I agree - the point of mockery and ridicule isn’t making the Pope renounce the catholic faith. Anyone who thinks he’s going to change his mind because we asked him nicely is living in a dream world. The point, aside from the obvious fun in finding companionship in shared thinking-something-is-ridiculous-ness, is to make it okay to think something is ridiculous. By stating, outloud, that said something is ridiculous.

Besides, if religulous people can constantly suggest that we are immature, not really sane, shifty, unworthy of consideration as an adult, evil, etc etc etc, and do so without really any punishment at all, then we should at least people to point out that transubstationwhateverhtehellitscalled* is just dumb. Magic crackers is just a stupid concept.

At this point, shouldn’t we consider a degree in theology to essentially be the same as a degree in Star Trek?

*I don’t care how it’s spelled anymore than I care whether or not He-Man’s nemesis is “Skeletor” or “Skelator”. It’s made up nonsense. Also, it’s “Skeletor.”

This whole thing is going out of control and the church will have to do massive apologizing.  First of all, what PZ is saying is common joke at school.  Making it like it’s giant outrages just underlying how weak the church is. (or how out of control donohue is)

I don’t think donohue is ready for the backlash.

Hmmm. Well, once again, typos and weirdness due to me rishing through my comment. Sigh.

PZ did absolutely nothing wrong. The people who did wrong are the ones who are threatening to kill him over his jokes about a FUCKING CRACKER.

Religion jumped the shark about five years ago. Could someone please cancel the series now?

Did Trey Parker and Matt Stone convince any true believers when they called John Edward the Biggest Douche in the Universe? Probably not many, but I bet they influenced a lot of young people who might have been on the fence.

Um, so it’s a good thing that Parker and Stone called Edwards names and convinced young people not to vote so we got a second term of Bush?  Because ... sorry, I’m still confused about why it was good.

The people who did wrong are the ones who are threatening to kill him over his jokes about a FUCKING CRACKER.

And yet Teh Islamists are the *real* barbarians, because they make death-threats- and violently riot over a cartoon. /snark/

Gotta love the American theocons’ [piss-poor] attempt at logic and rationalizations.

Mnemosyne:

It’s not “good” per se, it’s just an example of the effectivness of mockery.

I eagerly await the “Phil Monahue” episode of south park.

Mnemosyne, the John Edwards being referred to in said episode was the psychic host of “Crossing Over.”

Willaim Blake said it well:

“When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.”

Among other things, purported skeptics and rationalists who argue that we shouldn’t criticize things that make no sense because this would upset people are kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind of missing the point.

I eagerly await the “Phil Monahue” episode of south park.

Season 11, episode 158: “Fantastic Easter Special.”  I thoroughly enjoyed it in honor of Amanda.

I think the last thread on this went what..400 posts? And it became crystal clear that there was one overwhelming conclusion.

The problem is the privilege.

Be it the moral privilege where we assume that religious==moral, or the social/intellectual privilege where even saying you don’t believe in god is a dire insult…

The problem, just like everything else, is the privilege.

Mnem, John Edward is a psychic and a totally different person from John Edwards the candidate.  So, yes.  It’s a great thing that Parker and Stone took on a psychic who plays with people’s emotions for financial gain and ego-stroking.

Ah, okay.  Sorry, but after “South Park” put a snuke in Hillary Clinton’s vagina, I don’t exactly trust them as political allies.  Odd how they always attack Democrats by name, and yet somehow the Republicans always get genericized ...

Mnemosyne, the John Edwards being referred to in said episode was the psychic host of “Crossing Over.”

Repeated for truth.  The South Park Episode in question was about how John Edwards the fake psychic was a giant “douche” for preying on those who are in grief.

I maintain to this day that the fact that political candidate John Edwards shared a common name with psychic huckster John Edwards shaved a handful of points off of candidate Edwards’s political run just because of the subconscious association with evil cobag phony psychic John Edwards.

And I think this is pretty much dead on.  No idea should be immune to skepticism, mockery or criticism.  Anytime an idea gets singled out for special treatment you lose the ability to think about it critically.  This serves the religious well, since if you start thinking about religion critically you start to get skeptical about it (this is even acknowledged by intelligent believers who talk about how you can’t “prove” religion and you just have to “have faith” - it can’t be defended rationally so all they have is an appeal to the irrational and emotional).

OTOH - the idea that the Catholic Church is somehow going to be embarrassed by this or have to “apologize” is laughable on the face.  We’re talking about an organization that still makes excuses for hiding pedophiles (see the current holder of the Papal Seat’s non-apology in Australia this past week).  We’re talking about an organization that took hundreds of years to apologize for their treatment of Gallileo.  There will be no apologies for the embarrassing acts of the kooky wing of believers.  Even if the unthinkable were to happen and one of these nuts were to take “God’s Will” into his own hands and do something horrible to Myers the church would blame it on “one bad apple” and would never admit to their own culpability in making people think a wafer made of flour and water was equal to (or more important than) a human life.  Speaking as an ex-Catholic, that’s just not how the RCC does things.

Nit-pick:

John Edwards is the esteemed senator from North Carolina. John Edward is the fraudulent “psychic.”

Mnem:

Ah, okay. Sorry, but after “South Park” put a snuke in Hillary Clinton’s vagina, I don’t exactly trust them as political allies. Odd how they always attack Democrats by name, and yet somehow the Republicans always get genericized…

Well, they did have that one epsiode making a very specific mockery of Bill Donohue. And they’ve only made three episodes that mocked political figures by name, so that hardly seems like a trend to me.

How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

NiceGuy: It depends on how big the light bulb is. But I doubt the number is significantly different from non-feminists, presuming they can get anyone to sleep with them.

Well, I’m an atheist myself and I generally agree with Myers, but this looks to me like a situation that was blown out of proportion deliberately by people trying to pursue personal agendas. Yes, including PZ Myers.

Yes, there was an overreaction to the abduction of the host. But let’s face it: taking the host was a shitty thing to do. The only reason to do it is to mock someone else’s religion. That’s every asshole’s right here in America, but that doesn’t mean that people should do it.

So when Myers found that some people had overreacted to what amounts to a childish prank (a prank which is performed every week by teenagers all across America), he might have criticized the overreaction and been done with it. Instead, he pretends that what the kid did was no different than taking a packet of Saltines home with you from a restaurant. Because in Myers’ universe, context means nothing. I guess he’s also one of these people who thinks that comparing George Bush to a monkey is no different than comparing Barack Obama to a monkey.

Then, of course, Donohue did just what Myers did: deliberately inflamed the situation even further in order to aggrandize his stature within his own faction. And in doing so, he demonstrated a fact that atheists would do well to learn: there’s a lot more believers out there than there are atheists. So if we’re deliberately divisive, we’re going to lose.

I think that atheists shouldn’t shy away from defending secularism and offering reasoned critiques of religion. But given the current situation, deliberate provocation is just stupid.

Crackers be damned, I want to offend Methodists.  Any ideas?

Yes, there was an overreaction to the abduction of the host. But let’s face it: taking the host was a shitty thing to do. The only reason to do it is to mock someone else’s religion.

Well, the other reason is what actually happened - the church staff decided to assault him, and he left the premises.

You know, but keep pretending like we’re talking about bombing a mosque, not eating a cracker. You’re a jackass.

The level of obtuse of atheists on this point continues to astound me.  This college kid committed a deliberate desecration of the most important ritual of the Catholic Church - you used the word “stole” accurately here - then PZ Myers calls for others to do likewise and mail him the stolen booty,  clutching his pearls when some Catholics get pissed.

This is a universe away from the mau-mauing that you suffered, Amanda; you neither lied nor stole nor gave comfort to those who did or would.  Yeah, I get that atheists don’t buy religious claims since I am one myself, including claims about transsubstantiation, the divine origin of the Torah, the purity of the polluted waters of the Ganges or the imperative not to connect to an electrical grid for Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath and for the Amish all of the time.  Religion is in the “weird stuff” and “weird belief” business.  But it’s not Cook’s stuff, not Myers’ stuff, not his place to call for the subversion of what are legitimately private ceremonies and gatherings, not meetings of the General Assembly.  This is disorderly conduct and, as you accurately noted, larceny by trick.  If someone committed a con and got some of my stuff, I hope that my friends would accost the thief to get the property back, and would hound the thief if he made a public mockery of me, holding my stuff hostage until I kissed his ass.

