The last word on P.Z. Myers

Isn't Myers somehow acknowledging the power of the belief by desecrating it? I mean; I don't believe the Catholic host is other than a piece of wafer, so I wouldn't see the point of "desecrating" it. Myers strikes me as closer to a Satanist than an atheist.

I mean, I can certainly understand why someone can be fanatical about God, but where does the passion for believing a negative proposition come from?

My own perception is that at least some of the passion comes from all the horrible things that believers have done (and continue to do) in the name of their personal deities. Couple those enormous atrocities with the petty, daily hypocrisies and the sanctimonious absurdity of some of the dogma and rituals, and you have fuel enough to march an army of atheists forever.

Come to think of it, I'm surprised there aren't more.

My sense is that Myers's desire to desecrate the Body of Christ is as sacramental in its blasphemous way as a faithful Christian's desire to receive salvation and redemption in the same.

Myers is racked by what is to him the horrible suspicion that God may in fact be real, that Jesus Christ may in fact be his savior and redeemer.

But he doesn't want God to be real and he doesn't want to be saved or to be redeemed.

Luckily for him, the latter of his two desires can be satisfied.

Quite "tolerant," don't you think?

Myers is precisely like Lewis's inhabitants of Hell, who know the bus to Heaven is waiting for them, but who won't get on.

Myers is the kid with nose-ring who eggs the bus when it pulls up and moons it when it drives away.

At the risk of sounding like Dr. Phil, it's worth remembering that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

It goes without saying that God loves P. Z. Meyers, and on the evidence, I'd say that P. Z. Meyers loves God, too, albeit in a most "dysfunctional" way.

Myers doesn't desire to desecrate the host - he desires to insult and hurt believers.

Sort of like throwing down the doll a madwoman thinks is her baby - except that he sees an army of madwomen about him, possessed of political and social power and demanding that he respect their delusions.

God may or may not exist, but God's followers are a blood thirsty lot who use God to excuse their genocidal nature.

Thankfully, the atheistic communists did away with God and created Paradise on earth, where no man lifted a finger to harm another.

I didn't become a Christian out of Pascal's wager. Seeing the shocking episode of public blasphemy forced me to confront my unexamined and comfortable agnosticism. Maybe God really doesn't exist, I thought, in which case I can be merely amused, or discomfited, by B.'s behavior. But if God does exist, then I saw something terribly and eternally significant. The militant atheist forced me off the fence. Reading Kierkegaard started my conversion.

But if God does exist, then I saw something terribly and eternally significant.

Well, that assumes God cares about blasphemy, doesn't it?

Shouldn't your sentence read, "But if God, as I conceive of Him, does exist, then I saw something terribly and eternally significant."

To those who have issues with Pascal's wager (often those, by the way, who oversimplify it), I commend this essay:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-05-020-f

Tingley's style may be a little 'rich,' but he's got a good argument.

The bottom line is that human civilization is a story of great accomplishment and heroism as well as heinous crimes and widespread desctruction. At every point, religion, nationalism, ethnicity and any other identity exercise one can name has been handy as either the credit for good or the excuse for evil.

Underneath, behind and in the driver's seat of it all was and is human beings.

I don't mean it in a critical sense, but that is the logical rebuttal to Manning's Corollary... and while it is at the "heart" of many discussions, anonymous poster at 10:18 AM, it is not the cause. ;-)

This serendipitous contretemps with PZ Myers has inflamed a chronic cacoethes dubitandi that rankles deep within my Pyrrhonically skeptical though Tertullianesquely orthodox soul. Don't be alarmed at my two hats -- theological schizophrenia is quite a normal condition: it is averred that the Deity Himself wears three.

