That's how P.Z. Myers begins his post -- which I won't link to here -- in which he shows the photograph of his desecration of the Eucharist (and a page of the Koran). Here's a thoughtful reflection from the CC blog comboxes. The author is Houghton:
But I just had to point out that this afternoon he's posted a picture of a communion host with a rusty nail poked through it, along with a banana peel, coffee grounds, a ripped page of the Koran and a page from Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" dumped in the trash (it's beyond pathetic that Myers seems to think that by including this last bit, it somehow ameliorates what he has done). Paul Zachary Myers begins his post with the intentional words, "It is finished." The comments thread on Myers blog is stunning in its volume - as it is in the sheer ferocity of hatred spewing forth from Myers' fellow atheists. Here's one of the milder comments: "What a hollow god they serve! How delicious a treatment of their sacred relics!"I don't think I need to expand on this much, except to note how demonic all of this seems. It's gone beyond smarmy atheist "freethinkers" with a bone to pick against faith in general. Now the snarling rage is there for all to see, and it is very focused against one faith, against one figure in history. I'm not sure I was prepared for the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I would experience at witnessing Myers photo. As I've noted here before, I'm not a Catholic and I don't believe in transubstantiation. But what Myers has done is far, far beyond that. He seems trapped in his own version of magical thinking; in other words, he seems to believe that the "symbols" of Christianity are what gives the faith its power. And that is precisely what one under the oppression of the prince of this world would believe.
Myers seems unaware of the consequences of so gravely and deliberately sinning within his own heart. As he himself put it, he did this joyfully and with much laughter in his heart - thus he has committed an act of purposeful desolation, distancing himself from God nearly as far as one poor soul can be. Others will now follow him with far worse, I fear.
Myers has crossed a boundary, and the hatred of aggressive atheism has been loosed. It is no longer the province of folk songs, pithy bumper stickers or amusing droll commentary. It is now what it has always been - the domain of pure hatred. Pray for them, pray for peace, pray that you yourself can simply forgive them for what they do. And pray for the strength to walk in a manner worthy of Christ in the days ahead.
It is finished? No, in some ways, it's just beginning.
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"Should we ignore the reality that animals feel pain and experience fear? Or should we not consider these things because animals are soulless?" Allison
TR: Understand something, I don't even squash crickets and get annoyed when others do. I don't believe in killing animals except for food, in some form of self-defense, or for medical research. Hence when not meat-animals, like dogs, are fought in rings I find that wasteful and possibly dangerous.
I'm not sure how to say what I'm going to say without sounding like a monster to modern sensibilities. However I don't really think we entirely know what animals know of pain and fear. Obviously they experience pain, but many animals likely process it different than us. Now if a person thinks what they're doing is causing them pain and fear that's a bad sign about them. The potentially monstrous part is I rarely empathize with actual animals. If animals were like animals in a Disney cartoon or even the movie "Animals are Beautiful People" it'd be one thing. However actual animals seem mostly alien and mindless to me. (I'm not talking primates or cetaceans here) Possibly that alienness means I should suspend judgment, but that's about as far as I go.
"And if it's okay to show cruelty to another being provided that it lacks a soul, should atheists be let off the hook following a cruel act toward another human being? From the atheist perspective, we are all soulless." Allison
TR: No. It's a different terminology, but "sentience/sapience" serves roughly the same purpose for atheists. From an atheist perspective a sentient/sapient being is able to create, think, benefit society, love, be loved, etc. To commit cruelty to a fellow sentient/sapient being is to "damage a whole Universe" in a sense.
Although for an atheist I don't see how cruelty to beings with minimal nervous systems could even exist. So I'd think ripping the wings off flies or beheading shrimp would be about as morally neutral as those acts would be for me. (I wouldn't do them though because they could excite an evil in me or are simply unnecessary)
However I don't really think we entirely know what animals know of pain and fear.
Actually, we have a pretty good idea. Much of the pain research, as well as the basic work on fear an anxiety (which I do), is done on animals. I work exclusively with rats, but can tell you they do, in fact, have all of the underlying neural circuitry to experience emotion and exhibit learning patterns similar to humans. I realize that many religious people prefer to believe that animals are mindless, robotic beings, but there is a great deal of data that shows otherwise.
You know, I left this debate thread because of all the posturing and weary sophistry and equivocating, and look what I missed!
Someone somewhere along in here argued against my Moral Law argument by trying to demonstrate and reason through the economic value of abstaining against stomping on baby ducks. I would merely point out that once you've limited yourself to merely a materialist world view, you've opened up the door for me to argue in favor of stomping on baby ducks (of course I wouldn't stomp on baby ducks, because of the Moral Law written on my heart, and the fact that the idea of doing so stirs heartsickness within me and so on). But if I were a materialist, I'm sure someone out there would be happy to pay me for stomping on baby ducks, thus I would receive monetary reward, thus the action would have economic value - and what if that economic reward far outweighed the monetary reward of leaving the ducks alive. On what grounds would I then choose not to do it?
As to the whole line of thinking about the various and creative ways that people (including Christians) have been cruel to animals in the past - such as putting baby sparrows in one's mouth and so on - I would merely point out that it was a Christian, William Wilberforce, who awakened an awareness among other Christians about the immorality of both animal cruelty and slavery. Wilberforce didn't *create* this awareness within the hearts of his countrymen; he merely helped to rouse it. So it has been Christianity as a force for 2,000 years that has gradually awakened more and more of this awareness in the hearts of humans, whatever one may want to argue about past societal standards or bloodthirsty deeds by individual Christians (cue the standard replies about the Crusades and Inquisition here).
It is within the sphere of man's state of fallen-ness to be cruel, and certainly cultural or societal traditions may accompany that fallen state, but this is still a violation of the Moral Law, and man (collectively and individually) knows the wrongness of it.
Rob wrote: "If P.Z. Myers had any guts, he would put out a call for someone to send him a Koran so he could blow his nose and wrap fish in it. After all, it's nothing but frackin' ink on paper, right? So what's stopping you, Big Man?"
Hey, Rob. He had guts and *did* defile the Koran. So I guess you owe him an apology. So what's stopping you, BIG MAN?
Houghton, I agree that Wilberforce was a Christian, and was influence after his conversion by Christian anti-slavery campaigners. But you overlook the fact that the pro-slavery lobby was also Christian, and that both sides claimed that God was on their side.
The great English revolutionary, Thomas Paine, a deist rejector of Christianity, published "African Slavery in America", the first anti-slavery pamphlet in what was shortly to become the United States, in 1775, long before Wilberforce espoused the anti-slavery cause.
Benjamin Franklin, another deist, was the President of the first US post-revolutionary anti-slavery organization in 1784.
To represent the anti-slavery movement as solely a Christian movement is to rewrite history.
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