Some perspective on magic crackers
Jul 14th, 2008 by Butter
You’ll notice, of course, that in my pro-P.Z. letter to President Bruininks, I pretty much avoided the core issue. To a large extent, it’s irrelevant: P.Z. enjoys free-speech rights, particularly on a private blog that’s unaffiliated with the university, and anyway, he has tenure. Any organized campaign to pressure the university to take action against him is a shameful call for censorship.
Most of his original “Frackin’ Cracker” post was a report and commentary on the incident at the church, in which the kid tried to make off with the wafer. He rightly pointed out, although it’s a shame that it needs saying, that those of us in the reality-based community understand that it’s only a wafer, and not really a magic charm that’s really two things at once or some other mystical, deluded baloney. Really, the transubstantiation doctrine is so brazenly absurd that it’s essentially them thumbing their nose at everyone else, just asking to be called out on their power to make shit up. P.Z. did a service to humanity by ridiculing those who shut off their brain and actively perpetuate such medieval myths, and especially by pointing out the grotesque overreaction by loyalists apparently more interested in closing ranks and defending the in-group than rationally considering whether harm was done to any human being. Remember, we even had a spokessheep from the local diocese calling the incident a “hate crime”, a Father with the diocese comparing it to a kidnapping, and blowhard Bill Donahue saying it was “beyond hate speech”. (The latter is technically true, since it was an action, not speech, but I doubt that’s what he was getting at.) Oh, and let’s not forget that kid has been getting death threats.
Any decent person who’s honest, actually cares about others, and has a spine ought to condemn this bile, and P.Z., to his credit did so clearly. But P.Z., whom I’ve heard in an interview admitting to “stream-of-consciousness” blogging, ended the post by asking his readers to abscond from churches with sanctified communion wafers so he could commit “abuse” and “sacrilege”. Now, if meant seriously, it’s not commentary: it’s a call to action, and it’s ill-considered. It’s not just that it’s against an entrenched group who we know have no interest in playing fairly, and who can be counted on to ignore the substance of the criticism and use their significant media resources to play the persecution card. And it’s not just that it’s unhelpfully vague. (What’s he gonna do, rip it up? Draw a smiley face on it? Run over it with his car? Piss on it? Smear it in goose poop? One can’t help running through the possibilities, especially given some of the jokes he’s made in the past about how he’d like to treat the Bible and Koran.)
Rather, it’s that, in the interests of living in a civil society, I advocate erring on the side of leaving alone (physically, at least) the symbols that other people consider venerable. Pare away the transubstantiation myth, and the wafer (as part of the silly little ritual) is still a symbol that they have every right to use as they see fit. Then again, they give them away to the public for free—kind of. It’s still in their building and given with the expectation that they’ll be used immediately for a specific purpose. In such tricky situations I try to err on the side of not being a dick, in the expectation that the other side will reciprocate. They won’t be so magnanimous in their rhetoric, of course, but that’s a given, because they’re on the side that’s wrong and stupid—which is why I’m not on their side in the first place.
This all is in defense of the practical solution of tolerance and coexistence. In terms of words and ideas, it’s absolutely vital to be outspoken about the pathetic shortcomings of religious thought and the delight that comes from shedding it. I’m an atheist, and I just in general enjoy being free of the superstitions, guilt trips, and pernicious cultural memes that haunted me in my childhood. It really is a good feeling knowing you’re master of your own self, and not answerable to shriveled old men who want to think for you—and that you don’t have to feel guilty about your own thoughts. The sun shines a bit brighter when you take control of your own mind.
I heartily agree. This blog post is fantastic. I wish I could be more eloquent than that, but I suppose all that I can add is “Bravo!”
“(The latter is technically true, since it was an action, not speech…”
THIS. I lol’d.
I agree that PZ’s not helping himself, or the rest of us, I guess, and I also agree that it’s his right, the man isn’t a perfect blogger, etc.
And I know you agree that any reaction from Nisbet or the other “framers’ will probably be wrong-headed and recommend a higher level of self-censorship than is necessary or even advantageous, and might even exploit the idea of “civility” to snipe a bit at PZ and further their own ambiguous ideological perspective.
Oh, look, Nisbet has responded:
“As for the reaction to blogger PZ Myers commentary, it’s another example of the unintended consequences of his preferred brand of Don Imus atheism. Even fellow atheists and free speech advocates are troubled.” (Link: http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/07/on_pz_don_imus_atheism_and_ath.php)
Nice: link PZ with a fucking racist. This man should work for FOX News. I swear I wrote my comment previous to that quote before I even checked Nisbet’s blog. Nisbet then quotes Andrew Sullivan:
“It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a “goddamned cracker” isn’t about free speech; it’s really about some baseline civility. Myers’ rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.”