Not one voice, not even from among the most ethically-principled secular bloggers, has focused on the immorality of the acts of Cook and Myers.  Do they deserve a death threat?  No, obviously, but they are no heroes.  Hagiography is not the vice solely of religious writers; atheists can go down that fool road as well in defense of their saints and martyrs, and have regrettably done so in this case.

gordo, to be clear: the kid who originally walked off with the wafer did so because he was assaulted by a church official (don’t remember if it was a priest or a lay person assisting with communion) when he did not immediately consume it, but instead was going to bring it back to his pew to show a friend first. So it was not an asshole move, it was a completely legitimate and understandable reaction to abuse. The kid who took it is a Catholic himself. So, no, I would not actually say that Myers was out of line at all, given that the original “abduction” (what an absurd term for the misappropriation of a cracker!) of the host was not, in fact, a “prank” at all.

Also, while I am personally not that into deliberate provocation - my feeling being the foolish people shouldn’t have to suffer simply for being foolish, although I also don’t see why that should be MY problem - I don’t think that it is necessarily stupid. Why shouldn’t we take a hammer or a torch to a sacred cow like a consecrated host, or the Koran or what have you? Part of the reason the religious majority are so up in arms about such acts is that they KNOW what a powerful message that kind of irreverence is. Personally, I admire Myers and Dawkins for their willingness to expose themselves to public criticism and anger in order to send the message that they do: that no ideas are above criticism, that religion is a collection of foolish fantasies and that reverence for the generic artifacts of those religions is misplaced and harmful to rational discourse.

The level of obtuse of atheists on this point continues to astound me.

I continue to be astounded by the number of people who are either flat-out misinformed or are deliberately lying about the situation. Most of them self-described “atheists”, a claim I don’t believe for a fucking second.

I’m not so sure, Gordo. Myers seems to believe Cook’s account that he took the wafer completely innocently, and in response to the threats against Cook, ramped up his response to point out the absurdity of their threats. I’m not entirely opposed to your take, but I’m willing to take Myers at his word.

Even taking Myers at his word, though, I think that his response was stupid and wrong. Calling for the disruption of the religious services of a group because some members of that group—members that everyone agrees are not representatives or authority figures—did something you didn’t like is cheap bigotry, even if it is supposed to be a joke. (As Dave Neiwart has argued, “It was a joke!” is a tired, fake defense of the content of a joke.)

Nevertheless, this post by tristero has changed my perspective of the whole thing. I, a self-described militant atheist, am pissed off at Myer’s response to the Cook incident. I don’t buy the righteous indignation as exculpation argument tristero puts forward, but I did take this point to heart:

Death threats, for those of you who have never received a serious one, are not to be taken lightly. Real people do, in fact, die real deaths at the hands of lunatics claiming to be acting in defense of God’s honor. So let’s put this in perspective. There is nothing PZ Myers could say that is half as awful as a death threat. Since Donohue decided to target PZ, he has already received four. Has Donohue called upon anyone to desist in making murderous threats? Does anyone expect him to?

I’d focused on Myer’s provocation because, well, of course Donohue is a bullying blowhard; of course he’s going to want people threaten to kill PZ. During the chocolate jesus episode, he was quite open in his belief that threats of violence from Catholics would encourage non-believers to tread more carefully around their sacred objects. I didn’t expect anything different, so I focused on PZ, from whom I did expect different.

But that’s insane! Donohue is a lunatic who is (directly or indirectly) encouraging people to, at the very least, threaten to kill real live human beings! Myers “joke” isn’t even in the same league. I still maintain that what PZ did was wrong, but that that wrong is even balanced against Donohue is more illuminating of the power of religious privilege to excuse or mitigate behavior that is otherwise unacceptable.

Why shouldn’t we take a hammer or a torch to a sacred cow like a consecrated host, or the Koran or what have you?

For the same reason we don’t burn crosses - even our own crosses - in the neighborhoods of black people. It’s an act of oppression, and it’s wrong to oppress people.

But it’s really disingenuous to try to argue that it’s within the power of PZ Myers, or even of atheists in general, to oppress the Catholic Church.

That’s why taking a fucking cracker is not in any way like torching a mosque. Cook didn’t commit a hate crime vs. the church; the hate crime was committed against his person, by the religious. I wonder when people like Bruce and Gordo are going to stop whitewashing that.

Bruce, you need to read the story. The wafer was NOT stolen. Read my comment, above. Furthermore, seeing as they give the wafers away, there is no sense whatsoever in which any removal of the wafers is larceny or theft. Those who receive it are under no contract. It isn’t like an End User License Agreement for software or something. If the priest gives it to someone who turns out had a different purpose in mind, that’s too bad. Nice? Eh, not really, but I’m not too concerned about “nice” when it comes to the Catholic church.

I’d also like to hear why Myers should find a religious claim in which he does not believe to have any moral bearing upon his own behavior. It is just this absurd expectation, that you and me and Myers must treat the inane belief in “transubstantiation” as if it were actually true in order to “respect” people of faith, that Myers, Dawkins and Amanda are trying to blow apart. That sounds worthy to me. Respect? Fah. The insistence and expectation that I somehow behave as if ludicrous religious claims were true in order to show a sufficient level of respect for them (which I lack, in any case) is not fair and is morally without grounds. In the face of that, I have little regard for ‘respect.’

No, we’re not obtuse. We know exactly what’s going on here, and we see no reason whatsoever to put up with it.

I don’t understand how you can steal something that is being freely given away.

For the same reason we don’t burn crosses - even our own crosses - in the neighborhoods of black people. It’s an act of oppression, and it’s wrong to oppress people.

That’s hyperbole, and bad hyperbole at that. There’s a slight difference in the symbolic meaning of desecrating a generic religious artifact versus the burning of a cross in a black neighborhood. Do consider, for a moment, what that might be. This is not a valid comparison in the remotest of senses, and I have no interest in addressing any argument that contains such an analogy.

Crackers be damned, I want to offend Methodists.  Any ideas?
Call them Baptists.

By the way Chet, sorry for coming down all mean-like - I’m just getting sick of seeing those kind of comparisons. They really are apples and oranges. Kind of like the suggestion a week or so back that graffiti on a mosque is necessarily a hate crime.

Grolby is exactly right. How far must this respect for other people’s religious beliefs extend? The point is that nobody should have to live by anybody else’s religious tenants.

Not one voice, not even from among the most ethically-principled secular bloggers, has focused on the immorality of the acts of Cook and Myers.

Not true.

Crackers be damned, I want to offend Methodists.  Any ideas?

FCC a friend standing up. It looks so much like dancing they’ll explode in a fit of offended apoplexy.

Don’t be obtuse entowhatever.  It doesn’t flatter you.

I don’t understand how you can steal something that is being freely given away.

If I go to your door and tell you that I am collecting for a charity, but really I’m keeping the money for myself, I will have stolen your money, even if you gave it to me freely.

If I were to go to a real charity and tell them I qualified for their usual gift of free clothing but did not, I’d have stolen the clothing.

In this case, the Catholic Church is explicitly not giving away wafers to all comers for all uses. Like the second example, there are stated requirements about who qualifies to accept, and like the first example, there are stated restrictions on how the wafer may be used. It’s entirely possible that Cook wasn’t aware of any of this and took the wafer innocently. But it is also possible, if he was aware, to steal something that was being given away.

(At common law, the charge is larceny by trick, but modern statutes have been written broadly to include all the various flavors of theft)

All Myers has actually done so far is to write blog posts. He hasn’t personally sneaked into churches to purloin consecrated hosts, nor, so far as we know, has anyone else done so at his request.  He says he has some wafers sent to him by lapsed Catholics who had kept them as souvenirs. There have been no reports of disrupted ceremonies anywhere.

Fun and games with communion wafers has been going on for centuries. As a child, the physicist George Gamow took one home to put under the microscope. Quite an assortment of former altar boys have reported their abuse of the sacred crackers. It’s actually quite routine and even traditional.

One result from Myers’s provocation is that we have been reminded that Catholics can be as wacko as Muslim fundamentalists, and that’s something.

If someone comes to my door and asks for a magic cracker, and I give it to them and they say “I DO NOT THINK THIS CRACKER IS MAGIC AT ALL,” I am going to look really stupid if I accuse that person of a crime.

I think Cook and Myers did fine and gave a boost of confidence to a lot of skeptics that are otherwise inclined to keep their heads down.  We need more out atheists in the world.

The asshat concern trolling of Gordo, Bruce and Thom only serves to prove Amanda’s point, of course.

Attorneys have been disbarred for giving advice that was less idiotic than Thom’s “Failing to Do Exactly What The Catholic Church Tells You To Do With Your Cracker constitutes larceny by trick” analysis above.

And you’ve got to lurve gordo, who follows up a claim that “I’m an atheist myself and I generally agree with Myers” with:

[L]et’s face it: taking the host was a shitty thing to do. The only reason to do it is to mock someone else’s religion. That’s every asshole’s right here in America, but that doesn’t mean that people should do it.

