Rant By Proxy

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I love PZ Myers,* I gotta say. He’s bombastic, aggressive, hyperbolic and can at times be a colossal douche.

He can also tear your logical fallacies up one side and down the other.

Every once in a while I get really steamed and want to point out some of the errors people are making in what we will generously call their thinking. But dear Jesus Prime in a tasteless magic cracker, it’s hard to keep up with this relentless pile of stupid. So I link to PZ because he says everything I’d have said, except perhaps with a bit more hyperbole.

There. I’m glad I got that off my chest.


*Yes, you’ve heard the name in the news recently: he’s getting mentioned along with the news that the Vatican has released its list of the worst sins EVARZ. And according to the Vatican, PZ Myers made news as one of the worst sinners in all of history—worse even than, to borrow a phrase from Eddie Izzard, genocidal fuckheads. What is this heinous crime, you ask? Well, PZ tossed a cracker in the trash. And not even a very tasty cracker, at that.

The backlash is enormous.

Comments

[shadowofdoubt.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll agree that genocidal fuckheads are probably worse than people who chuck the Eucharist in the garbage. But I can kind of understand the thinking, in a curious way. I mean, for someone who's convinced (rightly or wrongly) that cracker is, quite literally, the body of Christ . . . I guess I can see how they'd be rather upset, and how they might count it up there even with genocidal fuckheads.

Personally, I support the idea of questioning everything. But you don't need to deface someone else's religion and belief system just to make your point. Saying that he thinks it's "just a cracker" is fine. Making a spectacle out of throwing it in the garbage (the banana peel was a particularly petulant addition, LOL) is just being spiteful.

Does God mind if he tosses the Eucharist in the garbage? If God is in that cracker, I'm sure he bloody well does. Does chucking the Eucharist in the garbage do anything other than make this guy feel vindicated in some way? Probably not. But either way, at least he's using his free will. :D

/devil's advocate
//wait . . .

[neintales.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I used to like the taste of the communion wafers. And the wine. That actually kept me going to church as a child longer than other things did. (Well that and the fact I was afraid my family would freak out if I stopped going.)

I liked them so much that when I was 6 or 7 or so I found where the church we went to at the time stored the wafers, and, well, stole and ate a bunch of them. Unconsecrated, if I recall right.

Of course, now I'll probably get declared a terrible sinner or such by wingnuts ^^

THough srsly, I was a huge church-goer and properly Catholic Unworthy for much of my childhood. Until I started realizing how shittily two-faced, reactionistic, and just plain hypocritical so much of the church was.

The nail through the eucharist for me was the nun/principal at my final Catholic school who called me in one day to tell me that I was FORCING the other kids to bully me, because I was an Agent Of Satan.

Oh, and my parents were also EVIL. (Because before they met and fell in love my dad had been a priest, and my mom was a nun. Leaving the service of God for love was a TERRIBLE CRIME. Etcetera.)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I like a bit of peanut butter and a banana slice on my Jesus.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

4 years out of this crowd now and counting. Hopefully after a whole other 22 I'll be done getting back what I lost during the first 22.

I'm sure I remember bananas being used as offerings to gods, although I'd have to look up exactly which ones - I think Ganesh was on the list, and possibly a Chinese or Voodoo god or two. A shaman might say what we feel as we drink coffee is the spirit of the coffee plant speaking with our minds to rouse them from sleep. I don't think I could accept a religion that says a cracker is any more or less sacred than bananas, coffee or the humans who consume all three.