’s recovering from some abuse inflicted upon him when he was a small child.
    People who have hostility towards Catholicism should not attend mass. That is the way for everybody to get along civilly in our diverse society. This kid should have returned the communion wafer immediately. His behavior could probably be considered theft under Florida law. If that is case, then he committed a crime which could be called a hate crime, as the term is commonly used in this country. I don’t why this professor doesn’t understand that point. Since theft is involved, it’s not as serious as a killing, but it’s a hate crime nevertheless. Personally, I don’t believe that crimes should treated differently because hate is involved. In other words, I don’t believe that the hate crime concept shold be enshrined in law at all. Nevertheless, if we have such a term in our language, then this college kid committed a hate crime. It’s pretty simple and I don’t know why the professor doesn’t understand it.

  22. The critical difference between religion and Alice’s baby rattle is that Alice isn’t killing people over the rattle, but people kill each other in the name of religion on a daily basis.

    England and Ireland, Pakistan and Indian, Serbia/Croatia, the Middle East, etc. The Catholic church in particular is responsible for the Crusades and the Inquisitions (which killed a greater percentage of the population at the time, than Hitler’s concentration camps). Religion is no mere sentimental crutch.

  23. Neil B (@121)

    “First, just because I mentioned BR doesn’t mean I should have to include everyone roughly similar in views, like Huxley”

    I never suggested you should. I was merely interested to know what kinds of writing would lead you to describe someone as a “snotty brat”. Pure curiosity on my part since, from the examples you give, I suspect we would describe different people as “snotty brats”.

    “It’s a matter of degree anyway, as you should realize since no one is perfect or exemplary.”

    Ummm, I do realize this, thanks.

    “As for Russell himself, maybe did spice his writings with some putdowns but I don’t think he wrote about religious folks like PZ Meyers does: ”

    As I thought I had mentioned, sensibilities were rather different 80-100 years ago. Indeed, there are even strong differences today between Europe and the US in what passes for acceptable discourse (says he with wistful memories of the House of Commons). I would even argue that there was a sea-change in sensibility and discourse in the US between my first stay here (1991-1992) and when I returned (mid 90s), though I’m willing to accept that that may have been more a result of my perception, and the differences between St. Louis and College Station (TX), than a real national change.

    “I can’t imaging BR doing something like that, which is unbecoming anyone having the title of “university professor.””

    Interesting perspective. I never knew the 3rd Earl Russell, but I suspect that his comparatively gentle wit and charm would mostly fall on deaf ears in what passes for modern public discourse. So maybe he would, I don’t know. So, again out of curiosity, how in your opinion should I behave as a tenured professor at an American public university in the deep south? I’m curious, because being British, I sometimes find what I consider normal, acceptable behavior is misinterpreted; so I would welcome your insight.

    And to set the record straight and avoid confusion, I would far prefer that ideas were discussed publicly in a rational, genteel fashion with credence given to fact and reality. Sadly that appears to be impossible in the US at the moment. To do so, you get belittled as being part of the “reality-based community” and get totally ignored by those around you. Consequently, I try to choose my rhetorical weapons with care, and respond with only appropriate levels of ridicule. So far, this latter approach has seemed to be far more effective than the former.

    All the best,

    Adrian

  24. Actually, I should make a major correction to how I just did, and most writers refer to “evidence” – many of us act as if what was or wasn’t “evidence for X” was easily assured, and it was just a matter of whether it had been found. But really there are two parts of the evidence problem: What do we find, and the interpretative question of whether a given thing is (or could be) evidence for X or etc. In the case of philosophical and not “faith-based” arguments for “God,” the question really is: Is this universe, its properties, and other things we already know in conjunction with conceptual justification, evidence that the universe would need to be created? Or, can it be “self-existent” etc. as Bertrand Russell, Sean here and others believe? It’s debatable, not a slam-dunk for there having to be a God, but that implies of course that the “no” answer has no particular higher standing. (The idea that non-existence is “preferable” or more likely than existence for hypotheticals in general, over and above their particular merits, is a fallacy albeit wide-spread.)

    (BTW in this context “God” is better put as “First Cause” since It may not be like God as described in most religions – but not all, see e.g. the alayavjnana of higher Buddhism, which almost sounds like a fundamental field or “mother foam” concept.)

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