There’s a word for someone who claims to be an atheist who “generally agree[s] with [P.Z.] Myers” but who also thinks that “mock[ing] someone else’s religion” is “every asshole’s right here in America, but that doesn’t mean that people should do it”—and that word is L-I-A-R.

Obviously Chet beat me to this diagnosis, above.

Attorneys have been disbarred for giving advice that was less idiotic than Thom’s “Failing to Do Exactly What The Catholic Church Tells You To Do With Your Cracker constitutes larceny by trick” analysis above.

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of what I wrote, but if you’ve got some actual reason or argument to show where I’ve gone wrong, I am genuinely interested in this subject and want to get it right.

As for being a concern troll, either you didn’t read what I wrote or I wasn’t sufficiently clear.

First, I described my initial frustration with PZ:

I’d focused on Myer’s provocation because, well, of course Donohue is a bullying blowhard; of course he’s going to want people threaten to kill PZ. During the chocolate jesus episode, he was quite open in his belief that threats of violence from Catholics would encourage non-believers to tread more carefully around their sacred objects. I didn’t expect anything different, so I focused on PZ, from whom I did expect different.

Then, in the next paragraph, I admitted that I had been wrong, and that the focus on PZ’s rectitude—whether or not his actions are blameworthy—is born of the privilege our society affords the religious:

But that’s insane! Donohue is a lunatic who is (directly or indirectly) encouraging people to, at the very least, threaten to kill real live human beings! Myers “joke” isn’t even in the same league. I still maintain that what PZ did was wrong, </b>but that that wrong is even balanced against Donohue is more illuminating of the power of religious privilege to excuse or mitigate behavior that is otherwise unacceptable.</b>

I mean, I said that my previous perspective—the one I assume is your basis for calling me a concern troll—was insane.

If someone comes to my door and asks for a magic cracker, and I give it to them and they say “I DO NOT THINK THIS CRACKER IS MAGIC AT ALL,” I am going to look really stupid if I accuse that person of a crime.

Yes, you would, because that would not be a crime nor an apt hypothetical.

I hereby declare my belief in the purity and sanctity of parachute pants to be worthy of “special protection” and retain the right to be offended and react like a nutcase every time somebody makes fun of said parachute pants.

It’s been pointed out that a great many communicants are not in a state of grace and thus not eligible to take communion, and yet this is rarely treated as an ongoing scandal.

Let us suppose an unbeliever goes down to the communion rail, is given a wafer, and puts it in her mouth. Is it worse if she doesn’t swallow?

(I should mention that, at my paternal grandmother’s funeral mass, the priest refused communion to my nephews. My mother, a lapsed Lutheran, defiantly took communion in his place. Would you condemn her?)

Physically, the sacred host is just bit of matzo over which a priest has intoned “Hoc est corpus” and waved two fingers.  I’d be more upset about violence being done to a fresh fruit.

Should I be more suprised to see that out of all the muck the boys are throwing back and forth in this, the only person who has suffered any real harm from all this, losing her job,—-was a woman.

WTF, watercat? Who’s lost a job over this?

bad Jim: Fun and games with communion wafers has been going on for centuries.

This discussion makes me think of the especially nasty game with it in “V for Vendetta”, when the cyanide failed to transsubstiate…

OK how’s this. Religion is a scourge on society. It’s a crutch so people can look up at the stars and not feel alone. Christianity specifically is a form of child abuse.

Ahhh that felt good.

Thom:

As for being a concern troll, either you didn’t read what I wrote or I wasn’t sufficiently clear.

No, I called you a concern troll because you are a concern troll. To wit:

Even taking Myers at his word, though, I think that his response was stupid and wrong. Calling for the disruption of the religious services of a group because some members of that group—members that everyone agrees are not representatives or authority figures—did something you didn’t like is cheap bigotry….

I, a self-described militant atheist, am pissed off at Myer’s response to the Cook incident. I don’t buy the righteous indignation as exculpation argument tristero puts forward….

I didn’t expect anything different [from Donahue], so I focused on PZ, from whom I did expect different.

You have repeatedly lied about and bashed P.Z., who has in fact done nothing wrong in this incident. (Your contention that P.Z. has “call[ed] for the disruption of [any] religious services” is a disgusting lie.) Add in your pathetic and cloying “I expected different from P.Z.”, and there really can’t be any doubt about your concern trolldom. In contrast, given that you allegedly thought that ridiculing an absurd religious dogma was beneath P.Z. Myers, your honesty about considering yourself a “militant atheist” is in significant doubt.

Then, your assertion that anyone who accepts a communion wafer without intending to do exactly what Catholic theology demands (s)he do with it has committed larceny by trick is a farcical excuse for legal analysis. With “militant atheists” like these, who needs right-wing theocrats?

Amanda had you nailed right in the original post.

In short, your contribution to this thread, like your condemnation of P.Z. Myers, has been consistently full of it. A spade’s a spade, and you’re a concern troll.

Get in line in that processional
Step into the small confessional
There the guy who’s got religon’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.

If it is, try playing it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
2-4-6-8
Time to transubstantiate!

So get down upon your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect genuflect genuflect!

I often take the free samples offered by the grocery store with the intention of freeloading rather than the intention of contemplating buying the product. Larceny by trick!

mc frontalot: the arch criminal for some reason not
sought by authorities, though I been running wild for days
they’s surely gonna track me down
I’m the #1 menace for miles around

PZ Myers is going up to those religious people and bluntly proclaiming, “I think the stuff you say you believe is transparent nonsense, and that you are contemptible to profess it.”

But these religious people do, after all, continuously say things like “I think you, PZ Myers the atheist, and you, Ahmed the Moslem, and you, Jaya the Hindu, are horribly evil people who deliberately and perversely defy the Lord God.  So after you pass away, He will torture you in Hell for eternity.  I appaud this and believe you deserve every moment of suffering, amen.”

But when you compare these two stances, a religious person might say, “The religious people are only speculating about eschatology and the distant and misty post-mortem future, whereas you, PZ Myers, are really insulting real people regarding their real-world Sunday rituals, stomping all over their most refined, delicate and ethereal feelings.  How can you compare a mere theological condemnation to an insult in the material world as though they were one and the same?”

To which I would reply, “Then it’s obvious that you religious people use the word ‘believe’ in some special technical sense, where it has its usual meaning when discussing anything but religion, but when discussing religion it become synonymous with ‘offer lip service’.  You take it for granted that a few mocking words on an obscure squid-fancier’s weblog are obviously far, far more offensive than a centuries-old official doctrine of eternal Hell fire, because you believe (1) in the first but you really only believe (2) in the second.”

But no. Soft-headed “must respect the crazy beliefs of others so long as they call it ‘religion’” thinking is kicking in, and the victim of this nonsense—-PZ Myers—-is being chastised for being insufficiently respectful of other people’s stubbornly false beliefs.  Rebecca chronicles the people saying that PZ should have tread more lightly and not been so blunt about his belief that nonsense is nonsense.  I understand the urge to avoid hurting people’s feelings, or even just to avoid strife, but really, this special respect that religion gets that other beliefs are not afforded has got to stop.

Is it misguided to belive that being nice to people who hate you will gain you their sympathy, as Ms. Marcotte so eloquently points out.

In addition, I can’t see how even normal Catholics can miss the absurdity of this affair. Much of my extended family is Catholic, to varying degrees of intensity, and I just can’t see them taking this seriously. It seems to me that, even apart from the issue of religion itself, the church members and the Catholic League have dishonest motivations.

Sorry, meant to say “It is misguided to believe that people who hate you…”

So, the complaint is that what this kid stole was not simply a cracker, but an actual piece of Christ’s body?  And the kid wasn’t supposed to take it—he was supposed to eat it instead? 

Man, you have to have a strong stomach to be a believing Christian . . .

The only interesting item of this whole debacle is understanding the mechanic of Donohue’s operation. Regarding PZ, saying really stupid stuff on the blog isn’t a crime yet.  To me what he does is no more than posting a method to do social engineering.

I for one think, donohue is going to make a mistake and should be encourage to make a mistake. Then it’s court time. His little operation is way pass its usefulness and need to be terminated.

Does he really expect for people to start protesting at every meeting he attend? The church is a big organization with a lot of fragile part. The planet is a big place.

