Friday, July 25, 2008

Holy Cracker Redux

I've written before that I don't think it's worth my time to trash people's religions. It just makes religious people feel persecuted and causes the vilification of us non-religious people. So it's with mixed emotions that I read PZ Myer's story of putting a rusty nail through an apparently sanctified piece of tasteless bread.

Yes, the religious people are crazy for sending death threats to that other guy who walked out of church with a host and trying to intimidate Myers through his children. But then, they're religious people. They have a faith in something for which they have no evidence and that thing they believe is that the cracker is sacred. Myers makes the point that no object should be considered so sacred. That includes a sanctified host, a page of the Qu'ran and a page from the God Delusion (just to be fair).

As someone commented on the blog, "This is going to be epic."

And so it begins. There are calls for his resignation, his firing, etc. etc.

The most ironic, the most hypocritical, that I've seen has go to be this one from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League:
“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."

Really.

Really, honestly, you can't think of anything more vile than desecrating a cracker that you've waved your hands over and declared to be the body of the part of a deity that lived 2000 years ago?

I'd have to argue that you're simply not thinking hard enough.

How about "molesting choir boys"? How about "covering up the molestation of choir boys"? How about "moving priests around while they continue to molest choir boys"?

How about "living in opulence while preaching poverty to your followers"? Maybe that's more hypocritical than vile. It might come down to semantics.

I can think of a lot of things that are way, way worse, but maybe that's just because I look at the cracker and I see the cracker - which is all anyone can prove is there - while Bill Donohue and the Catholic League elevate this wafer to some station far above the actual human beings (who actually exist) who are being mistreated by his own church.

I suppose that makes me the crazy one.

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5 comments:

Chrystal Ocean said...

Thanks for the morning giggle. :-)

Mike said...

I'm listen to "The Four Horseman" right now and the juxtaposition is ....well...glorious!

:D

Daphne Moldowin said...

Better look out...the wrath of GOD shall be upon thee for thy sacrilegious affront.

Anonymous said...

Ooh, I've got one! How about imprisoning Irish women in the Magdalene laundries and keeping them there as slave labour?

Or...Indian residential schools? IMHO, quite a bit more heinous than harming a magick cracker.

Greg said...

If I were actually out for laughs, I would have pointed out that there's about 34,722 kg of Jesus in existence at any given moment on a Sunday.

a) assuming every one of the world's one billion catholics takes communion every Sunday
b) a communion wafer lasts ten minutes from consecration to ingestion
c) a wafer weighs about 5g

But that's the sort of juvenile thing I just don't go in for.