The Cracker Case, Update
I blogged last week about science professor and blogger PZ Myers and his threat to commit "profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse" on a communion wafer. This was after PZ had learned of death threats against a young man who had taken a communion wafer out of church to keep in a plastic bag instead of swallowing it. Then PZ began to get death threats, and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League began a campaign to get PZ fired from his job at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
I should add that I've met PZ and also have had some online, um, discussions with him. I like PZ enormously even though we don't see eye to eye on religion. I also understand why he was making threats against communion wafers, even though it was disrespectful of Catholicism and not something I would have done myself.
Anyway, I see that a couple of other About.com Guides have weighed in on the PZ controversy. Our Guide to Atheism/Agnosicism, Austin Cline, and our Guide to Catholicism, Scott P. Richert, debated the controversy on Twitter (see Scott's comments and Austin's comments). Scott also has blogged about PZ and his cracker threats.
In response to Scott's post -- PZ didn't authorize me to speak for him, but it's safe to say that PZ didn't threaten to desecrate communion wafers out of a particular animosity to Catholicism or even Christianity. PZ doesn't discriminate; he thinks all religion is nonsense.He did once allow to me that maybe Zen Buddhists are less crazy than some other religious folks. (I can hear you Zennies snickering -- he don't know us very well, do he?) But he clearly thinks that religion amounts to believing in supernatural things -- and, frankly, a lot of it is -- and that people who defend religion are in denial.
I'd like to argue with him, but then some bleeping believers come along and make death threats against some kid because he didn't swallow his communion wafer. It's too easy to see how PZ came by his point of view.
Buddhism is hardly pure of, um, less than rational beliefs and practices. Try to argue with Shugden devotees, for example. They will agree that Shugden, a character from Tibetan mythology, has no intrinsic existence, yet they're determined to tear Tibetan Buddhism apart rather than stop venerating him. This doesn't even have internal logic.
IMO the correct response to PZ is not to pray for his conversion, which (a) strikes even me as obnoxious, and (b) ain't gonna happen. The correct response is to look to ourselves and be willing to criticize whenever our co-religionists are making religion look bad. As soon as our own conduct and practice of religion are perfect, then we can argue with PZ.
Comments
“As soon as our own conduct and practice of religion are perfect, then…” and of course that is beyond human capability which would shut-up all the religious ‘actors’ were they to realize it.
I can imagine worse fates, honestly.
I do think that the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) generally cause the most pernicious harm simply because lack of tolerance of other beliefs is built into their own belief systems. I guess there are Hindu radicals who have caused some violence in South Asia, but I see that as more of a nationalistic/ethnic thing than religious, though I don’t know enough about it to really say.
As for Buddhism, I can’t say that any crusades or comparable outrages come to mind. Are there any? The Tibetan thing also seems to me to be primarily nationalistic/ethnic. I don’t get the impression that intolerance of other religions really enters much into it.
Virginia - I don’t think it’s built-in intolerance of other religions as much as it is operating the ‘business’ side of the particular religious institution. A religion needs followers like a business needs patrons, and one of the many ways to keep ‘customers’ is to criticize the competition. In the case of religion, it comes across as intolerance.
PZ Myers will find it hard to out-blaspheme the Communion ceremony itself. After all, they _eat_ that wafer! That’s natural if it’s just a cracker; but if it’s a transubstantiated bit of flesh, then eating it is the most sacreligious, irreverent, defiling thing you could possibly do with it. This was well understood in Roman times, but 2000 years of ritual have dulled the sting of Jesus’s over-the-top jest.
If PZ Myers wants to satirize such a ceremony, already deeply satirical, then he’ll have to play the straight man. What would you do if someone handed you a wafer of human flesh? Bury it decently, of course; or better yet cremate it and scatter the ashes. So that’s what I suggest he do, if he does it at all. And play it completely straight-faced, solemn and reverential. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This would not only be respectful, it would by contrast reveal the disrespectful nature of the original ceremony.
For those Catholics, and I am one, who hold Communion sacred, no ‘explanation’ of it is necessary: For those who do not, no ‘explanation’ is possible.
So, paradoctor, your ‘belief’ is intact.
I used to work as a political activist for the Leadership Institute. My boss there used to say that politicians have IQs which are 40 points lower than everyone else on political issues. Why? Because once you are involved in a situatioin, you often loose perspective.
I would hold that many religionists and many anti-religionists act like they have an IQ which is 40 points lower than eveyone else because they are in love with their own opinions, beliefs, stances, or they feel threatened and thus go overboard in the name of defending the faith, whatever faith it might be.
So we have people who persecute Catholics in the name of opposing persecution. Then we have Catholics who refuse to show toleration in the name of demanding toleration.
Behaving badly is a human trait which is not limited to persons of faith. Nor is behaving badly unknown to those who oppose religion. Just look at the French Jacobins or the Soviet and Chinese Marxists. And then their was those Nazis who had their own perverse faith in modern science.
However, before anyone strikes out at either the Catholics or the anti-Catholics, they need to take a step back and reflect upon how their actions reflect on their faiths, whether religious or anti-religious. They need to ask what their rants or threats prove to anyone, and they need to ask how stereotyping Catholics or anti-Catholics proves anything other than their own bigotry.
In other words, take some time to empty yourself and then meditate for a while. Maybe your perspective will be different once you step back from the situation and regain some perspective.
felicity: Please understand, I don’t hold the essential irreverence of the Communion ceremony against it. On the contrary, I admire such stark black humor. It’s a pity that it takes an outsider to appreciate the sharpness of Jesus’s wit.
As for sacredness, it plus irreverence equals intimacy. The trouble with literalism is that it turns free energy into closed form; a form of alienation.
I was thinking that if a lot of bloggers made threats against consecrated crackers (you don’t actually need a cracker) it might defuse the situation for PZ… but I was too afraid to really make an honest threat (those people scare me) so I cloaked my threat in an attempt at humor:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/07/harass-me-bill-im-gonna-desecrate.html
It seemed funny at the time I wrote it, but am I the only one?
Would a big group cracker threat help PZ?