Then, of course, Donohue did just what Myers did: deliberately inflamed the situation even further in order to aggrandize his stature within his own faction. And in doing so, he demonstrated a fact that atheists would do well to learn: there’s a lot more believers out there than there are atheists. So if we’re deliberately divisive, we’re going to lose.
gordo on 07/22 at 11:29 PM

that’s nonsense gordo,

the church has a lot of enemies and the planet is a big place. A lot of people has connection to pull too.  This is about donohue attempt to play hero for the church right?

for instance, a lot of church facilities are outside the US law jurisdiction and it’s in hostile place for them. Well. money laundering, proselatizing, corruption charge, violation of land use, tax evasion, sex scandal, misusing state secret, violation of travel ban, foreign priests, etc etc…

plenty of item to attack if one would want to play really rough. Those are classic item to hit the church with.

-sq

Here is one very old classic trick.

Start posting video of priest having sex, specially homosexual.  That will destroy the entire church rather quickly. Do it fast enough, it will be a national scandal in no time. (not to mention financial destruction.)

So you see, if it is escalation they want. the planet is a big place. A lot of variable to play with.

Bush fucking the church with sex abuse scandal will look like a piker.

When is it OK to be religious?  How should someone be religious?  If someone believes in God, how should she express that belief?  Would it be more proper for those who disagree to tell her, “I respectfully disagree,” or that her beliefs are a bunch of baloney?

There’s a place for religion in private and public life, a place of respect and communal support.  The existence of God, the origin of the universe, and our fate are beyond the purview of human science.  Skeptics can believe in nothing or something to fill that void but should be reasonable and respectful in expression of their thoughts.

Even if someone’s beliefs are demonstrably nonsensical (e.g. transubstantiation, creationism), such beliefs may play a non-harmful role in someone’s happiness.  As long as he doesn’t impose this belief on others, he should be left alone.

There’s a place for religion in private and public life,  ...
JonE on 07/23 at 09:55 AM

Clearly this is not a ‘private life’ but application of power. If Donohue wants to play the game, he should get a game.

Caren, by human science, I mean the literal meaning of the word “science”: knowledge. It’s not possibly conclusively to demonstrate the existence of God or lack thereof.  One can make convincing arguments against the existence of God, less convincing arguments for the existence of God, but ultimately acceptance of either is a matter of personal conviction, though I would hesitate to call such conviction religious.

By fate, I mean only “what will happen to us in the future,” not some metaphysical destination of our soi-disant souls.

Ultimately, there’s a void in knowledge, a place where we can gaze no further into the abyss.  Religious people choose to fill that void with something else.  They are likely mistaken, but no one can know for sure.

Religious polemicists and bigots should be confronted, but I am not a fan of evangelical atheism, especially when the core of atheistic faith is no more sound than the religious beliefs of some theists.

It’s not possibly conclusively to demonstrate the existence of God or lack thereof.  One can make convincing arguments against the existence of God, less convincing arguments for the existence of God, but ultimately acceptance of either is a matter of personal conviction, though I would hesitate to call such conviction religious.
JonE on 07/23 at 10:23 AM

It is not possible to say the universe is not creted by bugs bunny either, and that bugs bunny created God. Are you saying my Church of Bugs Bunny is not delusional and that it is real? If so, you are crazy.

so what’s your point?

Ken and Barbie, if you want to believe in Bugs Bunny, then that’s your business.  Your belief is just as likely as my belief or disbelief in God, a signifier that lacks a referent.  If your referent is Bugs Bunny, at least your life is probably more fun than mine.

Just don’t tell me I have to to believe in Bugs Bunny.

Caren:

As I say above, it would be funny since they violated their own beliefs by doing so if it wasn’t so serious.  Jesus also said not to be a hypocrite or show off your faith in public.

Eh. If you believe the Gospels, Jesus also said freaky Donahue-ish stuff like “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me” (Luke 19:27) and “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6). By that standard, PZ Myers and Webster Cook might get off relatively easy in this matter even if their death threats are carried out. (Because chances are they won’t be ritually “slain” or “burned.”)

The Jesus character in the Gospels talks out of both sides of his mouth. In one verse, he’s all sweetness and light and the Golden Rule and “love thy enemies”; in the next (more than thirty times in four books), he’s shrieking that his opponents will burn in hell. The fact that wannabe theocrats like Donahue invoke that guy to support their all-too-similar two-faced act doesn’t seem surprising, ironic, or even all that inapt to me.

Ken and Barbie, if you want to believe in Bugs Bunny, then that’s your business.  Your belief is just as likely as my belief or disbelief in God,
JonE on 07/23 at 10:37 AM </i>

According to my Bugs Bunny, your God is his creation. Thus it is a subject of my interpretation, how you should act. You may believe bugs bunny has no relation to your God, but my believe you should shut up right now. Bugs Bunny says so.

(oh, so now you want to define what my church dogma should be huh? Since it claims domain over your behavior.)  Just you wait until I introduce you to some other religions that demands death to followers of Christ and non believers.  There is no such clause as “but leave me alone, while I screwed others if it is convenient.”

Just because you can make shit up doesn’t mean other people can’t make shit up.

JonE:

There’s a place for religion in private and public life, a place of respect and communal support.  The existence of God, the origin of the universe, and our fate are beyond the purview of human science.  Skeptics can believe in nothing or something to fill that void but should be reasonable and respectful in expression of their thoughts.

Even if someone’s beliefs are demonstrably nonsensical (e.g. transubstantiation, creationism), such beliefs may play a non-harmful role in someone’s happiness.  As long as he doesn’t impose this belief on others, he should be left alone.

And here’s the religious privilege mentioned by Karmakin upthread, in all of its patronizing glory.

Note well the demand in the first paragraph that ideas (only a small and privileged set thereof, of course) be afforded absolute deference and “respect” even from people who recognize said ideas to be nonsense.

And note the inevitable pivot from the hypothetical in which an Unruly Skeptic disrespects one of the precious ideas to the notion that a person has been disrespected (and not “left alone”). Neat trick, that. JonE has learned the religious-privilege playbook well.

But in a word, no. Ideas do not have human rights. Ideas have no claim to automatic deference or respect. Arguing that a given idea is absurd is not morally suspect, especially when the idea in question happens indeed to be absurd.

JonE, the religious privilege you advocate is a fundamental attack on the free exchange of ideas. It can’t stand, and we should all be thankful that generations of heretics discarded it as the oppressive nonsense it is long before P.Z. Myers (or Amanda Marcotte) came along.

Ken and Barbie, the only favor I asked of you was not to impose your belief on me.  To the extent that you do, you act reprehensibly.  I refrain from even suggesting that God exists or doesn’t exist, because I couldn’t prove it either way. 

I know you’re trying to be illustrative of the oppressive nature of some religious beliefs, but this quality was never in question.  This oppression is vile, and by analogy, the oppressive imposition of atheism on others is equally offensive.

Anyhow, I’m glad we’ve shown that religious people can be batshit crazy, but I think we already knew that…

The ones who want to mind their own business and believe in Jesus, God, Hale-Bopp, or atheism really don’t deserve to be harangued though.

To claim that science is about knowledge in order to argue for the possibility of the existence of a God of the Gaps in our knowledge betrays ignorance.

Science is a method, enabling us to make provisional claims about reality that are subject to revision upon receipt of new evidence and observations. Hypotheses that make accurate predictions matched by evidence and observation, that lead to better questions, get more attention by scientists. Well- supported explanations, that can also provide a more complete understanding for what we previously thought we knew, supersede earlier theories and become part of the current provisional scientific consensus, a new theory (which is not something dreamed up the night before while drunk). In that sense, science knows very little, which is seized upon by theists to mean that they can believe anything they please, because there is much that science does not know. But “god did it” is also a hypothesis, subject to scientific examination, or it would be, if the idea were not so otiose. How old are the stars? Well, God could have made them last Thursday, but made us think they’d been there for billions of years. In other words, there is nothing that science can do with the notion of magic or the supernatural as an explanation for anything, because science ceases to be useful at that point, and it may as well hang up the enterprise, because “God did it” explains everything, and nothing.

To claim that faith, believing something for which there is no evidence, should have equal status with science or should be accorded privileged status, because the alternative would be confrontational and bigoted and an act of evangelical atheistic faith, is to excuse yourself from intelligent discourse, JonE. Now go, and offend no more.

Rieux, I think it’s a greater good perhaps to be ignorant and happy than knowledgeable and distressed.

I’m all for a free exchange of ideas, even questioning someone’s core beliefs.  Such questioning is not offensive, but call me a little skeptical that anyone can prove to me that God exists or doesn’t exist, when no one can even establish what “God” means.

Ken, thanks.  Your post is very well-reasoned.  I don’t think religious belief should be equal with science, within the realm that science covers.  Beyond the limits of knowledge, if someone wants to believe in a mythical deity, he has no more or less basis than someone who wants to make unprovable hypotheses.

Am I a troll?

Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been taking those wafers home for years, and over the course of several hours dissolving them in acid and mixing them with my own shit.