I can report that I have now succeeded in filching ("scoring" ?) not one but several hosts for that intrepid tweaker of the divine nose Mr. Myers. One was from a Gregorian/Tridentine/Traditional Mass, a second from a Novus Ordo service, a third from an SSPX chapel, a fourth from a small congregation led by an "ordained" woman "Catholic" "priest". I would have liked to obtain a bit of the Orthodox "lamb" but the logistics are impossible, and in the past I was usually in a sort of spiritual swoon in Orthodox Churches: I knew not whether I was in heaven or on earth. Besides, it is not a "wafer" in the Western style. But I am going to a Lutheran church this Sunday for a fifth consubstantiated specimen.

PZ, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is (a) to identify the transubstantiated Host, (b) to determine the validity and licity of the various impostors. You must do this before engaging in any acts of putative desecration.

Of course, you will have to admit that, while not believing in God, you do believe in me.

Mais Roland est-il un Franc ou un Menteur?

Show me a zealot for _any_ cause, and I'll show you a person who probably has mental or psychological issues.

Reading Kierkegaard started my conversion.

So Rod, what was it about Kierkegaard that persuaded you to believe in God?

The great American philosopher Eric Hoffer has a wise thought on this subject:

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as thought it were a new religion. According to Renan, "The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men."

From "The True Believer"

SI, I mean this in all sincerity, that is a lurid cartoon version of what religious faith (not just Christian faith) is about. You assume, a priori, that anyone who believes in the divine can only have reached those conclusions out of psychological need. Therefore, you insulate yourself from having to confront their own arguments and experiences in a serious way. Many religious people do this in response to atheists and agnostics -- assume that these folks only disbelieve in God out of a psychological need to justify their own behavior, and an attempt to rid themselves of the anxiety of guilt feelings.

MEH, Kierkegaard didn't convince me that God existed, but he (or rather, the book about him) was a piercing diagnostic that revealed my own shallow agnosticism for the psychological evasion that it was -- in my case, it really was true that I was attempting to justify my own hedonism, and to deny what my conscience told me was right. I was the Kierkegaardian Aesthete, and I could see via SK where that was going to end. It was a flight from myself.

But SK showed, in his portrait of the Ethicist, that I was not altogether wrong in my suspicion and disdain for bourgeois Christianity. He offered the Religious mode of existence as an alternative to the two less-than-fully-human modes he critiqued (the Aesthetic and the Ethical). Like I said, none of this was fully convincing to me to become a serious Christian, but it did make me radically reconsider everything I thought I knew about God, and about myself. It was the first real step in a long journey.

"I presume to tell God how he should run the universe because I have to live here, among people with such tiny moral imaginations and such great hunger for self-aggrandizement that their consciences are untroubled by the thought of another human being suffering unspeakable agony for eternity because he offended the vanity of an all-powerful imaginary being."

As with many other skeptics/atheists, this paragraph betrays a rather profound misunderstanding of what Christianity teaches about the nature of God, the notion of eternal punishment, etc. It's not just Dick-the-Dawk who criticizes things he doesn't know about, apparently.

"We're on our own, except for each other, so if we want a better world, WE HAVE TO BUILD IT, not wait for a God to take us away from all the bad things and punish all the people we didn't like."

Which, of course, assumes that "we" all have the same idea of what a "better" world might look like. Gandhi and Mao both had ideas of a "better world," but whose would you rather live in?

Rob, the fact that you use the phrase "what Christianity teaches" implies to me that you don't actually know what you're talking about, and are simply assuming a tone of authority to hide your inability to offer a more informed response. "Christianity" teaches a few dozen different things about the nature of God and the notion of eternal punishment, depending on time, place, sect, etc. Now, if you'd like to point out a specific teaching of a specific church that conflicts with my admitted over-simplification, I'm more than willing to listen and discuss it. Otherwise, don't try to out-pompous me. It won't work.

And yes, we all have different ideas about what a better world might look like. Thankfully, we evolved the ability to communicate even the most abstract of concepts with this thing called language. It allows us to explain our own perspectives and experiences and to understand others. We can work to build consensus, to refine our ideas, to create the communities we want to live in. Rod's much-discussed "Benedictine Option" is a wonderful example of what I'm talking about.

"At the risk of sounding like Dr. Phil, it's worth remembering that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference."

