So my fellow SBer PZ is in all sorts of hot water with Catholics over a blog post. I didn't really want to poke my nose into this, but there's been so much noise about it, that it's really unavoidable. But I think I've got a rather different opinion on this than most bloggers I've seen so far. And I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be making any friends by posting this. But people keep asking, so I'm going to open my big mouth, and tell you what I think.
You see, I think that both sides are assholes. Obviously, the people making threats take the prize as the biggest assholes, but a huge margin. But this isn't a situation where a bunch of wackos went on an unprovoked rampage against a blogger; PZ deliberately provoked this mess.
As you must have heard by now, the whole kerfluffle started when some student at a University in Florida got into a fight with the local church over a piece of communion wafer. That led to a lot of Catholic folks becoming very upset, because the communion wafer is deeply meaningful to devout catholics. Some of those folks went beyond upset and crossed right over into the realm of profound insanity - claiming that taking the wafer was the equivalent of (or even worse than) kidnapping a child. And some folks went so far as to send death threats.
So far, you've got a typical story of loony religious types freaking out over something thoroughly trivial. Yeah, the wafer's got a lot of significance to them. But at the end of the day, it's a cracker.
Then, PZ chimed in. And in his inimitable fashion, he went way overboard, deciding that merely flaming the stupidity of this wasn't enough. Instead, he flamed the stupidity of it, and then asked his readers to send him communion wafers, so that he could desecrate them on film, and post the images to his website.
As you would expect, this caused the wackos to go absolutely ballistic. PZ has received death threats, and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has used it as an excuse to get lots of attention calling for PZ to be fired.
Like most other folks who've spoken up about this, I agree that the folks threatening PZ are a bunch of raging assholes. And I agree that whatever your religious beliefs, becoming violent over a non-violent action taken by someone else is absolutely, unquestionably wrong. In fact, it's more than wrong, it's downright batshit insane. The people making threats should, if possible, be tracked down, and get visited by the police. Threats of violence aren't just wrong - they're criminal, and they should be treated as such. The people making threats should be prosecuted.
When it comes to the whole "Get PZ fired!" thing, I think it's nuts. If you could show that he's discriminating against religious students, or otherwise mistreating religious students in his classes, or in any part of his role as a professor at UMM, that would be appropriate. But no one is plausibly claiming that. People who know PZ in person all say that he's a pleasant, softspoken guy, who would never abuse his students. Privately, he might think that they're a bit crazy; but no one has ever plausibly claimed that he's ever done or said anything inappropriate to students at UMM on the basis of their religion.
But: I think that PZ is an asshole when it comes to religion, and I think that he deliberately provoked this shitstorm. He didn't just say something offensive; he made a very deliberate effort to provoke people. I think this whole mess is the result of a very deliberate, calculated action on his part.
What PZ did wasn't just say "These people are nuts". That would be offensive, but perfectly within the realm of civil discourse. He didn't just say that it's just a damned cracker, and getting hysterical over it was stupid and foolish. That would be offensive, but perfectly within the realm of civil discourse. He didn't just say that people who compare stealing a cracker to kidnapping a child are total fucking loonies. That would have been fine. That probably still would have caused some amount of shitstorm, but nothing near the scale of what we're seeing now.
What he did was solicit people to steal communion wafers, and send them to him, so that he could desecrate them and post images of that on the web. Now, PZ's a really smart guy. It's not like this reaction is something that no one could have predicted. Anyone with half a brain would realize that going over the top that way was guaranteed to create a crazy reaction. He knew when he posted it what kind of reaction it would provoke. And he went ahead and did it - because he wanted to provoke that reaction.
I think that people have an obligation to behave in certain ways for civil society to function and survive. People who deliberately provoke others for no purpose beyond the malicious joy of provocation should be recognized as the obnoxious assholes that they are.
I'm not saying that everyone should pussyfoot around in order to avoid every offending anyone else. There are lots of things that offend people, but that are appropriate and reasonable things to say. Saying that religion is silly is deeply offensive to some people - but for anyone who thinks that religion is silly, there's nothing wrong with saying it. And if other people think that you're an idiot for saying it, there's nothing wrong with them saying so, either.
But you shouldn't deliberately provoke people. There's a big difference between "I think it's stupid to complain about how someone abused a cracker", and "someone please go bring me some of those crackers from a church so that I can desecrate them, and post pictures of it". The latter, in my opinion, is not acceptable behavior. It's being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole; provoking people not to make a point, but just for the sake of provoking them. It's petty, childish, pointless, and obnoxious.
Now, obviously, people are allowed to do things whether I think they're acceptable or not. I'm not arguing that what I consider unacceptable should be illegal, or in any way actionable. But when you go out of your way to provoke people, when you deliberately do something to offend and hurt them, when you very deliberately and calculatedly say something that's going to produce an emotional response, then you shouldn't pretend to be surprised when you get that response, and people react badly. When you do that, you should expect that people are going to react badly. You should expect it, because you deliberately provoked those reactions. PZ went out of his way to provoke a shitstorm. And now he's complaining about the crazy things that people are doing. Well, duh... He went out of your way to piss off and provoke a bunch of people that he knew are irrational loonies; what did he expect?
That doesn't mean that it's OK for people to threaten him. It's not OK to send him death threats. It's not OK to try to get him fired from his job. That's all, obviously, absolutely unacceptable, and I think that the people threatening PZ should get a visit from the police, and be punished appropriately for making threats.
But when PZ did the rhetorical equivalent of walking up to a hornets nest and whacking it with a stick, he shouldn't have been surprised when the angry bees came buzzing out after him.