Somehow, nobody’s said a word to me about it.

I don’t think religious belief should be equal with science, within the realm that science covers.  Beyond the limits of knowledge

You really didn’t understand what I said, did you. There is no realm, no magisteria as per Gould, no limit to knowledge where science falls off the edge. There’s culture and literary criticism and art, and insufferable music snobbery, but much of that reduces to the power to move and to persuade; religion is a subset of all of those things, seeking to expropriate from science a status it does nothing to earn.

JonE:

Rieux, I think it’s a greater good perhaps to be ignorant and happy than knowledgeable and distressed.

Good for you. Those of us who have received death threats from your “ignorant and happy” charges tend to disagree. And once again, your attack on the free marketplace of ideas because—wow—it risks making people “knowledgeable and distressed” is little short of disgusting. There are more important values at stake than your fwagile widdle sensibiwities, or those of the religious folks you patronizingly claim to be protecting.

I’m all for a free exchange of ideas, even questioning someone’s core beliefs.

No, in fact you have made it clear that you are not. (In this very comment, even—given that questioning one’s core beliefs routinely leads to becoming “knowledgable and distressed,” of course.)

You have made repeated moral pronouncements that skeptics ought not speak the reality that a huge proportion of religious notions are absurd. That is a simple and blatant attack on “the free exchange of ideas.” Like it or not, you are on record in support of theocratic powermongering.

Plenty of us on this thread are not willing to cede to Bill Donahue and his ilk the right to declare what we may or may not say about religious absurdities.

I think I’ve been very civil.  The only moral pronouncement I think skeptics should refrain from making is the following: “You should not believe in “God,” because I believe that “God” does not exist.”

You are free to say, “I believe “God” does not exist.”

Let someone make up his own mind whether or not he believes in God.

If a theist imposes his beliefs on you, he should be condemned.

As a muslim apostate, I think I should be intimately familiar with what it means to renounce religious belief, as matters of life and death are concerned, but don’t tell me you’ve got the universe all figured out.

If science is able one day to encompass everything including the (non)-existence of God, then so be it.  Until then, telling people it’s wrong to believe in God is problematic.

Telling people it’s wrong to believe that a wafer is the “body of Christ” is fine with me, but you might exercise courtesy in doing so.

I apologize on behalf of those religious people who have not extended you the same courtesy.

Ken and Barbie, the only favor I asked of you was not to impose your belief on me.  To the extent that you do, you act reprehensibly.  I refrain from even suggesting that God exists or doesn’t exist, because I couldn’t prove it either way.
JonE on 07/23 at 10:56 AM

The fact that you think Church of bugs bunny should be respected is offensive enough to me. It is an admission of a) you don’t even believe there is only one God. b) obviously you recognize the logical difficulty of religious metaphysic in general. c) How did you get to pass seminary? Did you get down on your knee blowing somebody?

Now, unless you can show me you actually lost your cookies, I suggest you don’t have a case.

Let someone make up his own mind whether or not he believes in God.

Oh, there’s a fair deal, after so many minds have been poisoned and left to atrophy by religious conditioning and ignorance.

Ken and Barbie, I’m sorry I offended you.

I think I’ve been very civil.  The only moral pronouncement I think skeptics should refrain from making is the following: “You should not believe in “God,” because I believe that “God” does not exist.”
JonE on 07/23 at 11:24 AM

You are running a scam, taking people’s money and then threatening people when somebody try to question your scam.

Hey, learn something from scientology already. Get a real spaceship story and skip the cookie. There is more money in it obviously. At least Bugs bunny is actually funny and cheaper entertainment.

wow.  I’m speechless.  I’m outta here.  You guys can have this forum to yourselves.

Wouldn’t the crime technically be kidnapping?  Or maybe desecration of a corpse?

Also:

Cartman: Jesus was made of crackers? 
Sister Anne: No. 
Stan: But crackers are his- body. 
Sister Anne: Yes. 
Kenny: [thinks a while, then] (What?!) 
Sister Anne: In the Book of Mark, Jesus distributed bread and said, “eat this, for it is my body.” 
Cartman: So wwe won’t go to hell as long as we eat crackers. 
Sister Anne: Nononono! 
Butters: Uhwell, uhwhat are we eatin’ then? 
Sister Anne: The Body of Christ! [confused faces all around] 
Stan: Nonono, I get it. Jesus wanted us to eat him, but he didn’t want us to be cannibals, so he turned himself into crackers, and then told people to eat him. 
Sister Anne: No! 
Stan: No?? 
Butters: Huh-I can’t whistle if I eat too many crackers. 
Sister Anne: Look: all you have to know is that when the priest gives you the cracker, you eat it! Okay?! 
Kenny, Stan, Cartman: O-kay. 
Sister Anne: And then, you will drink a very small amount of wine, for that, is the Blood of Christ. 
Cartman: Aw, come on now, this is just getting silly!

I’m the Easter Rabbit, hurray!
I’m the Easter Rabbit, hurray!

WE’RE AT UR ALTER KIDNAPPING UR GOD

Rieux, I think it’s a greater good perhaps to be ignorant and happy than knowledgeable and distressed.

Case in point, George W. Bush. Happy, and ignorant as pig shit. Never harmed a soul, right?

Tsk tsk, dude, that’s some seriously harmful bullshit you’re peddling there.

Vegan, in principle I agree, but I’ll give you a counterexample.  Right now, my dad is dying of cancer.  He’s a born-again Christian.  He believes in heaven.  I’m not going to spend my time trying to dissuade him.

The difference is, his beliefs are personal and applied to him.  To the extent he thinks abortion is wrong and votes accordingly, his beliefs are no longer personal and I try to dissuade him.  But if people want to believe something that is strictly personal, sometimes I am inclined to leave them alone, knowing that I really don’t have all the answers.

“If I go to your door and tell you that I am collecting for a charity, but really I’m keeping the money for myself, I will have stolen your money”

That’s a false analogy.  If I take a pen that is being given freely when I am at a bank, but instead of writing with it, I (gasp) pick my nose with it, it is not stealing.

Anyway, I hear those magic cookies taste OK!

WTF, watercat? Who’s lost a job over this?

The 1-800-FLOWERS employee, who violated company policy by letting her husband send a death threat to PZ through her corporate email address.

Sucks for her, I guess, but isn’t that a big no-no?

“How can we love you if you won’t go away,” JonE? (We’ve gotta appreciate that “Say ‘I’m outta here’ and then don’t leave” technique.)

Vegan, in principle I agree….

No, you have made it quite clear, repeatedly, that you disagree—in ridiculous and categorical statements like these:

There’s a place for religion in private and public life, a place of respect and communal support.

Skeptics can believe in nothing or something to fill that void but should be reasonable and respectful in expression of their thoughts.

Even if someone’s beliefs are demonstrably nonsensical (e.g. transubstantiation, creationism), such beliefs may play a non-harmful role in someone’s happiness.  As long as he doesn’t impose this belief on others, he should be left alone.

I think it’s a greater good perhaps to be ignorant and happy than knowledgeable and distressed.

It is to laugh at your current furious backpedaling. Oh, now it’s wrong to engage in the free exchange of ideas insofar as it hurts the feelings of terminal patients, huh? How cutely denuded that logic is from the broad pronouncements quoted above. (Here’s an idea: God-soaked people with terminal illnesses should avoid reading Pharyngula!)

Just give up. You want to limit free inquiry to areas that pose no danger to the fragile sensibilities of those who are deeply emotionally invested in religious absurdities. That’s a ridiculous abandonment of the basic notion of a free marketplace of ideas. And it remains so no matter how heavily you try to polish it.

That’s hyperbole, and bad hyperbole at that. There’s a slight difference in the symbolic meaning of desecrating a generic religious artifact versus the burning of a cross in a black neighborhood.

Well, yes, and no.

There’s no difference between burning the cross and the acts desecrating the cracker have been compared to, but that’s the hyperbole.

But, say, publicly burning a Torah? Smearing pig fat on a mosque? That’s not just desecration, that’s an attempt to send the message “Jews and Muzzies don’t belong here.” Just like burning the cross is an attempt to say “niggers get out.”

Fiddling with a holy cracker? That may be “desecration”, but only if you believe that the cracker is divine. If you don’t believe that, it’s hard to see how you could be committing desecration. The question is whether you’re doing something oppressive, that’s why vandalizing mosques is bad, that’s why burning crosses is bad, and that’s why messing around with a cracker is insignificant. It’s currently impossible to oppress the Catholic Church.

Christians: Jesus can take care of Himself, thank you. Even if He’s currently a mystical part of a cracker.