Not Dr. Phil, but Elie Weisel (or at least he's the first I ever heard use that line; pretty sure it's his).

I received a good reminder on this topic from a priest friend (who I forgot was on vacation, but who took the time to reply to an email I sent anyway). I had been asking about various ways to protect the Blessed Sacrament from these sort of outrages, and Father reminded me that the very act of receiving the Sacrament with the intent to blaspheme or desecrate It is already an act of desecration.

The real blasphemy and desecration lives in P.Z. Myers' heart, in that he so desperately wants to maltreat and destroy Something he doesn't even believe is there. If he were a colorblind man raging at all the fools out there who insist in spite of him that shades of color really do exist he'd be as powerless to prove the absence of color as he is to prove the absence of a God he doesn't believe in in a Sacrament he doesn't revere; all he can prove is the bit about "the appearance of bread and wine" which we already knew, anyway.

While your post was quite long, and covered a great deal of extraneous material, it neglected any mention of WHY Dr. Myers made his wafer challenge: a student at CFU was physically accosted, and received death threats, because he didn't consume the host wafer he had been given. This, in the eyes of the reality-based community, is crazy. No one is saying you don't have the right to believe what you like about the communion wafer, including believing the fellow is damning himself to hell, but grabbing him and attempting to force him to eat it and sending death threats to him are not tolerable responses in a civilized society. It is in this context that Dr. Myers may have felt compelled to point out that, in fact, these wafers (consecrated or not) are still just wafers, regardless of what you believe. Daniel Dennett, in his book Breaking the Spell, suggests that it is time to stop setting religion in a special place above logical thought and scientific study. It is perhaps in this vein, although more extreme than I suspect Dr. Dennett would espouse, that Dr. Myers presented his challenge.

I think that Dr. Myers is like me in his attitude toward Catholicism -i.e., I find the majority of Catholics lovely people, but find the hierarchy and doctrine to be deeply flawed, and in some cases downright evil. Mr. Shea calls "Myers and Co" evil for calling for eucharist desecration. "Myers and Co" has a different definition of evil - it includes things like withholding potentially life-saving devices like condoms and other forms of birth control from indigent people in underdeveloped countries, and turning a blind eye toward systemic, long-standing, and devastating abuse of children. Damage to wafers, even very, very special wafers, just doesn't quite rise to these levels of evil in the eyes of the non-deluded.

Deb,

Sending death threats to some little punk who tried to steal a consecrated communion wafer certainly isn't the right response, but that's no justification of Myers's actions or his longstanding, fanatical hatred of everything religious. Anyone who tries to defend Myers is simply morally bankrupt, so far outside of the realm of normal moral discourse that they need to be laughed at, not taken seriously.

Death threats should not be part of civilized society. But neither should juvenile attempts to desecrate things that other people hold dear. Not only is it out of line, but it's ineffective at opening up room for any kind of real dialogue between the religious and the non-religious. Myers and all his drones are profoundly stupid people who can't seem to realize that behavior like this doesn't challenge religious people to consider atheism but makes us all the more disgusted by it. If very many atheists can stand up and defend Myers, that will look to our minds like very good reason NOT to take atheism as a serious option.

. . . it neglected any mention of WHY Dr. Myers made his wafer challenge: a student at CFU was physically accosted, and received death threats, because he didn't consume the host wafer he had been given.

I will assume that the community of magical materialists is wholly unaware of what occurs during Communion. Let me assure ye irrational deniers of reality (both in this specific instance and in your general world-view) that congregants are not held down and force fed the Eucharist. Quite to the contrary, generally only Catholics not conscious of mortal sin (that has not previously been absolved through the Sacrement of Reconciliation) are welcome to receive. But the Eucharist can be received in one way and one way only: it must be eaten. So the Eucharist is not passed out at Mass to anyone interested in the Faith.