So PZ deliberately acted like an outrageous asshole. The reaction of people to his outrageous assholery is completely unreasonable - over the top to the point where it would be comic if it weren't so dangerous. The reaction of loonies to his outrageous assholery make PZ look squeaky clean and rational in comparison. The people reacting to him are nothing short of insane. It's terrifying to see such a vivid demonstration of just how close to violence many people are - that an offensive blog post can provoke people to sending death threats is crazy.
And then, there's Bill Donohue. Donohue takes the term "raging asshole", and basically redefines it by example. Donohue is an lunatic who's made a career out of finding things to be offended over, and running around screaming in violent outrage every time he finds one. He's a vile, disgraceful excuse for a human being. It's an absolute crime that he's managed to present himself as some kind of spokesperson for the American Catholic community. It's even worse that he gets treated by our dreadful media as some kind of reasonable voice in the public square. Bill Donohue belongs in a mental institution, not in front of a television camera being presented as a respectable community leader.
But still... This whole thing is largely a manufactured uproar. You've got a bunch of insane assholes on one side, like Bill Donohue, screaming threats. And on the other side, you've got a guy who gets his rocks off on provoking the loonies, basically doing the rhetorical equivalent of painting a target on his ass and handing out rocks. It's stupid all around.
Politics
Comments
Well if recent cracker-related posts over at PZ's blog are any indication, get ready for a 1300-comment thread on this.
I'll start:
Who ever said civil discourse had to be civil?
Let the games begin.
Posted by: Jason Failes | July 14, 2008 2:34 PM
Jason:
It doesn't have to be. But if you decide to be uncivil, you can't expect people to be civil in return. If you go out of your way to provoke people, then you shouldn't complain when people are provoked. That's all that I'm really arguing.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 14, 2008 2:38 PM
Well said, Mark.
I agree nearly 100 percent with everything you've said here.
Posted by: Dave Munger | July 14, 2008 2:42 PM
Are religious fanatics who knock on the door of the personal home of an atheist deliberately provoking?
/file not in direct analogy but in related thought
(and yeah, for someone who gets his knickers in a knot over the merest suggestion that some small town college professors might suffer an occupational hazard of swell-headedness.....geez, offend much?)
Posted by: DrugMonkey | July 14, 2008 2:45 PM
First item I've seen that brings up the notion of "civil discourse," which I believe is important.
"Myers on science" is excellent - well-written, clear, even elegant at times. "Myers on religion" is increasingly silly. I wouldn't even dignify it as "dangerous" or "offensive" ... it's just silly.
I thnk he's lost sight of the cause he's supposedly passionately concerned about. At this point, he's a net negative.
Posted by: Scott Belyea | July 14, 2008 2:48 PM
The worst thing about this is nothing is learned. We already knew these people were crazy. And we already knew that PZ (and others) like to provoke them. The Florida story demonstrated the former and is just another brick on a pretty big pile.
Posted by: Patrick | July 14, 2008 2:48 PM
I am starting to suspect that the calls for his getting fired and the death threats were EXACTLY what PZ wanted. This just goes to add evidence to his idea that religious people are loons. Yes, what he did was rude and not very civil, but it did not involve anyone actually being hurt. The response however actually involves threats against life and limb. Therefore, PZ is able to point to this in future as an example of how much crazier religious people are than he is.
Posted by: Donalbain | July 14, 2008 2:51 PM
Mark, I mostly agree with what you've said here; any surprise on PZ's part is silly given that he deliberately stirred things up.
That said, you make a distinction between 'unacceptable' (you use the word or something similar four times) and 'legal'. It's pretty clear what the consequences of doing illegal things are; we have them written down in the law books. But from your post, I'm really not clear on what the consequences are for doing unacceptable things. Maybe, drawing from your above comment, it is 'no whining'? This seems pretty harsh, since it takes away half of what the internet is for -- whining and, of course, porn.
pg
Posted by: pg | July 14, 2008 2:51 PM
I don't think that the response to PZ was unexpected. He's trying to make the religious look like zealous idiots and they played right into his hands (perhaps more so than was anticipated, but still). I agree he was a bit of an asshole, but if you can't be an asshole on the internet, where can you be?
Now the part that actually troubles me is that the kid who originally "stole" (they gave it to him, it's not stealing) the wafer is getting into all sorts of trouble with his university. I actually have a lot of sympathy for that kid, whereas I don't particularly for PZ (who will probably come out of this just fine, but even more internet-famous).
Posted by: Max Polun | July 14, 2008 3:04 PM
As per usual for his style, Mark give a nice balanced take on this current and most epically boring--in substance, not the passions those involved--kerfuffle. Yes, transubstantiation is one of the more plainly dumb tenets of faith and should be mocked. And, yes, PZ provokes them in a way apparently designed to hit them where it hurts, to send them into a berserker rage of illogic and raw, idiotic, criminal behavior. They fell for the bait, but we all knew they would. The cause of reason and science was not advanced, and now PZ is getting death threats. This result is not good for anyone involved. People who actually beleve in transubstantiation are too far gone to be rehabilitated and provoking their ire will do nothing to prevent those people on the fence to move away from religion.
Posted by: Ethan Obie | July 14, 2008 3:07 PM
Drugmonkey:
In my opinion, yes, they are. I certainly make no attempt to be civil when one of them shows up at my door.
In fact, one time I actually called the police to get them off my property. This is when I was in college, staying at my parent's place. Some Jehovah's Witness came to our house.
My parent's place is set back from the street, down a hill, in the woods. It's invisible from the street. People who lived up the street from us didn't know there was a house there when we bought it. So it's not the kind of place you come on accidentally.
Anyway... The JWs showed up, and I answered the door. I did my usual "We're Jewish, we're not interested, slam the door thing", and they interrupted, put their foot in the door to stop it from slamming, and said "Yes, we know you're Jewish, that's why we're here". When they wouldn't leave, I went and called the police, who escorted them off my property, and warned them that if they came back on, they'd be arrested for tresspassing.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 14, 2008 3:07 PM
No, this isn't agreeable at all.
