Crackergate Redux

PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame followed through on his threat to desecrate a consecrated communion wafer, piercing the alleged body of Christ with a rusty nail, which also ran through pages from the Koran and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, to demonstrate that nothing is sacred.  Myers then tossed the lot into his garbage can, along with some coffee grounds and a banana peel for good measure.  Pre-desecration, I questioned the wisdom of this move, arguing that intentionally attacking one of the key symbols of a religion might be great fun, but did little to advance the atheist cause.

Upon further reflection (spurred both by comments to my last post and Myers’ writings on the matter), I stand corrected.  Myers’ action was an important act of civil disobedience.  Catholics, in particular the Catholic student ministry at which the “kidnapping” of the Eucharist occurred, would have been within their rights to ask that Webster Cook (the Univ. of Central Florida student involved in the brouhaha) not return to their services because he violated their dogma on transubstantiation.  But they didn’t stop there.  Cook received death threats, an action was commenced to impeach him from the student senate, and a student ethics complaint was filed against him seeking disciplinary action by the university.

In other words, certain Catholics didn’t try to persuade Cook to respect their beliefs, they tried to force him to.  When he didn’t, they sought revenge.  In this context, Myers was entirely right to fight back.  The religious do not get to set the terms on which non-believers exercise our rights of conscience.  Unless an atheist commits a crime in exercising his or her views, no one has the right to demand that civil authorities punish displays of irreverence or even blasphemy.  When that kind of demand is made, striking back at sacred symbols (again, within legal bounds), stating unequivocally that “your sacred objects are not mine,” is an appropriate way to reassert the equality of our freedom.

Thoughts on Crackergate

There’s been a major blog brouhaha circling over a young man’s “theft” of a Eucharist wafer from a Catholic church and a blogger’s subsequent remarks, which drew the ire of none other than Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.  The story started with a Florida college student taking the wafer with him instead of eating it, as is required by Catholic doctrine.  The young man apparently received death threats, and the church asked his university to discipline him.  Finally, he relented and returned the wafer unharmed.

Enter science blogger and Univ. of Minnesota biology professor PZ Myers.  In a post entitled “It’s a frackin’ cracker,” Myers lambasted the church and university for its treatment of the student over, as he put it, “a goddamned cracker.”  Then Myers issued this request:

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.

That was when the shite hit the fan.  The Catholic League fired out not one but two press releases on the Myers post, the first encouraging people to contact the university and state legislature to go after Myers’ job, the second stating that a Virginia delegate to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis had requested additional security to protect god-fearing republicans from the frenzied atheist hordes at Myers’ beck and call.  The comment threads on Myers’ blog, Pharyngula, exploded with thousands of posts, and other blogs got in on the action with their own huge comment threads.

Myers’ fundamental assessment of the situation is dead on — death threats are NEVER an acceptable way of expressing disapproval, even of someone who trashes your most cherished beliefs.  And the university would be completely out-of-bounds to discipline the student for an action taken outside of the school context that did not result in harm to a person or property damage.  Committing blasphemy is not an expellable offense; the First Amendment guarantees that, especially where a state school is involved.

But I don’t get the point of Myers’ “score me a wafer” idea.  He finds the idea of protecting “a goddamned cracker” absurd.  So do I — transubstantiation is a silly belief (for the non-Catholic, transubstantiation is the belief that, at the moment of consecration [blessing], communion wafers and wine, although retaining their appearance as simple bread and wine, actually become the body and blood of Jesus), and was the one that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t accept when I was practicing as a Catholic. 

But what’s the point of going out of your way to desecrate a communion wafer?  How does poking a very sharp stick in the eye of Catholics advance the cause of rationality that we atheists hold so dear?  I suppose there’s a certain amount of glee in tweaking the most powerful religious body in the world.  And holding transubstantiation up to ridicule isn’t inherently overboard.  But aren’t there better ways to do it?  I’m not suggesting giving religious beliefs the kid-glove treatment.  Far from it.  But is this the most constructive way to support The Atheist Agenda (TM)?

Atheist Billboard Rises Over Philadelphia

A coalition of freethought, humanist and atheist organizations calling itself the Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason has erected a billboard on I-95 North in the northeast portion of Philly.  Mrs. MG and I saw it for the first time Saturday while in the car with Mrs. MG’s mother, an erstwhile Catholic.

Readers may recognize the design as that erected outside New York City by FreeThought Action.  As stated in a post on that billboard, I love the whole concept of this design, and of public displays of positive freethought ideas generally.

Head on over to PhillyCOR’s website and check out the organizations participating.

Unto us a child is born

The Midwestern Household is abuzz with excitement this week (or would be if we weren’t so sleep deprived) as we welcome our first child, who for blog purposes shall be known as Little Bigfoot.  This fella joined our happy family last Saturday.