(Note that “repeatedly” is an ambiguous claim: PZ hasn’t waged a continuous war against wafers over many posts; he has, however, “repeatedly” engaged in “free, if disrespectful, debate” concerning the Catholic religion, among all the others.)
(2nd note: Ouch, he used the word “civility” just like you did, and then took it to a rather different level.)
Anyway, then, surprisingly, Ed Brayton weighs in and offers something on the opposite of the framing debate than he usually does:
“[Sullivan is] certainly right that atheists and agnostics can be bigots just like religious people, but I don’t think mocking this absurd situation makes one a bigot at all. The mockery is perfectly justified by the absurd behavior of Bill Donohue and his cohorts, who are claiming that the student who did this engaged in kidnapping (!) and that he should be expelled from school. For taking a cracker. I’m sorry, if that isn’t deserving of mockery, what is?” (Link: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/sullivan_on_pzs_sacrilege_thre.php#more)
Brayton goes further to bring up the Mohammed cartoons. Those cartoons could be considered just as juvenile as PZ drawing a smiley face on a wafer or photoshopping wafer poops out of, I don’t know, a Catholic priest’s behind. All were or would be stupid and unfunny (well, I’m not so eloquent, I might laugh at a priest pooping wafers). So, then, does it mean that we criticize a rather public mockery of religion only if it’s not funny or clever? I might agree with that, if it weren’t that the criticism were substantively about whether we should needlessly offend religious folk, and not about the affront to decent comedy.
The offense will come whether it’s in good taste or not, and perhaps the offense just doesn’t come as strongly when it’s actually funny or clever simply because it’s funny or clever, and the offended look even stupider for being so. (Really, though, that only happens when those who are offended are also intelligent. The death threats from 1-800 Flowers.com kind of disprove that assumption. And a lot of recent Catholic mocking has come from the boy-buggering priest thing, which they don’t have quite the ability to mobilize public outrage over. Well–not quite the right kind of outrage, anyway.)
I see and agree with your assertion that PZ’s post was juvenile. But rather than err on any caution, I’d just recommend he get a friend or two with a background in comedic writing. Then we wouldn’t be parsing over wafer-poop, and instead be all on the same side, openly mocking both the reactionary Catholic pundits (thugs) AND the namby-pamby idiot critics (like Nisbet) or the free-thought hypocrites (like Sullivan, who was not so offended by the Mohammed cartoons, and actually in support of publishing them–I think). My point is that it’s criticism that, while worthy, is merely nitpicking in the context of Bill Donahue and Matt Nisbet.
And as an after-thought, I think the distinction between religious symbolism and any other religious sentiment (like a commandment, or Bible verse, or age-old tradition) is somewhat of a silly distinction. Maybe it has something to do with the idiotic nostalgia that comes with symbolism (isn’t offending the letter of the symbol worse than offending the symbol?). But still, I see no difference; pooping on a communion wafer is admittedly less refined, but still similar to, saying that it’s silly to believe a cracker becomes Jesus because some old dude in robes sings some stuff. Both the symbol and the meaning are quite open for mockery–and, while PZ sort of failed, the symbol is much easier to mock. I mean, you know, it IS a “goddamned cracker!”
Later in Nisbet’s post:
“In a recent interview on the podcast Point of Inquiry, host DJ Grothe asked PZ if he worried that scienceblogs.com was becoming better known as “atheistblogs.com.” It’s a question that merits serious consideration, especially in light of recent events.”
Fuck off, Nisbet; I care not for your “serious consideration.” Go do some communication science, or something. Oh right; ROFL!
We’re back with the moderation? For a non-public blog, we’re either back to technical-fail or “for shame, sirs.”
You had > 1 URL in your post, so of course it got held up for moderation… Is how teh spam-filter works. FAIL!
But thanks for the links, though. I’ve been thinking along the same lines regarding comedic and satirical use of symbols. To be clear, the kind of juvenile behavior I object to is attending a worship service just to disrupt it, Gaius Baltar-style (I’m not saying Cook did this), or making off with property where your right to do so is fuzzy, as in, for example, an object that’s intended to be used as part of a specific ritual (P.Z. did encourage his readers to do this).
By contrast, using a cross or a floppy pope hat or a God Machine that goes “Beeedley-deedley-beeep-booooooop-doop” as part of a comedy skit can be fucking funny, and I’m grateful that people do it. Offense given by intellectual and artistic works is something adults ought to be able to deal with, especially when that work is fucking clever. Like this one.
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