So far it is much like the rape defense. "She had so short skirts, that she begged to be raped, being out after dark and all."
Here is the real argument:
Hmm. First off, PZ's position is obviously that those crackers aren't sacred, so he isn't "desecrating" them. [And, as a minor point, he adds an empirical experiment to show that nothing untoward will happen during or after his actions, that indeed there is nothing special or sacred with the bread.]
But mainly he shows solidarity and support to the poor student that, probably unaware of the consequences, AFAIU wanted to show this bread to a fellow student. I dunno if he thought he would act as a lightning rod, and perhaps the student doesn't get less of a number of death threats, but YMMV in these things.
So I'm pitching in with PZ here, he did the moral thing.
I should add that IIRC PZ has suggested such things before, for example desecrating one or the others religions religious texts, independent of any show of solidarity. But that hasn't spawned as much as a twitch from religious quarters.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 14, 2008 3:08 PM
I just emailed Herr Pope Sturbanfuher Bendadick:
Heil! You need to excommunicate Bill Donohue ASAP. He is one verdammt dummkopf.
Danke Schoen,
Posted by: Anonymous | July 14, 2008 3:09 PM
Max:
I agree with you. The kid in Florida is in all sorts of trouble over something silly. And helping throw up this giant shitstorm wasn't exactly a big help for him. It just raised the temperature, making it that much harder for him to work out his situation without getting screwed.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 14, 2008 3:09 PM
I'll admit, I haven't waded through ALL of the insanity over at Pharyngula, but I don't know if I'd describe PZ as "surprised". I got the impression that he was unsurprised, but maybe I read it wrong.
I'll agree that he caused a fuss that was tasteless and, perhaps, unnecessary. (I think it had a point, though: see nuts go even nuttier. Maybe not a great point, but still a point.)
I think, also, that "stealing" might be a bit harsh. He said to "do what it takes" to get some. What it takes is to go through communion and have them be given to you. My impression on reading that wasn't that "do what it takes" means "do something illegal", it was "do something unpleasant like go into a church." Again, I may have read it wrong.
Nice post, overall.
Posted by: pough | July 14, 2008 3:12 PM
Mark -- great post! You expressed my feelings exactly. There seems to be a vibe out there that if you don't completely agree with everything PZ does/says/writes, then you are a deluded religious nut. I'm sick of it.
Posted by: JH | July 14, 2008 3:12 PM
Frankly, if I hit a hornet's nest with a stick and bees came out, I would be very surprised indeed. But that's not the point.
Point is: I agree with you wholeheartedly. PZ posted what he did specifically to start a shitstorm, because he loves to rile up religious loonies. I myself identify as atheist, and am rapidly filing PZ into the same category as Bill Donahue--not as representative of their belief system as they'd like to think.
Posted by: Nick Herold | July 14, 2008 3:27 PM
Minor quibble; wouldn't hornets come out of a hornets nest?
On the rest of your post, I agree Myzzle knew exactly what he was doing. His acting suprised is disingenuous at best.
Posted by: Chris' Wills | July 14, 2008 3:28 PM
Torbjorn:
I think that comparing my position to that of a rape apologist is seriously wrong.
The difference is the deliberateness of the action.
PZ didn't just do something that would upset people. He did something in order to provoke a reaction. He went out of his way to provoke a reaction, and he got it.
If you go walking alone through NYC at night in fancy clothes, you might get robbed. If that happens, you're a victim. Maybe you did something dumb by being alone at night, but you should be able to go for a walk without being robbed.
If you go walking alone through NYC at night, holding a fistful of hundred dollar bills in the air and shouting "I bet there's no one out there with the balls to take this money from me", they you're *going* to get robbed, and you're not a victim anymore.
PZ did the equivalent of the latter.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 14, 2008 3:31 PM
Both sides are indeed assholes, and PZ did indeed go out of his way to be an asshole here. See also the comment thread at Zeno's weblog. I'm the OpenID "unapologetic".
Posted by: John Armstrong | July 14, 2008 3:32 PM
People get really upset over desecration of corpses, which is just as irrational as getting upset over the desecration of the host, since the only harm caused is the psychological harm to people with feelings about showing respect to a bit of insensate, dead, and unconscious matter. Maybe we should encourage people to dig up bodies and otherwise divert cadavers and send them to us so that we can post video of ourselves desecrating them. And then we can laugh at how irrational and insane all these religious loonies who have feelings about that are.
Posted by: El Christador | July 14, 2008 3:48 PM
I agree. It is becoming increasingly silly--embarrassingly so, even. On the other hand, when it comes to religion, PZ strikes me these days as being very much like a shock jock. After a while, the old schtick gets boring and predictable; so he has to take it up a notch (or several notches) to keep it "interesting." I think that's exactly what he was doing there with the whole "cracker" incident. It was clearly calculated, and it worked.
Posted by: Orac | July 14, 2008 3:56 PM
I look at this as sort of a Spartacus moment. PZ saw a person being singled out by a bunch of authoritarian bullies, and stood up and said "I am Spartacus." (Of course, unlike the movie, PZ is more well known than the original kid.)
Perhaps more of us should be standing up and demonstrating with more than just words: "It's just a cracker, and there's no such thing as blasphemy against a cracker."
Would you say that joining blacks at a segregated lunch counter was an unnecessarily provocative act, when the "civil" thing was to just denounce the injustice?
I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but do I think that there is some value in deliberately provoking people in some instances - which you seem to rule out. Whether this was an appropriate instance is another matter.
Posted by: idahogie | July 14, 2008 3:57 PM
Mark, great post.
If I may be allowed a criticism, though, it shows that you feel strongly on this issue, as you've repeated several of the points in consecutive paragraphs.