In thinking about all the things I want to do with him in the coming years (including sleeping more than two hours at a time), I’m faced with the conundrum every atheist parent must address: What in the world am I going to tell this kid about religion and god?  The question is complicated, as it is for many, by the high level of religiosity among some of our family members (esp. Mrs. MG’s clan of diehard Catholics).  Here’s the best I can come up with over breakfast:

1. I absolutely will not baptize this child.
2. I will educate him about religion.  To critically evaluate religion, one must know something about religious beliefs.  If one is to be an empathetic human being, one should also understand some of the motivations behind certain doctrines and belief in general.  Moreover, no one can fully appreciate our society or art and literature without some knowledge of religion.  Little Bigfoot will have the benefit of an introduction to major religious ideas and why people hold them, always with the caution that Mommy and Daddy don’t believe these stories are true.
3. I will insist that our religious relatives not try to indoctrinate him.  If I find out anyone has tried to secretly baptize him or encourage him to believe, there will be hell to pay, so to speak.
4. Same goes for daycare workers, teachers or other school officials.  Seriously, I will f you up, legally speaking. 
5. I will answer his questions about religion (and everything, for that matter) as thoroughly, honestly and age-appropriately as I can.  If we are to encourage him to value truth, we should always speak the truth to him.
6. I will encourage a love of and wonder at the natural world in his imagination.

I’m sure I’ll think of other things, but those are the points that jump to mind at this early hour.  This will all become far more relevant with time, of course, so right now I think I’ll grab another cup of coffee and snuggle with my boy for a while.

Universe thrilled to find its purpose in life

“Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naive humanism; the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance and are best corrected by a little astronomy.” – Bertrand Russell

Astronomy magazine published one of the coolest graphics ever this month:

The large center oval shows the distribution of 150 million or so galaxies in the local universe.  Every dot represents a galaxy of millions to billions of stars.  The smaller ovals are slices of the universe at various distances, and thus various times, from the Milky Way.  I love it because it takes the unimaginably large, unimaginably numerous, and displays it on a single page in a comprehensible way.  Sort of puts our smallness into perspective, no?

Well, apparently not if you’re Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and recent Colbert Report guest.  Here’s what he had to say about our place in the universe.

In case you’re having trouble with the video, here’s what Warren said near the beginning of the interview:

Well, God is the creator, and He created the entire universe just so He could create this galaxy, just so He could create this planet, just so He could tilt it at the right axis so it wouldn’t burn up or freeze up, to sustain human life because he wanted to create human beings, he wanted to create you to love you.

That’s right — the entire universe, all those millions of galaxies pictured in Astronomy, were put here just so God could create humans.  Wow.  Just wow.

Let’s put the existence of humans in a little historical context.  Current estimates place the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years, plus or minus a couple hundred million years.  The Milky Way formed not long after (in astronomical terms), probably more than 13 billion years ago.  The earth formed around 4.55 billion years ago.  The first life arose somewhere between 4.4 billion and 2.7 billion years ago.  Modern homo sapiens, the species to which all existing humans belong, didn’t arise until approximtely 120,000 years ago.  (Rick Warren, incidentally, was born in 1954.)

Riddle me this, Pastor Rick.  If God created the universe so he could create this galaxy, so he could create this planet and tilt it at just the right axis, just so he could create human beings and love them, why did he wait 13,699,880,000 years to get down to the lovin’?

The simple and correct answer is that humans are a product of the universe’s natural processes, not its intended beneficiaries.  We are tiny, impotent creatures, crawling across a tiny planet (even for our own solar system), circling around a middling yellow star, revolving on an outer spiral arm of what must be admitted is a pretty cool galaxy (yea us!).  And that’s an extraordinary place to be and appreciate on its own merits, if only one is humble enough to accept the truth.

MySpace Discriminates Against Atheists

According to the Secular Student Alliance, social networking site MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Coporation, has deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group from that site.  This is apparently not the first time MySpace has deleted this particular group, and not the only atheist group to be targeted.  Some godless bloggers have decided to tie this event to the previously declared International Delete Your MySpace Account Day on January 30.  I’m not a MySpace member, but if I was, you could be damn sure I wouldn’t be a user anymore.

Guess this puts a recently spotted piece of Christian flotsam into perspective:

 

Huckabee: “Amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards”

The Almighty, who inspired a book so perfectly drafted it contradicts itself on who Jesus’s granddad was, apparently has some issues with the wording of our Constitution. That according to presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who had this to say in Michigan:

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Note that in Huckabee’s America, the Constitution, the bedrock and foundation of our nation, is “some contemporary view.” Just a fad. Some new-fangled nonsense cooked up by a bunch of wig-and-panty-hose-wearing hippies in the 1780s. These kids and their “separation of powers” and “due process.”