Atheists et al: Don’t be excessively rude. Just say, It’s a cracker to me, and if you are Christian, please note the message above.

Both Christians and atheists know that the Golden Rule is a good principle. Follow it and stop baiting each other. Do something constructive.

Blaspheme is constructive.

Rieux, I decided I wasn’t going to give in to someone who accused me of giving blow-jobs to get through seminary.

I think you’ve drawn conclusions that are far too strong on the basis of my statements.  I am not backpedaling.  I am trying to be consistent in my thinking.

And I never said anything like I wanted to limit free inquiry.  Quite the contrary, I said that if science demonstrates the (non-)existence of God, so be it.

But it’s evident that the vicious ad-hominems that come from the keyboards of such enlightened progressives are part and parcel with the intolerance that comes from religious people.  I choose to address people such as Ken C. who at least has the dignity to evaluate my logic, flawed as it may be, on its merits.

As much a principled agnostic as there ever were, I am repulsed by the kind of invective that has been directed at me and the extravagant assumptions you make about what my beliefs actually are.

JonE:

I decided I wasn’t going to give in to someone who accused me of giving blow-jobs to get through seminary.

Again you attempt to rewrite your own history. In fact, you wrote:

I’m outta here.  You guys can have this forum to yourselves.

Whereupon you… failed to get “outta here” and did not leave this forum to us.

It’s difficult to have a coherent argument with a person who is constantly retconning his own position.

I think you’ve drawn conclusions that are far too strong on the basis of my statements.

And I think you’re doggedly refusing even to think about what you are (or perhaps were—it’s hard to keep up) arguing.

I never said anything like I wanted to limit free inquiry.

Bullshit. I quoted four, count ’em, four instances in which you directly argued that treating religious ideas (and therefore people—never mind the fallacy there) without “respect” is a moral wrong. That is necessarily an attempt to limit the free marketplace of ideas. Q.E.D.

But it’s evident that the vicious ad-hominems that come from the keyboards of such enlightened progressives….

Wrong again. I haven’t authored a single ad hominem in this thread. (You may need to learn that “ad hominem” doesn’t actually mean “thing that makes me feel bad.” Indeed, maybe that confusion goes to the root of the problem regarding your complaints that atheists are violating legitimate societal mores.)

I choose to address people such as Ken C. who at least has the dignity to evaluate my logic, flawed as it may be, on its merits.

In my responses to you I’ve done nothing but “evaluate [your] logic, flawed as it may be, on its merits.” It has little to no merit, so the evaluation has been far from positive. Tough cookies.

As P.Z. Myers recognizes, one of the most powerful weapons against ridiculous and destructive ideas—such as religious absurdities, or the notion that said absurdities must receive automatic respect—is mockery. If that hurts your precious sensibilities, I suggest you’re in the wrong place.

Caren, Thanks.  Rieux, you’re a thoughtful person but I’m unable to wrap my head around your intellect, so I’ll concede the argument to you.  I must admit, I haven’t read the previous threads, so I’m at a disadvantage.  I would only ask in the end that you guys be as considerate to me as I have tried to be to you.  Seeing as I have few allies around here and as I really am starting to be a troll, I’ll leave this topic be and return some other day when I’ve done a better job with my reasoning.

There’s no difference between burning the cross and the acts desecrating the cracker have been compared to, but that’s the hyperbole.
But, say, publicly burning a Torah? Smearing pig fat on a mosque? That’s not just desecration, that’s an attempt to send the message “Jews and Muzzies don’t belong here.” Just like burning the cross is an attempt to say “niggers get out.”
Fiddling with a holy cracker? That may be “desecration”, but only if you believe that the cracker is divine. If you don’t believe that, it’s hard to see how you could be committing desecration. The question is whether you’re doing something oppressive, that’s why vandalizing mosques is bad, that’s why burning crosses is bad, and that’s why messing around with a cracker is insignificant. It’s currently impossible to oppress the Catholic Church.

Chet, I don’t think you’re quite getting my meaning. The point is that burning a Torah, smearing pig fat on a mosque and burning a cross in a black neighborhood are categorically different from the generic desecration per se of religious symbols or objects. The symbolic meaning of that cross burning - “n—rs get out,” is not derived from the symbolic religious meaning of the Crucifix, itself. The desecration (if you can call it that) of the cross by burning is not performed to oppress a particular religious group. Keep in mind that most members of the Klan have and do consider themselves to be devout Christians. The burning cross means what it does because of a cultural history of its use as a weapon of intimidation and oppression. Similarly, random vandalism of a mosque may not be oppressive, as such. Some teenager spraying “KERRY <3 JESSE 4 EVAH” on a mosque is not committing an act of oppression. They are committing vandalism upon private property. While it is often necessary to tread lightly in this territory, you seem to be saying that the willful destruction of religious symbols becomes oppressive as soon as they are committed against the artifacts of a religious group with a history of prejudice against them. I don’t think that this is necessarily true. For the record, I do NOT advocate any of the acts mentioned. At the very least, they constitute willful destruction of property, which is wrong. I suppose that if you buy your own Torah or Koran, you can burn away, but the targeting of those particular texts is touchy and suspicious. Throw in a Bible and you’d probably do better at getting the right message - I think that a big part of the problem of messing around with symbols like this is that it’s WAY to easy to look like you’re saying something entirely different from what you intend. I like to stick with mockery, it’s easier, safer and you don’t need as many materials.

Well, JonE, my dad’s dying of cancer too, as it happens. And i’m sorry that you’re dealing with this also…it’s horrid to watch.

But it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL to do with free inquiry, ignorance, bliss, or atheism as they are being discussed in this thread, which deals with the PUBLIC SPHERE.

Nobody is saying that atheists must abusively confront all believers at all times and in all situations. We are saying that an atheist who is behaving in the public sphere should be able to make whatever statements he or she feels are valid and called for, without fear. We are saying that public criticism of religion MUST be allowed, in a society of free inquiry.

You can’t seem to distinguish the public from the private, which makes me skeptical about all of your “just leave people alone!” claims. If your dad sees Richard Dawkins on TV tomorrow, will it somehow cause him to be more miserable? Will he abruptly abandon faith on his deathbed? 1) I doubt it, and 2) IT’S STILL NOT DAWKINS’S PROBLEM.

JonE, the problem with your “principled agnosticism,” is the assertion that, because God cannot be disproved, belief is equally as valid as disbelief. How absurdly false! Look up Bertrand Russel’s Celestial Teapot. The hypothesis that God exists is not equally as probable as the null hypothesis that there are no Gods. Your claim that it is reasonable to consider the subject in doubt is ignorant and false. That’s not how empirical reasoning works. Without evidence for the existence of God, there is no reason whatsoever to consider the possibility of its existence.

grolby and chet, FWIW I think you two are in heated agreement.

Vegan:

We are saying that an atheist who is behaving in the public sphere should be able to make whatever statements he or she feels are valid and called for, without fear.

I would step back from that just a bit; I can, actually, imagine atheist/anti-religion statements that one of Our Kind could feel moved to make (e.g., “Anyone who believes in God is an idiot”) that would be inappropriate and ethically blameworthy. Actual, full-blown, ad hominem venom is ugly and unnecessary.

The problem, as Amanda (and countless heretics before her) has pointed out here and as several commenters on this thread have exemplified, is that religious interests have succeeded in enlarging the scope of targets that most of society considers off-limits from harsh critique. Rather than limiting the category of “inappropriate attacks” to actual personal invective, a large proportion of religious folks (and, it appears, plenty of heathens too) regard it as a deep personal affront if a P.Z. Myers or an Amanda Marcotte questions the validity of popular religious beliefs. That’s bullshit, but they get away with it.

This “Attacking my ideas means attacking me” garbage is endemic in religious (and religious-apologist nonbeliever) complaints about uppity atheists. In my experience, the vast majority of allegations of anti-religion misbehavior stem not from actual inappropriate conduct but from certain people’s absurdly inflated sense of the matters that are morally out of bounds for criticism.

And so we get idiocies like P.Z. Myers being tsk-tsked by religious apologists for pointing out that it is, in fact, only a “fracking cracker.” Here, we’ve had the specter of JonE complaining about “vicious ad-hominems” when in fact it was only his arguments that had been beaten up. And so on.

The end result is that religion’s age-old effort to insulate itself from any and all rational criticism survives, with the ridiculous assistance of all too many people who claim to be free from religion themselves. Not incidentally, that happens to be a substantial proportion of Amanda’s argument in the OP. She’s absolutely correct, and this comment thread contains plenty of evidence for it.