Posted by: Eyal Ben David | July 14, 2008 4:00 PM
Orac - condolences for your loss. You had me hiding my tears this morning.
Posted by: idahogie | July 14, 2008 4:02 PM
Nice one Mark. I agree with PZ almost 100% of the time but this is one case where I think he blew it and he has no-one to blame but himself.
As Torbjörn points out in #12, personally I think PZ's mistake was to state that he intended to desecrate the crackers. If they're just crackers then how can you desecrate them?
Desecrate implies that PZ intended to do something vile (ie not eating it) to the cracker in question with the sole purpose being to upset Catholics.
Mike
PS My mom and dad used to live in a secluded house like yours. We were always bothered by JW's - until the day they caught my father at home. They finally excused themselves after an hours 'lively' debate, never to return.
Posted by: NoAstronomer | July 14, 2008 4:05 PM
I've had similar thoughts but I'm not sure that the blame should be put entirely on PZ for this vibe. At least some of the blame has to go the the readers/commenters.
I get a bit uncomfortable when people refer to atheism as a "belief system". :)
I don't really care that PZ did this. You could make the argument that he's just demonstrating one of Sam Harris' arguments; moderates are "enablers" for fundamentalists. I would imagine that many moderate catholics think that transubstantiation is a silly idea but forget or choose to overlook that it is the official belief of their religion. By just "going with the flow" they allow the fundies among them to continue on with all of this crap. PZ's words actually might serve to highlight the wackiness of transubstantiation for moderate catholics. just a thought.
Posted by: sdg | July 14, 2008 4:09 PM
idahogie:
If you go back and look at my post, you'll see that what I say is: "I think that people have an obligation to behave in certain ways for civil society to function and survive. People who deliberately provoke others for no purpose beyond the malicious joy of provocation should be recognized as the obnoxious assholes that they are."
The key phrase there is for no purpose beyond the malicious joy of provocation".
Going beyond the point that there's a lot of Catholics acting like incredibly idiots, and saying that he wants to desecrate some communion wafers and post the images - that was very deliberate. The phrasing and the intention are clear, and very deliberately provocative, not to make a point, but to make people angry.
The contrast with sitting at a black lunch counter should be clear. In that case, you're breaking the rules of segregation for one of two purposes. One, you're deliberately making the political point that you believe that segregation is wrong. Two, there's someone at the black counter that you want to sit with, and you don't think that the rules should prevent you from sitting with whoever you want. In either case, you're acting on principle, to make a point.
But even so: the people who did that knew that they were breaking the law, and that they could be punished for it. It was deliberate provocation for a good purpose - but people expected a negative response, and accepted the consequences. That's what civil disobedience is about: the rules are wrong, so you deliberately and publicly break them, and face the consequences of that. Doing that is,
to me, a brave and wonderful thing - to stand for your beliefs, and accept the consequences. People who did (and continue to do) that faced jail, violence, even murder.
I don't know what I'd do in that situation. I'd like to say that I'd be one of the people who stood my ground and did what was right. But I don't think that you can be sure that you'd really be able to do that until you're in the situation. I've never been in a situation where I even thought I might be arrested. I've been to some protests
before the Iraq war where people got arrested, but I didn't even see it - I just heard about it afterwards.
In contrast, I don't think that PZ's offer to desecrate communion wafers was a principled stand; I think it was just a gesture of obnoxiousness.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 14, 2008 4:17 PM
Is it sufficient to simply declare self-professed believers in transubstantiation "batshit insane" and get back to our microscopes and Erlang or should we perhaps take a closer look?
There's a too-short continuum between 1-800Flowers death threats, Bill Donohue's goon squad, Protestant fundagelicals and two world-class "leaders" -- the Pope and the Preznit.
You, me and we all should realize that lunatics are at the helm of our ship of state. You didn't seem to care before the Cracker Kerfluffle and you don't seem to care now.
Remember a story that begins "When they came for..."? This is your opportunity to see exactly who "they" are this time: different agonist, different antgagonist; same old story.
Posted by: Matt Hussein Platte | July 14, 2008 4:28 PM
Good post, Mark. I used to be on PZ's side of this mess...even volunteering to get the blessed wafers. But I've come to your way of thinking over the last several days. Why provoke people unnecessarily?
Posted by: Adrienne | July 14, 2008 4:29 PM
As a friend of mine once said, "blame is not a conserved quantity!" If you go walking through a bad part of town waving money around and get robbed, it may be the robber's fault, but it does not mean that your actions did not contribute the the situation.
While PZ is not responsible for the reactions of a few loons, his actions directly contributed to the situation.
As for the kid, I would have more sympathy for him if his story was consistent and/or believable. When I first heard this story it was reported that he was holding the host hostage because he disagreed with student fees going to religious groups. The story was updated a few days later and his explanation sounds a bit far fetched to me. I mean, come on, he needed to take it back to show it to his friend? What would he see that he couldn't from the pews when the priest repeatedly held it in the air? it's not like the thing has magical incantations written on it or something.
Posted by: tonyl | July 14, 2008 4:33 PM
Whether this was intentional or not, I don't know, but PZ's actions made me aware of how crazy people can be, wanting to kill one another over a cracker. I am willing to give PZ the benefit of the doubt here, as he has in my opinion been a general force for elevating the level of discourse (his recent obsession with poll-bombing aside), and exposing the flaws of many "arguments" that get thrown around these days.
Maybe he was a raging asshole on this one, but I remain supportive of him. Even if he did intentionally provoke this, the response he has received is way out of proportion to any offense which he committed. At the very worst, this incident made PZ a bitter asshole, but in no way dangerous, or anything more than an annoyance to those he disagreed with.
Really, I think that this incident reflects much worse upon PZ's opponents than on PZ himself. That said, I thank you for posting your thoughts on the issue. More rational and level-headed discussion of this can't but help.