This kind of talk should set all freedom-loving Americans on alert level “Holy Shit!”  Huckleberry is proposing, in no uncertain terms, a theocracy, specifically, a Christian theocracy.  It is unfathomable to me that someone running for President of the freaking United States could so blatantly disregard (nay, actively oppose) the First Amendment, upon which so much of our progress and identity as a people depends.

There is one interpretation of these remarks that lowers the threat level to “Gigantic Douchebag,” but just barely.  The allusion to amending the Constitution to meet “God’s standards” and the references to opponents who are unwilling to do so could very well be a “dog whistle”to Christians on one specific issue — gay marriage.  Huckabee may essentially have been saying, “I’ll amend the Constitution to keep the queers from getting hitched, and my opponents won’t.”  I’m just speculating here, but that’s the first thing that came to my mind. 

 

You are not alone!

This is so spot-on brilliant, I’m beside myself.  A relatively new organization calling itself FreeThoughtAction has erected a billboard outside New York City on the New Jersey Turnpike:

I love the message — “Don’t Believe In God?  You are not alone.”  It’s a positive message that many unbelievers need to hear.  And it’s difficult for the religious to assail with any semblance of credibility – it’s not “angry”, “mean”, or any of the other epithets the oh-so-sensitive purveyors of religious bigotry and hatred like to sling at freethinkers.  Ah, but that assumes the religious argue only when they have a valid argument.  Silly atheist…

(BTW, FreeThoughtAction has an awesome fundraising slogan: “Every God-damned dollar goes to advertising!”) 

This joins the other billboards placed into rotation around the country by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which read “Beware of Dogma” and “Imagine No Religion.”

Public billboards promoting freethinking and atheism are a huge step forward for unbelievers in America.  We’re constantly bombarded with Christian advertising (a billboard near my home declares “Jesus Christ is the ONLY Lord and Savior”), but it’s difficult to get a freethought message out into the public.  By placing high-profile, visible messages of unbelief on the highways, I hope these organizations will help more individuals feel comfortable enough in their unbelief to “come out” and get involved.

I find stuff

Found stuck in the front of a newspaper box in downtown Philadelphia:

At least I agree with the title.

A Good Life With No Regrets

My grandmother is dying.  Fifteen years after suffering two heart attacks, congestive heart failure is finally going to take her life.  It’s a matter of days at this point, perhaps a few weeks at most.  Sooner rather than later the fluid collecting around her heart and in her lungs will overwhelm her, and she will die.

This is the first family death I’ve confronted in a very long time, and the first ever since I concluded that god does not exist.  At first I thought this would be a test of my convictions, a time when I would feel that “god-shaped hole” in my heart that Christians speak of and long for the comfort of a supernatural counselor.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Although certainly sad, I am more at peace with my grandmother’s imminent passing than I possibly could have been when religion twisted my perception of death and dying.

Two weeks ago, I flew back to my hometown to have an early Christmas with Grandma and my extended family, one last time.  The night before everyone got together, Grandma and I sat and talked for a couple of hours, just the two of us.  Our conversation ranged far and wide, touching on the presidential race, various developments in my hometown, the impending birth of my wife’s and my first child.  In the course of talking, Grandma declared to me that she was ready to die, that “I’ve had a good life and I have no regrets.” 

That struck me as the best possible statement and frame of mind any of us mortal mammals could have when facing death.  It says and contains so much – so many births, weddings, childhoods, family meals, holidays, times tending the garden, hot summers swimming in the lake.  It encompasses all of our lovers, friends, relatives, coworkers, acquaintances, even strangers with whom we had one memorable conversation.  Nights under the stars, days on the porch swing, exciting trips to new places, the comfort of returning home.  A good life with no regrets.  What a wonderful way to spend 82 years.

I contrast this with the torment religion inflicted on me in connection with my grandfather’s death 17 years ago.  Shortly after his death, I became heavily involved in a fundamentalist evangelical church.  Hellfire and damnation haunted my consciousness, as I struggled vainly to fight every “evil” impulse of my hormone-soaked teenage body.  I trembled that I might die in sin, some fleeting thought or passionate moment with a girlfriend dooming me to an eternity of torment.  The lure of paradise was never so potent to me as the fear of perdition.

My grandparents having never been overtly religious people, I realized with horror that I had no idea what Grandpa believed before he died.  I remember broaching the subject with my mother, telling her of my conversion to that cult and questioning whether she knew what Grandpa believed.  In her continuing grief, she lashed out at me, demanding, “So what, you think your Grandpa’s in hell?!”  I was devastated, and the torture of being unable to answer her with an emphatic “NO!” remained with me for years.  This was the supposed “comfort” of religion – death as an object of profoundest fear, even reluctant judgment on a loved one.

If someone should attempt to comfort me regarding my grandmother’s death with words promising peace in god’s presence, I believe I’ll politely answer, “thank you, but she deserved much better than that.  And she had it.”