I felt a great disturbance in the Force…
as if millions of voices cried out in terror! Wait, what? Oh. Um. Sooo…let me see if I got this right. He pierced a communion wafer with a rusty nail…and then he threw it in…the trash. OMG. Atheists are so scary. And edgy. Seriously, most Catholics are probably rolling their eyes right now.
“It is finished,” professor P.Z. Myers wrote on his popular science blog. You’ve heard the line before. Those were the last words Jesus Christ was said to have uttered on the cross.
What had Dr. Myers finished? His long-promised desecration of a consecrated communion wafer, considered by Roman Catholics to be literally the body of Christ. “I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’ tetanus shots are up to date),” the University of Minnesota-Morris biologist wrote. “And then I simply threw it in the trash.”
The militant atheist photographed his sacrilege, which also included his tearing a page from the Quran and soiling it with banana peels and coffee grounds. He posted the photo on his Web site.
[...]
If Dr. Myers had carried out a similar extreme act of contempt against homosexuals or racial minorities, for example, does anybody doubt that he’d be shown the door? And should have been. It’s absolutely defensible to advocate for unpopular doctrines, especially within a university. But to engage in such shocking and unhinged acts of spite is to strike at the core of what makes a diverse community possible.
Calling Myers actions “extreme acts of contempt” seems a bit hysterical. As I see it, no one was threatened or hurt, no beheading, no suicide bomber, no “Death to America”, no call for world domination by atheists. What I think is most interesting about this story is the way the author avoids the huge elephant in the room.
Dr. Myers’ highly public desecration of the holiest Christian and Islamic symbols has already called forth atavistic reactions – including death threats – from the aggrieved. Once this kind of thing starts, it’s hard to stop.
I can almost guarantee that the death threats are not coming from aggrieved Catholics…
via LGF links
Banana peels and coffee grounds? Is that the best he could do?
What an attention seeking idiot. Typical of a liberal college professor although I’m surprised to hear that he’s a biologist. Seems more like a lit or art history prof.
Myers is a brave dude; those Catholics have been known to burn people at the stake
“I can almost guarantee that the death threats are not coming from aggrieved Catholics…”
But they are. Or at least, last time I checked Pharyngula, he hadn’t reported hearing anything (much less threats) from self-declared Muslims. It was the Catholics . . .
“Catholics”
…really? You believe it?
I would suspect that the Catholics making death threats are probably named Mohammad. I was a Catholic. I know catholics. They don’t make death threats. When was the last time a person has to go into hiding because of Catholic death treats. Seriously.