Posted by: Chris Granade | July 14, 2008 4:34 PM
@29:
Well, that I can agree with.
That is complete BS. And Mark isn't calling for people to capitulate or believe in wacko religious beliefs or magic crackers. He's just pointing out that there is a difference between criticizing wackaloonery and threatening to do something just to piss off the wackaloons.
Posted by: Adrienne | July 14, 2008 4:38 PM
a. how do you know he wasn't trying to make a point? has he written that? just saying it doesn't make it so.
b. are making a point and making people angry mutually exclusive? sometimes you make a point by making people angry. sometimes people get angry as a side effect of a point being made.
you're certainly entitled to think that what PZ did is stupid and wrong but i disagree with some of your arguments.
Posted by: sdg | July 14, 2008 4:41 PM
You could be right about PZ's action just being a gesture of obnoxiousness. I don't know.
But isn't there a valid point to be made here regarding how Christianity dominates our culture? A "we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore" kind of thing? I think it's possible that PZ was motivated by more than a desire to be a jerk. It may not be an issue that all of us agree deserves his uncivil response, but writing it off as just "assholish behavior" seems a little dismissive to me.
Like some commenters have pointed out, I don't think PZ's at all surprised by the reaction. That is the heat that he decided that he was willing to accept for his actions, just as the lunch-counter protesters accepted the consequences of their law-breaking.
I don't want to say that PZ is a noble practitioner of civil disobedience here. But I do think the lunch-counter analogy is a little more apt than you seem to think.
Posted by: idahogie | July 14, 2008 4:42 PM
At last, someone with a clear mind wrote about this issue, and wrote lucid words. It's a shame that people, be they fundamentalist theists or atheists, cannot comment on this kind of topic without being irrational or offensive. Is this an American problem?
Posted by: Italo M. R. Guedes | July 14, 2008 4:47 PM
When you believe that the cracker is the *literal body of your savior* as Catholics must, then their reaction becomes understandable. I think it's very hard for people who haven't been Catholics (I was raised Catholic, as you may have guessed) to understand that they believe that the cracker is *actually, wholly, the body of Christ*.
I recuse myself from any debate about the issue, since I'm clearly too biased to be involved, but I thought that I'd perhaps be able to shed a touch of light on the Catholics' position.
Posted by: Bill Mill | July 14, 2008 4:50 PM
Mark:
I think it was a bit of both; the question remains how much obnoxiousness "cancels out" principle. In my case, I agree with PZ's principle (skewering the overwhelming respect given for silly religious traditions) and PZ's obnoxiousness is something I expect and tolerate. Others will have different tolerances for PZ's bullcrap.
Personally, I think we (Catholics, bloggers and blog-readers all) are still underestimating how off-hand comments can explode in a globally-connected world.
Posted by: Sharkey | July 14, 2008 4:50 PM
Mark (#38):
I don't think I've seen a single statement I can agree more with out of this whole damn mess. (Aside from "it's just a cracker.")
Posted by: Chris Granade | July 14, 2008 4:55 PM
i'm really not trying to be rude but ummm, yeah, we get it. that's what makes it CRAZY!!!
i was raised to believe that 1+1 = 3.
i was raised to believe that anyone who does not have the same skin color as me is inferior to me.
at some point, you have to take responsibility for yourself.
Posted by: sdg | July 14, 2008 4:58 PM
No, that is not right, Mark. Your blog is appreciated for your centeredness, lucidity and impartiality when analyzing your topics, but you should not imply that these qualities, while very appropriate for your net persona, are necessary or even applicable in every situation.
Simply keeping your calm while seeing, day after day, the absurdity that comes with all religious sects is, beyond unnecessary, inhuman. Come on! Blush, shout, cry when you hear one more of the lunacies that constantly flow from these people. At least, cry for the billions of new and creative ideas that are massacred everyday by the inflexible insistence of religious people of forcing ferry tales down their followers' throats and reassuring them that there is virtue in not questioning the old and not creating the new.
It disgusts me jut to think how many people just like yourself, whose writings I quite enjoy, are kept from flourishing. And if this disgust every once in a while erupts into a rant, I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe I'm the one who is not "behaving in certain ways for civil society to function and survive"
Posted by: Joao | July 14, 2008 5:39 PM
Mark,
I wish you never would have commented on this, but I understand why you did.
Up front: I am a Catholic. And this is a lot of the reason that the death threats sadden me even more. There are so many, even in my own faith who just don't "get it". All life is precious, and we are taught from an early age to show love even to those who do not believe or understand our faith. The death threats come from those who are so full of hate and have forgotten what we are put on this earth to do. I'm embarrassed to call those people my brothers and sisters.
We should pity PZ. We should pray for PZ. We should tell him that desecrating a host is equal, in our faith, to desecrating an alter. Yes, it's a slab of wood or marble in a big building, but would you desecrate that? Would you light our Bible on fire during a Mass? While just things, Catholics believe that Christ is present in all of them, and no different than an piece of unleavened cracker.
We should not want for his death. Those who ask for it are just as lost in faith as PZ. I guess at least PZ doesn't care openly. Those who claim to be Catholics and say such terrible things probably make it worse for the rest of us. If they would act during the week the way they're taught to act on Sundays, this kind of thing probably wouldn't happen. Those Catholics who wish him harm, in the name of religious justice or whatever, will have to pay the same price as Mr. Myers.
/religion
Now please. More math and programming. Thanks.
Jarrett
Posted by: Jarrett | July 14, 2008 5:42 PM
"In fact, one time I actually called the police to get them off my property. This is when I was in college, staying at my parent's place. Some Jehovah's Witness came to our house."