I don't expect the deviant deniers of reality with their magical based reasoning, materialist prejudices, and irrational fear of and bigotry against the thoughtful members of philosophical and theological communities to appreciate the similarity between presenting oneself for Communion in order to abscond with the Eucharist, and walking up to the altar and stealing the Chalice and a couple of candlesticks. So just take my word for it. Absconding with the Eucharist is the worse of the two. I will actually be a bit surprised if the facts show that an Extraordinary Minister of Communion requested that the thief consume the Host; and thereby exacerbate his already obviously troubled relationship with the Almighty. I guess that just provides another example of the problems of the liturgical abuse of using EMs outside of necessity. Either way the EM should prevent the thief from absconding with his ill gotten gains.

The death threats are strange. But I am not sure why strange acts at the margins of any group of people surprise the magical materialists unless it be that human behavior cannot be fully accounted for and appreciated in their philosophy.

In sum, atheists are a pretty crazy bunch. I would need to actively turn my mind to think about Vishnu. I have never in my life suddenly thought, "MAN!!!! SOMEBODY IN INDIA PROBABLY THINKS VISHNU EXISTS. THAT REALLY CHAPS MY HIDE."

Margaret, whatever anger and scorn I may have in my heart are directed only at those things which I deeply believe to be evil and contrary to the common good. I will neither apologize for that fervor nor censor it beyond the basic ground rules of discussion.

As for being "smarter-than-thou", I'll resist the urge to snark here and just point out that I'm hardly alone in having high intellectual self-regard on this blog. But I see no reason to submit to fallacious brow-beatings just to adopt a pose of false humility.

Nate:

You say "Anyone who tries to defend Myers is simply morally bankrupt". That is ridiculous. Dr. Myers has, at worst, insulted people's beliefs. I have had my beliefs insulted once or twice, and I would never accuse those people, or those who defend them, of being anything more than bad-mannered. To call them morally bankrupt would just be hyperbole of the whiny, entitled sort.

You also say "Myers and all his drones are profoundly stupid people". That, again, is ridiculous, and I'm sure you know it. I wouldn't suspect that Dr. Myers' behavior would challenge anyone to "consider atheism", and I highly doubt that was his intent. One person's "desecration" may simply be another person's "wake up and smell the reality".

3:33 was me. I get it now. Atheists rage and foam at the mouth because they believe they suffer terrible oppression at the hands of an army of intolerant believers. Another example of their inability to accurately perceive reality.

Egads, Still Unimpressed is being oppressed by Intelligent Design. Now we see the violence inherent in the system. The horror!!!! The horror!!!!! I am unimpressed by this weighty cross you bear, brother.

And Loudon, you don't in any way note the way religious conservatives in this and many other countries do the EXACT SAME THING that you decry. A mere cutting and pasting will save time:

"RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES rage and foam at the mouth because they believe they suffer terrible oppression at the hands of an army of intolerant UNBELIEVERS. Another example of their inability to accurately perceive reality.

Egads, LOUDON IS A FOOL is being oppressed by EVOLUTION. Now we see the violence inherent in the system. The horror!!!! The horror!!!!! I am unimpressed by this weighty cross you bear, brother."

This behavior is quite common on both sides of the atheist/religious divide.

JPL and Still Unimpressed,

Granted some religious conservatives might be concerned by the PZian horde and interactions with it. But you guys are scary and frequently have poor social skills and poor hygiene, so I would think you would understand.

Either way, our tolerance and determination of what would constitute a government body elbowing its religious beliefs into our respective lives likely differs. In a pluralistic society I think the healthy expression of diverse beliefs publicly and privately by both public and private actors is a good thing and like to see it encouraged rather than discouraged. Truth will out.

Public schools, obviously, pose unique concerns in a pluralistic society. I think in the end (calm down PZians) all parties should recognize that the local majority will rule with respect to those institutions and to the extent we find our local majorities to be unpalatable private education is the preferred route. Hence, if I lived in Minnesota I would send my children to private school to limit their interaction with prepubescent PZians. If you lived in Texas you would need to find (or perhaps found) a school for atheist degenerates.

