P.Z. Myers in the news (the catholic church communion wafer incident)

I'm not offering them special privalege, nor have I said anything about satire. This is simple being rude, for rudeness sake, and that is bad behaviour. It's petty, and it's pathetic. Wrong+wrong != right

look it up Eucharist in the Catholic Church - Wikipediaread the section titled Transubstantiation

I just did. It nearly made my teeth bleed to see logic tortured so wantonly.

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"The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe." - Agobard of Lyons, ca. 830 AD

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."
St. Thomas Aquinas

Hi Artemis,If you use the little reply buttons on each post rather than the general reply button at the bottom, it creates a link showing which post you are replying to. This makes it much easier to follow the thread of the discussion.Thank you.

ok. thanks.im very n00b here

You are offering them special privilege. You're exempting ridiculous beliefs from being ridiculed. If Myers had done a similar rant about the flat earth society, no-one would be criticizing him for it.You're giving the magic cracker believers special privilege. For rudeness sake? Do you really think that Myers or anyone else cannot be genuinely angry at aggressive superstition? The kid in Florida was receiving death threats.

Either way, I for one...love the bagpipes I thought in Scotland it was single malts...of which I have five...and love them all.Oops...forgot to keep this on topic.It is interesting how someone can say that wafers are the body of Christ, and yet not consider the consumption of said party part as being cannibalistic. Religious hypocrisy...gotta love it.Edited by FliesOnly, : forgot the 2nd half of the post.

Not exactly. If someone has brown hair or blue eyes and I mention as much, that is not being rude, that is merely a statement of fact. And, if someone says that the wafer or the glass of wine becomes the actual body and blood of Christ and I call them a blithering idiot, that is not being rude, that, too, is merely a statement of fact.

I have no objection him to calling the cracker a cracker. It's the bit about someone sourcing him one so he can torture it that is crossing the line into bad behaviour.

No, I'm not. I think everyone should be treated with a basic level of respect. Once again: anger does may explain bad behaviour but it does not excuse it and wrong+wrong != right.

quote:

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wrong+wrong != right

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I'm guessing that this is supposed to be a reference to the saying, "two wrongs don't make a right." Maybe it's different in the U.K., but here in the U.S. the commonly interpretation of the saying is that an action is not excusable just because it is done in retaliation of the exact same (or very similar) action done by someone else -- being called names doesn't mean it's right to call them names in return, having a jetliner flown into a large building doesn't mean you can bomb one of their buildings, and so forth.I'm having trouble with the idea that harassment and death threats are somehow comparable to using street theater to demonstrate that the harassment and death threats are out of proportion to the offense.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Well, of course they're not.I take "two wrongs don't make a right" to mean that bad behaviour by others in not a justification for bad behaviour by oneself. Myers has behaved badly; what members of the Catholic Church have or haven't done, doesn't make any difference to that.

Once again, ridiculing ridiculous beliefs is not bad behaviour. It is a legitimate weapon in ridding the world of ignorance and superstition.No one needs a Pope who tells people in aids ridden Africa not to use condoms. Large, aggressive, organized superstitions are dangerous things. They kill. Edited by bluegenes, : spellingEdited by bluegenes, : No reason given.

So it is the actual body of Christ when someone steals a cracker...
But it is also very much not the body of Christ in terms of cannibalism with regard to Catholics taking communion.Is it not obvious this stuff is being made up as we go along?Frankly I cannot think of a better example of religious opportunism, hypocrisy and evident delusional insanity than the example in question. Namely that the crackers in question are considered to be the actual body of Christ in one situation whilst being rationalised as very much not the actual body of Christ when required otherwise.When will this sort of lunacy end?