While I agree that this was odious behavior on their part, I think we should encourage everyone with a religious bent to become JWs. From my perspective, the door knocking is a small price to pay for religious people who self-select against themselves and don't vote.
Posted by: dogscratcher | July 14, 2008 5:58 PM
You make an interesting (but possibly unintentional point): Perhaps all of this will turn out to be useful in the sense that it highlights just how close to violence over their religious beliefs a lot of people you'd generally assume are reasonable are - and how willing the majority are to be silent about it. All of this seems like a great vindication of Richard Dawkins' claim that religion is dangerous for exactly these sorts of reasons.
Posted by: Nick Johnson | July 14, 2008 6:00 PM
i was raised to believe that 1+1 = 3.
Really? Why?
Posted by: R. Totale | July 14, 2008 6:16 PM
Think about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and the newspapers that deliberately reprinted the cartoons, and the editors that defended the value of free speech in the face of violent threat. PZ's stunt is a smaller-scale, more juvenile version of the same situation. He's expressing solidarity with a student who faces threats of violence and disruptions of his personal life merely for violating a sect's arbitrary superstitious taboo. PZ's putting his money where his mouth is here, by subjecting himself to the same threats.
Furthermore, he's pointed out that much of the mail he's getting falls back on the canard that "atheists only criticize Christianity because they're afraid of violent Muslims, and they know Christians are peaceful." (In actuality, an atheist in America or Europe most likely thinks Islam is just as misguided as Christianity, but finds that Christianity has more immediate relevance to his/her culture and life.)
The Danish cartoon incident exposed the bankrupt hypocrisy of the masses who threaten death toward those who dispute that Islam is a religion of peace. Likewise, PZ's stunt points in a similar direction for those who claim the mantle of pacifism or calm dialogue for Christianity and Catholicism.
On the other hand, the difference in scale makes PZ's point weaker. A hundred violent threats aren't as representative as the rioting and demonstrations that followed the Danish cartoons. Still, this was deliberate provocation in order to make a point, not simply for perverse pleasure.
Posted by: Spaulding | July 14, 2008 6:20 PM
So many mixed feelings about this. But my feelings about freedom of speech (including purely symbolic action as speech) and about academic freedom are quite unmixed, so that was my angle on the whole thing. Threatening someone with loss of livelihood or worse over a phantom... is unacceptable. PZ and Donohue are not equivalent; which one is threatening an actual person whose existence could be demonstrated in court?
I hope PZ will reconsider messing with the symbolicrackers people send him. His point is made, times ten. As my dad used to say; "you're beating your point into a blunt instrument".
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | July 14, 2008 6:20 PM
I hereby nominate Mark as the most reasonable person on ScienceBlogs.
Posted by: Jane | July 14, 2008 6:51 PM
Well Mark, it didn't take you long to make a tremendous blunder. You said "Yeah, the wafer's got a lot of significance to them. But at the end of the day, it's a cracker." Well nothing could be further from the truth. That's like saying a $1000.00 bill is nothing more than a piece of paper. That is not true at all, and if you think about it you will have to agree. So I would suggest you just admit that. The host is not just a cracker. To over a billion people the host is a tangible connection to the same God you believe in. That is what PZ is desecrating. If this was a Muslim country he would probably be dead right now. For an offense of this magnitude a dismissal would not be uncalled for. If he made an equivalent outrage to the liberal orthodoxy he would be gone next week.
Posted by: Peter | July 14, 2008 6:58 PM
In contrast, I don't think that PZ's offer to desecrate communion wafers was a principled stand; I think it was just a gesture of obnoxiousness.
I think the "I think" is the key part of that statement.
Anyway, I'm a little conflicted about the whole thing. On the one hand, I'm of the opinion that maintaining a functioning civil society requires us to respect other people's beliefs. By that I mean we must acknowledge and abide by their right to hold those beliefs and practice them freely, within reasonable bounds, etc. I think the kid at UF failed to do this when he walked out of the church with the cracker, and so acted inappropriately. And if the Catholic reaction had been to calmly stand up, explain why the cracker is so important to them; why the kid taking it was so hurtful, and generally attempt to civilly shame the guy into giving it back, then I'd happily side with them on this issue and take my seat in the PZ Is An Asshole choir.
But they didn't do that, of course. They howled and screamed. They made threats (up to and including death). They're trying to get the guy expelled from UF. In short, they're behaving like thugs and bullies. Their reaction isn't merely inappropriate. It's flat-out unacceptable and frankly a little scary. So at the very least a compelling argument can be made that it's deserving of a sterner rebuke than a few rounds of blogospheric finger-wagging.
Which kind of creates a dilemma, doesn't it? The state does not (and should not) have any mechanisms for imposing collective punishment. The individual people making the threats won't be caught.** People like Donahue will be careful to limit their harassment of the guy to methods that aren't technically illegal.
So if you don't have any formal recourse, you don't do violence, you'd never harass individual people, etc., what's left to someone trying to hold their feet to the fire?
Stealing some crackers, perhaps?
**Hell, I'm posting this comment from my laptop on someone's wireless LAN connection to an apartment provided internet connection where each unit sits behind three or four layers of NAT depending on whether the resident has a router-based home network. So good luck figuring out who I am, and I'm not even actually trying to conceal my identity beyond refusing to give up my real email addy. Imagine trying to catch some asshole with a wireless device and a remailer using a spoofed address to harass someone.
Posted by: Nobody Important | July 14, 2008 7:05 PM
" If he made an equivalent outrage to the liberal orthodoxy he would be gone next week."
What kinds of things outrage the "liberal orthodoxy" equivalently?
Posted by: dogscratcher | July 14, 2008 7:07 PM
What PZ did was expose the nutcases for the ... well, nutcases that they are. Look, if I deliberately provoked a dog, and it attacked me, you would be right to blame me for the consequences. But these are people who profess to follow a religion of peace, and it's utterly clear that they do not do so -- and I can only say, screw them, I wish I had some communion wafer to desecrate.