As a trained biochemist, may I make the observation that the nomenclature Myers chose for his blog could very well serve as a metaphor for his soul's spiritual existence?

embryonic and hidden to the human eye
(perhaps pinhead-sized, between 24 and 48 hrs of age)

As a developmental biologist and molecular geneticist my perspective is rather the opposite. May I ask what instrument you're using to measure something you have no clear concept of?

We ought pray that his "Dark Night of the Soul" is as mystically miraculous as that of the great Carmelite St John of the Cross (but, in charity, mercifully not as physically dejected and horrendously tormented as the semitic Spaniard's).

It's always sadly amusing how fervent advocates of religionism have no meaningful knowledge of the mystic life.

Ejaculation (whether random and biological or not) doesn't make the man. Conception does, as Karol Wojtyla dramatically portrayed in his play "Radiation of Fatherhood."

No, that's wrong. Fatherless children will not agree to that view. Fatherhood involves conveying and persuading to a meaningful social identity and something of the significance of human life.

Shorter Jillian: The reasoned opinions of the religionists commenting on Rod's blog do little to convince irrational magical materialist bigots.

True 'nuff, Jillian. And your point, other than that you hate Christians, is? Also, your third paragraph makes no sense. To what point of view has Myers successfully battled for for so long? That Christians are a nasty plurality and organized immoral mob, or that the are a minority (either nasty or otherwise) and disorganized (whether moral or otherwise)?

When Myers makes a serious point, by the way, be sure to let us know. I've read his blog for several months and have seen little to recommend it (other than entertainment for uncultured materialist barbarians). But I suppose if by "serious points" you mean uninteresting factoids about cephalopods, dishonest and/or political motivated essays regarding "science" (see particularly his presentation of the Plan B controversy), and the lunatic ravings of a verifiably Christ-haunted man and his horde of true believers, I guess you also would have a "point."

"Similarly, I hope P.Z. Myers' infamy will be redeemed at least partially by it shocking the conscience of agnostics, and encouraging them to read more about the Christian faith" RD

TR: This is something that unnerves me in some odd way.

It brings up the theory, that I mostly don't credit, that people like Myers and you in a sense "need each other." An non-militant neighborly atheist with a wife, kid, and a blog is probably not going to be of interest to you. Likewise an average Catholic who doesn't threaten to kill anyone is not going to be of much interest to Myers or any militant atheist.

By pointing at the more extreme element both of you can hope to shock the agnostic, or simply unaffiliated, to take a stance. If atheists did not have a P. Z. Myers, in a sense, you might have to invent him. Hence when I was young it was Madelyn O'Hair who, really, was mostly just a crank and not even remotely like a scientist or intellectual.

Wow, in one post you call me scary, note that I have poor social skills and poor hygiene, and call me an atheist degenerate.

My name calling is directed at the PZian horde, I apologize for any collateral damage.

Apology accepted, but perhaps name calling just isn't the best response, particularly if you're arguing from a Christian position. Surely you can point out their behavior is sacrilegious, profane, or blasphemous without calling into question their personal hygiene. Throwing those elements in just weakens your primary argument, which seems to me very strong, and removes the moral ground you stand on when presenting it. After all, whether you're right or wrong, if believers in God act no better than the atheists you decry, what difference does it makes if their facts are correct?

Doesn't anyone read their own links anymore? Elizabeth Anscombe was a very conservative Catholic, not an atheist. She and her husband had seven children and famously toasted Humanae Vitae with champagne.

Why does this matter? Because still unimpressed is clearly guilty of copypasta. No one with any familiarity with the Lewis-Anscombe debate would have made a schoolboy error like that.

Ahh, the internets, home of fake intellectuals of all possible weird persuasions.

Still Unimpressed writes of C.S. Lewis:

"His one debate with an actual atheist so embarassed him he never wrote an apologetic work after. Is his appeal primarily that he pats you on the back for being so much smarter and wiser than his caricatures of others?"