The difference is, his beliefs are personal and applied to him.  To the extent he thinks abortion is wrong and votes accordingly, his beliefs are no longer personal and I try to dissuade him.  But if people want to believe something that is strictly personal, sometimes I am inclined to leave them alone, knowing that I really don’t have all the answers.
JonE on 07/23 at 12:41 PM

You can’t even stick with what you mean consistently, how can anybody believe you don’t make another shit up. A polite liar is still a liar.

While it is often necessary to tread lightly in this territory, you seem to be saying that the willful destruction of religious symbols becomes oppressive as soon as they are committed against the artifacts of a religious group with a history of prejudice against them.

I’m saying that, like most other things, these actions don’t occur in a vacuum. Much as there’s a difference between me, a white man, burning a little cross in the fireplace and burning a giant cross on my black neighbors lawn, there’s a difference between these actions that, fundamentally, has to do with privilege and power.

Haha, as an above poster says, we’re probably in heated agreement. My original point was that the desecration of a cracker doesn’t even begin to approach the level of other kinds of truly-oppressive desecration, and to compare the one to the other is pretty fucking stupid.

I’m pretty sure you agree with that. Yes? I think you’re explaining it better than I am.

Gonna go eat some crackers now.

Instead, he pretends that what the kid did was no different than taking a packet of Saltines home with you from a restaurant.

Explain to me how they are different in any way, without resorting to the standard cries of undeserved religious entitlement.

Oh, wait - there is one way that they are, in fact, different.  Webster Cook was physically assaulted for taking the saltines back to his seat.  A waiter who tried to tackle you would quickly find himself out of a job and awaiting criminal prosecution.

Rieux, I think it’s a greater good perhaps to be ignorant and happy than knowledgeable and distressed.

JonE, this sentiment is exactly the reason why I am an atheist.

In my experience, the vast majority of allegations of anti-religion misbehavior stem not from actual inappropriate conduct but from certain people’s absurdly inflated sense of the matters that are morally out of bounds for criticism.

It reminds me of North Korea’s claim to 50 miles’ worth of territorial waters.  Absurd and dangerous.

Gonna go eat some crackers now.

Cannibal!

This “Attacking my ideas means attacking me” garbage is endemic in religious (and religious-apologist nonbeliever) complaints about uppity atheists. In my experience, the vast majority of allegations of anti-religion misbehavior stem not from actual inappropriate conduct but from certain people’s absurdly inflated sense of the matters that are morally out of bounds for criticism.

That wasn’t my experience at my majority atheist campus where mostly White suburban-raised socio-economically privileged militant atheists routinely verbally harassed religious students in and out of class with insults about their “inferior intelligence”. 

It got to such a point that every religious student I’ve met have felt so intimidated that they preferred to keep their religious/agnostic beliefs on the down-low to avoid being verbally harassed and taunted as of “inferior intelligence.”  To these militant atheists….if you’re religious or agnostic…..you’re irredeemably stupid and merit any harsh verbal harassment and tauntings that were meted out by their fellow atheists.  I caught a lot of this crap for admitting my agnosticism….along with arguing with their ignorant overidealization of Marxism/Maoism.*  On the other hand, being an atheist meant that they regarded themselves as “paragons of high intellectualism”....even when several of them were suspended and/or expelled for academic underperformance.** 

The militant atheists’ criticisms of religious students also had a strongly classist and colonialist flavor due to their racial and socio-economic privileged positions in relation to most of the religious students who tended to be working/middle class and/or POC.  I myself was one of those POC working-class scholarship students. 

I’ve personally witnessed this in classes such as when an orthodox Jewish classmate was recounting how his grandparents’ faith helped them cope with the Nazi holocaust in a modern German history course or Taoist/Buddhist classmates describing how their religions affected the culture and society of East Asian societies in my Chinese and Japanese history and politics courses.  Plainly put, these atheists’ behavior was uncalled for when all those religious students were doing was discussing something germane to the topics being covered in the course and not meant to be a discussion of merits/non-merits of religious belief as the Profs had to reiterate time and again.  In many ways, they behaved no differently from the Christian fundamentalists I’ve had to deal with before and after college. 

* From their arguments, it was quite obvious they’ve never experienced firsthand living in a Marxist/Maoist society….or knew anyone who did so.  As I later found out…their knowledge of Marxist/Maoist theory was superficial at best. 

** Takes a lot of f^%king up one’s grades to get to that point.

My enthusiasm for discussing exholt’s college experience knows no bounds.

The great thing about exholt, though, is how he never carried a grudge.

Uh, I’ve got to point this out.

How did you get to pass seminary? Did you get down on your knee blowing somebody?

from ken and barbie @11:27 directed to JonE is an ad hominem attack.
Now, JonE is wrong wrong wrong in my opinion, but that aint no reason to call him a stupid cocksucker.

CWD:

....directed to JonE is an ad hominem attack.

Touche. That was uncalled for.

Well, it’s a good thing that exholt has led us away from a discussion about how the religious population of the world (numbering, what, four billion? five?) abuses their power in favor of a discussion about how one witness claims an irreligious subset of Oberlin College students (student body 2,850) once abused their power.

We all know it’s true—as Oberlin goes, so goes the world. Thus P.Z. Myers is a total asshole. Q.E.D.

I can, actually, imagine atheist/anti-religion statements that one of Our Kind could feel moved to make (e.g., “Anyone who believes in God is an idiot”) that would be inappropriate and ethically blameworthy. Actual, full-blown, ad hominem venom is ugly and unnecessary.

- moi

Rieux,

Also keep in mind that there were militant atheistic regimes in extremely populous countries that did much to punish and brutalize religious believers as they were regarded as suspect and disloyal to the Marxist/Maoist ideological system.  This included China as the various 50’s era anti-rightist campaigns and the 60’s era Cultural Revolution has shown.  In the latter event, Maoist red guards went on a rampage persecuting, brutalizing, and killing anyone determined to be insufficiently loyal…including persons who were religious or had religious members as family members.  To this day, all anyone knows is that the numbers killed in the wake of the Cultural Revolution numbers in the millions and that discussion/research of this is still heavily suppressed/discouraged by the CCP government.

from ken and barbie @11:27 directed to JonE is an ad hominem attack.
Now, JonE is wrong wrong wrong in my opinion, but that aint no reason to call him a stupid cocksucker.
CWD on 07/23 at 05:53 PM

well he screwed up his basic argument. I seriously doubt he is following official church guideline. So obviously he is incompetent hack who gets his job by coasting.  I mean is not like somebody made this argument is just last week. It’s been since the beginning of religion.

How else do you suppose he pass his seminary?

I’m saying that, like most other things, these actions don’t occur in a vacuum. Much as there’s a difference between me, a white man, burning a little cross in the fireplace and burning a giant cross on my black neighbors lawn, there’s a difference between these actions that, fundamentally, has to do with privilege and power.

I couldn’t agree more. I think I’ll go nosh some crackers, myself.

Also keep in mind that there were militant atheistic regimes in extremely populous countries that did much to punish and brutalize religious believers as they were regarded as suspect and disloyal to the Marxist/Maoist ideological system.

Also keep in mind that this had less to do with some kind of atheist dogma than it had to do with convenient means of totalitarian oppression. And no, I won’t claim that Marxism and Maoism were “religions” of the state, but they ARE out-of-control irrational ideologies. Atheism is a non-ideology. The fact that atheism is part of Marxist ideology doesn’t change the fact that this kind of oppression must be laid at the feet of Marxism and Maoism.

And yes, we get it - atheists can be assholes too. You keep trying to make this into some kind of Big Revelation. It’s not. It’s actually rather uninteresting. Frankly, I find the implicit comparison of the meanie atheists at Oberlin (and, apparently, everywhere in your life) to the oppressive ideology of the Soviet, Chinese and other totalitarian Marxist states inappropriate and despicable.

Frankly, I find the implicit comparison of the meanie atheists at Oberlin (and, apparently, everywhere in your life) to the oppressive ideology of the Soviet, Chinese and other totalitarian Marxist states inappropriate and despicable.

Grolby,

I never meant to make any comparisons with the two. 

The college experience was my own experience with militant atheists…..which was fortunately countered by more reasonable civil atheists I met at work after graduation with whom I had many long interesting after-work conversations…including ones where they’ve recounted how they experienced similar crap from Catholic/Christian classmates at more mainstream secular and religious institutions. 
Basically, it was to show a data point that some atheists can not only be assholes like everyone else…but just as evangelistic and intolerant of those holding different viewpoints/beliefs as Christian fundies. 

I referenced the Maoist Chinese communists mainly because I find it astounding how many atheists from those at my undergrad to some commenters on this and other progressive blogs have asserted implicitly or otherwise that no atheist/atheistic movement(s) have ever committed massive bloody violence to the same degree as their religious counterparts….a dubious assertion considering what transpired in the history of the 20th and even 21st centuries.  This is troubling not only as a student of history, but also as someone who has had family members who experienced and survived the Cultural Revolution with its persecutions, brutalities, and killings.