If you believe in your particular superstition, how can ones and zeroes on a computer hurt you?
Posted by: Aramael | July 14, 2008 7:14 PM
@Peter: A cracker, be it "blessed" or not, is not the same as a $1,000 bill. The main difference is that I can test a measurable effect of the latter: the $1,000 dollar will buy me a lot of very nice things. By contrast, how can I test that a cracker is a "host"? It's not a "tangible connection" almost by definition, since I cannot in any way test or measure any difference between a blessed and un-blessed cracker. If you want to believe it has some special meaning, then fine, do so.
What I object to is you claiming that somehow PZ's stunt (which as I've said above may be an asshole stunt), however bad it may have been, insulted a cracker. Not the "host of god," but a cracker. Maybe it's inappropriate to do so, but it's hardly something that he should be killed over, as you so inartfully suggest.
Actually, that's something else wrong with your trolling. You seem to be projecting what you think should happen to PZ onto someone else (in this case, the Muslim population of the world). There's no doubt that in some places, the equivalent of PZ's stunt would be a capital crime, in other Islamic-majority areas, it wouldn't be. It's not as if the Catholic community hasn't shown that it has its own crazies, either. (Not that the whole community should be equated with its most violent members. Just pointing out something about those in glass houses.) Really, being an asshole shouldn't be a capital offense, so even if you really and truly think he did something heinous, then your veiled threats are off the mark.
We can disagree about the severity of PZ's offenses, and we can disagree about how much respect religious beliefs should be, but let's not dance around with such terms as "tangible connection" and let's not be sending veiled threats around. Mark is calling for us to be more civil, and I'm willing to give it a go.
Posted by: Chris Granade | July 14, 2008 7:19 PM
This I have learned: anything worth saying will offend somebody, and no sentence worth writing is safe. The best we can do is try and offend the right people.
Frankly, I won't even attempt to judge whether anything PZ Myers has said is in good taste or not. My own scale of propriety is calibrated on Bill Hicks and Warren Ellis, so I know I'm the wrong person to ask.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 14, 2008 7:29 PM
PZ provoked them, sure. That was the point. I think you get it wrong when you say he has no right to be shocked or to complain. I'm sure he's shocked by the inanity of it all and by some of the death threats, but overall he's just using the responses to point out how stupid it is, he hasn't complained about it. So I don't think he has been hypocritical. He's just put it all up on his blog.
Sometimes it's necessary to provoke. Sometimes it's necessary to put people's stupidity on display. Sometimes you need to prod the hornets nest so people will know just how angry and petty and ridiculous the hornets are.
Posted by: poke | July 14, 2008 7:45 PM
decrepitoldfool:
The best suggestion I have yet heard is that he videotape himself reading a Harry Potter book to them.
And on that note, I bow out. Enough of ScienceBlogs until all this blows over. Everybody has their own line drawn in the sand, and it's too damn tiring to remember where they've all been put. Will any of these postures and counter-postures resolve or improve anything? Hah. I've got a journal article to write and a DVD box set of The Prisoner which won't watch itself. Catch you all on the flipside.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 14, 2008 7:50 PM
I'm also a (former) Catholic, and those people (the Catholics) are batshit insane.
I've stood with PZ before, and I'll continue to do it now.
Posted by: Lettuce | July 14, 2008 7:53 PM
I think there's lots of us in the blogosphere who agree with the substance of what Mark has written here. This is what PZ does: he creates attention for his cause. He's just gone a bit more over-the-top than usual in the present case. He can't possibly be surprised at the shitstorm he's created.
That said, ultimately, PZ's is not the greater "sin." I might not like his approach when it comes to religion -- although I greatly enjoy his other posts, especially the cephalopod whimsy -- but I will staunchly defend his right to say it without receiving death threats or facing the possibility of a firing.
Posted by: Jennifer Ouellette | July 14, 2008 8:07 PM
@ dogscratcher 51
Voting for the Telecom Immunity/FISA bill would do it nicely
Posted by: charlie | July 14, 2008 8:09 PM
Ethan Obie:
i beg to disagree. can you say spotlight? from where i stand, this whole thing started, grew and perpetuated through the internet by means of the textual counterpart to camwhores. sure some people are just giving opinion here. these are the ones we most definitely feel like calling reasonable --- Mark, for instance. but whoever is taking sides in this one is just clearly craving for spotlight, and let me tell you: in that sense, the result's been great, for everyone involved.
sdg:
but it does make sense at times. if you've been enlightened with the fact that god doesn't exist for sure, then you're acting just as irrational as the people who show an unshakable belief in the existence of god. come again? what i'm trying to say here is, when you affirm some ungrounded belief --- even when it takes a negative form --- it gives you a (poor) excuse to take things for granted. ethical values, for one.
getting out of your way and being a downright arse in order to convert people to atheism is --- i feel --- just as aggressive, just as violent and just as lunatic as getting out of your way to convert them to any other religion. in that sense, yes, atheism not only is a belief system --- it's a religion in its own right. that's not to say all atheists behave religiously (i.e., irrationally). but then again, who said christians or muslims or buddhists all necessarily act irrationally? some people just realise there's just so much they can do with their beliefs before they start crossing other people's lines.
in my opinion, what PZ managed to prove with his little soap opera is the exact opposite of what he's yelling so furiously to the four winds: he managed to prove that yes, some atheists can as a matter of fact be just as lunatic as any other extremist. ha, either that or that marxist theory about how "postcapitalism" is all about "the spectacle"... really, anyone else bothered reading the posts and comments throughout? it was--- it felt like that cheap kind of spectacle slapstick humour and prank tv shows are made of.
this's been unnecessary on so many levels...