The wise and all-knowing Still Unimpressed provides us with a link to the "actual atheist" in question, who turns out to be none other than... well-known conservative Catholic, Elizabeth Anscombe. As to S.U.'s assertion that Lewis was "so embarrassed," here's Anscombe's own take on their debate, which did inspire Lewis to rewrite a chapter in his book, Miracles.

"The fact that Lewis rewrote that chapter, and rewrote it so that it now has those qualities [to meet Anscombe's objections], shows his honesty and seriousness. The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much. Neither Dr. Harvard (who had Lewis and me to dinner a few weeks later) nor Professor Jack Bennet remembered any such feelings on Lewis's part ...My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis's rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends—who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments of the subject-matter—as an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection."

Still Unimpressed, you're correct in pointing out that C.S. Lewis has untold numbers of devotees (though not just 'conservative' Christians), none of whom find him the least bit "smug or self-satisfied," as you rather ironically call him. Buy into his arguments or don't – that's up to you. But your failure to see the love, joy, humor and great humility that infuse Lewis's work makes me wonder if you're even capable of being "impressed" by anyone or anything.

I've read Lewis, and he came across as smug to me too.

Sorry, just because someone doesn't agree with your impressions, doesn't mean they haven't read the material.

He had a tendency to extrapolate his experiences and thoughts as an atheist to all atheists, and much of his debate seemed to be in nice little quotes that, in many of them, seemed to be dismissive, or 'gotcha' sorts of observations.

And that comes across as smug. Sorry.

I think it's just Freudian Projection.

Well, I'm a fan of Lewis, and in the past a huge fan, but there are elements of smugness in his writing, and I suspect he'd admit if if someone pointed it out. He seems to take himself to task on this very point in the book he wrote after his wife died. He'd been too glib in his writing before then.

He also seemed to have a bit of a problem with women in his writings, and it's my impression is marriage probably helped straighten him out on that matter. "Till We Have Faces", which I think was written after he met Joy Davidman, is almost the work of a Christian feminist.

Donald, that's a good (and fair, I think) assessment of Lewis' writing as it progressed throughout his life and changing experience...

I've been mulling over the "smug" comment, since so many seem to share it. When I first started reading Lewis (first Mere Christianity, then Screwtape, etc.), I was delighted by the fact that he poked gentle fun at the fashionably "enlightened," too-smart-for-God crowd. This was MY crowd, and I had grown deeply weary of their (our) snide cynicism and know-it-all arrogance. Most of my friends were college professors, journalists, or artists of some sort. The contempt in which they (we) held people of faith, non-intellectuals, business people, political conservatives, and anyone NOT in their little circle... that mean-spirited contempt began to wear on me and wear on me and wear on me 'til it literally DROVE me to seek... another way. And here was C.S. Lewis, talking to me from half a century ago, but he KNEW these people. He saw what I saw – the bitterness and hubris behind the ironic pose. He, too, had been one of them, but had found another way. It was like finding a kindred spirit... a new best friend. Lewis made it okay – good, even – to be an intellectual AND a believer. He was brilliant, yes, but unlike my smart friends, he seemed to understand the importance of the biblical teaching that "knowledge will pass away," leaving only faith, hope and love. That meant everything to me.

Anyway, I suppose if you came to Lewis NOT open to what I was looking for... if you came with your mind already made up about what you believe (or don't believe)... I can see how he would come across as smug. To an atheist reader, he's in essence saying, "I was once like you, but now I've seen the light." I guess that WOULD seem smug. For someone like me, however, who was just beginning to see that same light, it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Rob, you're exactly right. And in the end, it won't matter how "informed" S.U. becomes about the teachings of Christianity, because his heart is closed to its truth. Until he can open his heart, humble himself, and lose the pride that infuses so much of what he writes, he will remain... unimpressed. Not to mention angry. That's just the way it works.

10:40 post was me.

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."

Hey, jackass. He had guts and *did* defile the Koran. So I guess you owe him an apology. So what's stopping you, BIG MAN?