I never meant to make any comparisons with the two.

Gods, what a jerk.

Exholt, Stalinists and Maoists were destroying the competition. If you’re trying to make the claim that atheism leads to Stalinism or Maoism, you’re an idiot. If you’re trying to claim that atheists are as likely to be an asshole as any fundy, nobody is going to dispute that. Atheism is not an ideology like Xtianity or Stalinism or Maoism, it’s nothing more than an absence of belief in gods. You want to dishonestly conflate correlation with causation, knock yourself out. Being an asshole or a murderous thug isn’t what makes a fundy or an atheist wrong about the existence of a god or gods. Showing yourself to be incapable of honest argument is only going to bring out the asshole in everybody you meet, until they discover how easy it is to ignore you. Get some new material.

exholt, that’s why I favor atheism as the obvious outlook of an epistemology built upon empirical reasoning rather than as a component of any particular ideological system. Religious movements that have caused and continue to cause hurt and bloodshed do so because they are violent, irrational, anti-humanistic ideologies. So too avowedly atheistic ideologies like Maoism. Religious ideas seem to me to be of the same class of exceptionalist, irrational, magical thinking (along with a heaping helping of ambition, hate, greed and other such pleasantries). What I’m trying to say is that an anti-humanistic ideology may be avowedly theistic or atheistic. A truly, deeply humanistic ideology, on the other hand, will necessarily be atheistic (secular, if you prefer), and very importantly - this is the part we’ve been getting at - will not privilege any kinds of ideas over others in the exchange of information. Knowing the truth and having true freedom in the exchange of ideas is far too important to compromise in the name of “respect.”

And yes, by the way, it is possible to arrive at the “right” conclusion, atheism, for the “wrong” reasons. Still, I’m very reluctant to make a criticism of an individual’s reason for their disbelief. First of all, credit must be given for getting the right answer. Second of all, to me that criticism implies that abandoning belief for atheism is some kind of drastic step and that the correct decision in the absence of reason and evidence is to remain a theist. I think that this is completely backwards. Whatever. I also think that describing cruelty as “evangelism” is misplaced and inaccurate. Christian beliefs and actions, both fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist, have consequences and effects that reach far, far beyond the actions of some meanie atheists at Oberlin. That’s the problem, and it IS a problem, no matter how nice and polite the theists are. The fact that both believers and non-believers can be mean is really rather beside the point, and that’s why that fact fails to move me.

To make my point another way: a benign dictatorship is still a dictatorship, and wrong. Just the same, even benign religious beliefs are still religious beliefs, and mistaken about reality. The continued effort to grant special immunity to such beliefs, even if they were all perfectly nice and benign, has inescapable negative consequences. No ideas deserve special protection, feelings be damned.

from ken and barbie @11:27 directed to JonE is an ad hominem attack.

No, it’s not.  “JonE is an ignoramus who slept his way through school, and because of that characterization, his arguments are bogus” is an ad hominem.

“JonE’s arguments are completely bogus, here’s why, and in addition he probably couldn’t get through school without performing sexual favors for passing grades” is not an ad hominem. *Hint: This is far far closer to ken and barbie than the other thing.*

Ad hominem is not Latin for “you hurt my feelings with mean words”.  Ad hominem is “can’t you folks see that Obama’s black?! (and therefore shouldn’t be President because of his skin color)”.

Exholt, Stalinists and Maoists were destroying the competition.

If that’s the main reason you feel Marxist derived regimes were doing it…you really need to reread the Marxist canon in far more depth and study how Marxist derived ideologies were actually carried out in practice.  In that sentence, you revealed the same level of superficial understanding of Marxist derived ideologies and societies as those sheltered racially and socio-economically privileged “Marxist/Maoist” militant atheist undergrads whose understanding of such ideologies and societies were quite limited. 

This was quite manifest when some of them ended up with poor or even failing grades in courses dealing with Chinese politics and Marxist theory because even the avowed Marxist Profs got fed up with their lackluster and even downright crappy seminar papers exposing how their superficial knowledge was wholly inadequate to the demands of the course/research requirements.

No, it’s not.  “JonE is an ignoramus who slept his way through school, and because of that characterization, his arguments are bogus” is an ad hominem.

Except it is ad hominem.

Stogoe, considering that we use a language where meaning is defined via consensus, I bring this to your attention (my bold):

Usage Note: As the principal meaning of the preposition ad suggests, the homo of ad hominem was originally the person to whom an argument was addressed, not its subject…The expression now also has a looser use in referring to any personal attack, whether or not it is part of an argument... Ad hominem has also recently acquired a use as a noun denoting personal attacks, as in “Notwithstanding all the ad hominem, Gingrich insists that he and Panetta can work together” (Washington Post). This usage may raise some eyebrows, though it appears to be gaining ground in journalistic style…

Here is <a > the</a> site
Like it or not the term has come to denote any personal attack inthe course of an argument.
Accusing JonE of fellating his way through divinity school served no one.  Except people like me who get an adolescent kick out typing “stupid cocksucker” or “fellate his way through divinity school”.

Why did the embed not work?

To make my point another way: a benign dictatorship is still a dictatorship, and wrong. Just the same, even benign religious beliefs are still religious beliefs, and mistaken about reality. The continued effort to grant special immunity to such beliefs, even if they were all perfectly nice and benign, has inescapable negative consequences. No ideas deserve special protection, feelings be damned.

I’m of the mind that if one believes in a healthy secular pluralistic society where all religious beliefs/non-beliefs are respected…the best personal policy is a “live and let live” policy where other people’s worldview…whether derived from atheism or theistic beliefs are none of my business unless they choose to make it an issue by attempting to shove their worldview down my throat, attempt to whitewash/deny/distance themselves from the misdeeds of their fellow adherents*, and/or otherwise acting like jackasses because they cannot tolerate anyone whose worldview differs from their own.

* Funny thing is that the atheist co-workers with whom I’ve had many afterwork conversations had no problems admitting that fellow atheists and avowed atheistic groups were just as violent and bloody as their religious counterparts and felt that to deny this not only signifies an astounding ignorance of recent history, but is also a possible sign of intellectual dishonesty.

CWD on 07/24 at 03:47 PM

I already show that the flaw of his argument is VERY BASIC. the kind of thing that any seminary student should notice and learn first thing.  THEREFORE, he is stupid and pass his schooling by blowing somebody instead of using his head. Therefore he shouldn’t be listened. That’s a fact and a speculation.

an ad hominem attack against him would be “he is catholic, therefore he is stupid and probably gay too. Don’t listen to him” That’s ad hominem.

Ken & Barbie,
Look, I think his argument was craptastic too.  No disagreement and you did a decent job of refuting it.  But calling him a stupid cocksucker (nerver will get old, that) was an ad hominem attack as defined by our evolving language.  See above. 
By calling him that you essentially said:  “I disagree with you and think that you are so stupid and cocksucking that I can safely discount anything you say”.
And I really don’t have a problem with that.  Anyone who says that “ignorance is bliss so its good” really is a stupid cocksucker. But the attack was ad hominem.

If that’s the main reason you feel Marxist derived regimes were doing it…you really need to reread the Marxist canon in far more depth and study how Marxist derived ideologies were actually carried out in practice.

You keep using the fact that atheism was a tenet of marxism to imply the converse. STFU.

But calling him a stupid cocksucker
CWD on 07/24 at 04:03 PM </i>

well, defining him as stupid cocksucker works more effectively in turning his frame of mind against him than high minded language.

He can seek solace in his God if that hurts him so much. I am sure heaven awaits him for this prosecution. The stupid cocksucker believe that sort of shit.

Jesus was a liberal.

That said, you shouldn’t mess with the crackers in a catholic church. They take that stuff seriously, and have every right to. I would love to see the redfaces of the posters here, if their all time favorite idol (bible says stay away from idolatry) whether it is a politician, poet, rock band, or family pet was being dissed here. I am sure that is the way the church felt…. disrespected.

</table>“You know, but keep pretending like we’re talking about bombing a mosque, not eating a cracker. You’re a jackass.” </table>

While Jesus would think your statement was rude, he would not judge or call you an empty, petty troll. I on the other hand would. Let these folks have their darn communion. And find something else to bash. Skepticism is not the same thing as chauvinism and bigotry. At least not the last time I looked in the dictionary.

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL AND A POPULIST
yer loving brother
Billy J

crap… I should have previewed that… well… ya’ll can call me a dumbass now, but it still doesn’t mean you should leave the crackers alone