Posted by: bruno ( ) | July 14, 2008 8:14 PM
I wish that Thomas M. Disch was alive to comment on this.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | July 14, 2008 9:08 PM
You're dead wrong about this, Mark. 180 degrees. It would have fallen out of the news quickly, been forgotten, and the kid would have probably be quietly forced out of his degree program for whatever reason the school decided they could get away with without being sued (I'm in academic administration; believe me, it happens all the time). The profile's too high for that now. PZ raising the temprature may be the only thing that lets the kid complete his degree assmuing he sucks it up and keeps his head down till he's done (or if he actually has two brain cells to rub together and make a spark, transfers).
Posted by: usagi | July 14, 2008 9:23 PM
"PZ didn't just do something that would upset people. He did something in order to provoke a reaction."
I think you guys are missing the mark. You seem hung up on the idea that he is shooting for a reaction. All he is trying to do is pop the "sacred" bubble on these stupid crackers. Over zealous catholics think these stupid things are magic and they assume/demand that everyone else agree(or else). Well, here's a news flash, there are those of us who don't share that delusion. And more importantly we DON'T have to play along with their fantasy. The easiest way to shoot that fantasy down is to get one of the silly things, spritz it with some water then set it in a sunny window and watch it turn into green fuzz. That clearly shows that the silly things are not magic and are nothing more then crackers. If zealots lose their shit and make themselves look like idiots, well that's just a bonus, but it's not the goal.
How is this any different from debunking any other silly religious claim? If I bought an "e-meter" from the church of scientology then I took the damn thing apart and showed that it's not any kind of alien technology but basically just an ohm meter, would I be debunking their nonsense or would I be "provoking" them cuz you know they'd lose their shit. They'd be calling me a criminal and hitting me with slap suits and all sorts of nonsense. So tell me, how is busting this sacred cracker bullshit any different? How is it somehow exempt from being exposed? Somebody explain it to me cuz I don't get it.
Posted by: Boosterz | July 14, 2008 9:31 PM
Mark -
Thank you for writing a reasoned response to PZ's storm. At best, his posting was childish (your god can't hurt me, nah, nah, nah), at worst, it was an attempt to stoke his own ego.
For those for whom atheism is not the same as Pharyngulism, this has been a catastrophe. For years I have had to put up with people telling me that I can't be an atheist, because I'm a nice guy. Only recently have I seen any change in this attitude and now PZ has gone and demonstrated that atheists are raving sociopaths who are dedicated to the desecration of others' beliefs. In one blow he has unraveled decades of progress.
Of course, PZ can't be given all of the blame. Hundreds of rabid Pharyngulites now have their martyr. A cult of personality is rapidly becoming nothing more than a cult.
Posted by: Hephaestus | July 14, 2008 9:51 PM
Boosterz -
In what way has PZ "debunked" a religous claim? Do you think that it's not possible to desecrate a sacred object? People have been doing it for millenia, often with much more smoke and noise than PZ has used.
Posted by: Hephaestus | July 14, 2008 9:54 PM
@Hephaestus (#64):
I must take issue with the idea that this incident shows that PZ runs a "cult of personality." Someone having a bit of an ego does not mean that he runs a full-out cult. Exaggerating problems like that doesn't help solve them. At worst, PZ showed a bit of an asshole streak, but not so much that it dooms himself or any SB community.
Frankly, I'm in the awkward position of both supporting Mark's level-headedness about this whole issue and PZ's willingness to take a stand, even if some of us may feel it's in an inappropriate fashion. I hardly think that his actions are completely damning of the atheist community.
Posted by: Chris Granade | July 14, 2008 10:03 PM
One more thing. I can't be the only one who has noticed the huge number of concern trolls that descended on this thread. All of them are basically reading from the same script, "that nasty atheist PZ is giving all the good atheists a bad name". What they keep leaving off is that the only good atheist to a zealot is one that keeps his mouth shut and doesn't point out the zealots faults. Apparently you can't be a "good" atheist if you actually open your mouth.
Posted by: Boosterz | July 14, 2008 10:06 PM
I know a couple of irredeemably sleazy greedhead personal injury lawyers who could have done a lot more good for Webster "Hamster-pockets" Cook, than any public cracker-desecration would. Mr. Cook seems to have been back-pedaling a bit on the incident, so perhaps it's just a case of poor impulse control, typical of many people at a certain stage in their lives. A fact of human development not lost on the US military.
I enjoyed reading Mark's post as well, but will second Jarrett: math and programming, please. And recipes. My teenage nephew will third the math and programming vote-the recipes, not so much.
Posted by: Barn Owl | July 14, 2008 10:12 PM
I think a lot of people are overreacting, including Mark C. Chu-Carroll. I personally don't believe that PZ is doing it to stoke his own ego (although simply seeing my comment here feeds my ego so ....). Rather I see it as a 'Mad as Hell and not going to take it anymore' type of response. Obviously PZ has a problem with the whole 'framing' thing but sometimes you've just got to pop that zit, start the firestorm and get on with it.
my $0.02 which in US money ain't worth as much as it used to be.
Posted by: rmp | July 14, 2008 10:13 PM
@Boosterz (#67):
I happen to support PZ on this one, as I've said, but I don't think that everyone being disparaging about him is a concern troll (though many are). I think (correct me if I'm wrong, please) the point is that PZ could have just said it's a fucking cracker and left it at that, without adding the salt in the wound of asking for crackers to desecrate.
Now, as it happens, I don't actually mind that kind of sacrilege, but I recognize the reasons why a reasonable person would mind. PZ could have called a spade a spade and left it at that, but he chose not to. I believe that last part is what's so controversial. Only the actual concern trolls will say that PZ shouldn't have said anything.
Posted by: Chris Granade | July 14, 2008 10:14 PM