A.K.A., Atheism: You’re Doin’ it Wrong.
PZ Myers has decided to take on Catholicism, by calling for atheists to take communion wafers and either deface them, or send them to him for the same. While I agree abstractly with the sentiment animating this quest – in his own words, “IT’S A FRACKIN CRACKER!” – and applaud the (misspelled) Battlestar Galactica reference, I question the means of getting his message across.
Background: upon consecration by a duly authorized Catholic priest, per the doctrine of transubstantiation, the communion wafer actually becomes the body of Christ. In the eyes of a believing Catholic, PZ Myers is sanctioning nothing less than the abduction and grim mutilation of the body of Christ.
Fun is Fun
I do not doubt the potential for private hilarity here. While I deeply respect the Catholic faith, and its beliefs, I laughed myself silly when hearing about a friend’s Catholic school classmate who for three years palmed his consecrated wafers, turned them into snack food, and then conspicuously sold the “products” in the school cafeteria. “Nacho Jesus” and “Shake ‘n Bake Jesus” were some of the funnier ones. Footnote – the kid was expelled & excommunicated. But, I emphasize the private aspect this type of humor must take.
But Advocacy is Serious Business
PZ wants to encourage the world to laugh at itself, and through laughter, eventually urge theists to question their dearly held beliefs and commit themselves to what he sees as a more rational belief system. Satire is obviously a powerful motivator for social change. But by opting for offense over reasoned debate, and deliberately choosing an off-putting means of advocacy, PZ compromises his own commitment to rationalism, and endangers the entire agnostic/atheist movement. This latest internet offensive betrays a saddening lack of political flair which, like it or not, every intellectual movement must have.
Atheists stand at the outside of society. This should be no surprise. Accordingly, the first goal of any self-respecting atheist group must be, in my girlfriend’s words, to convince the world “that atheists don’t eat babies.” Mutual understanding and respectability is the way. I know that most of PZ Myers’ readers – and some of my own – will think that there’s no reasoning with theists. But that, in fact, is empirically disproven. While some of the true loonies will never be converted (holy dino-riding Jesus, Batman!), there are legitimate and achievable means of promoting an interfaith/nonfaith dialogue. The Secular Students of Rice University, of which I was a member in college, held an “Ask an Atheist Forum” every year, encouraging students to ask atheists about their beliefs, and realize that, hey, atheists aren’t so bad after all – sure, they’ve got beards, but who doesn’t! They held moderate Darwin Day celebrations of science every February 22nd. They hosted weekly meetings, encouraging open debate, and often had more than one theist in attendance, and always maintained a respectful tone. I’m not sure if any minds were won over to the cause, but none left convinced of atheism’s evil, and none were lost from it.
Spreading the Message: You’re Doin’ it Wrong
My point is that an atheist advocate’s goal should not be the creation of bloggable instances of theistic outrage, any more than a Christian apologist’s goal should be to piss off as much of the world as possible. Neither contribute to a meaningful dialogue by which a movement can progress from thesis and antithesis, to new thesis.
I don’t dispute the value of incidents like this, to have a little fun while preaching to the choir. But to leverage “a little fun” into a PR stunt is bad advocacy. The Cracker Incident was a bad move. I say this as an agnostic – not a full blown atheist – so take my words with a grain of salt. Or, perhaps, with a little red wine.
Submitted to a Candid World 
The details of the event are not clear at all, so it’s hard to comment in anything but general terms, but theft is theft, too. Webster Cook did not have the right to take the host without permission. The church and the diocese have every right to complain and seek restitution. PZ has every right to publicly mock the situation, and I’m pretty sure his request for someone to “score” him a host is tongue-in-cheek, but to seriously suggest stealing something one group considers sacred is irresponsible. The diocese and even Bill Donohue have the right to publicly object to PZ’s mockery, too. What’s completely out of line are death threats, both to Webster Cook for taking the host and to PZ.
Yeah, no disagreement there. I think PZ’s tactically and rhetorically wrong, not wrong on his very right to live ~ CRAZY.
Meh. Being nice hasn’t worked yet. Idiocy is idiocy, and I’ll stop calling it idiocy only when someone convinces me it isn’t. The eucharist is idiocy, and I will continue saying so. Convince me it isn’t. If people are offended by that, then those people are idiots. Period.
P.Z. often makes me uncomfortably, because I feel that at some point when the posts become too jingoistic “let’s crash a poll”, they basically fall down to the level of the nutters. I respect P.Z., I love his blog, but to my mind he has very little influence over the real issues that matter because he can’t reach across the divide.
Funny you should bring this up, as it’s been troubling me quite a bit recently. On the one hand, it’s good to have respect for others’ beliefs, etc etc. On the other, I have to admit that my first reaction to this story and its fallout was to laugh hysterically.
In the abstract, I don’t see much of a difference in goofiness between transubstantiation and the sorts of things that Scientologists believe. And no one seems to object on principle to making fun of Scientology at every opportunity. There are beliefs that are simply not worthy of respect, and I tend to think that we only consider certain strange religious beliefs to be respectable because they’re old and popular. If Scientology is still around in 2000 years, and if 30% of the population subscribes to it, it will still be ridiculous.
Strategically, I think good arguments can be made for both sides. However, right now I tend to come down in favor of stuff like this. You’ve covered the cons pretty well, I think, so I’ll take a stab at the pros.
First, the value of a faith/nonfaith dialogue is questionable. The immediate goal of atheism is less to be understood and more to combat what it sees as irrationality in the public sphere, and I think you gloss over how hard it is to actually convert someone. Getting the sympathy of moderates does atheism no good, because it really doesn’t object to moderates (I do agree that PZ’s loud denunciation of any sort of religion is a bad idea). And, as alienating to moderates as some of this language can be, it seems unlikely to drive them to fundamentalism. I continue to think that virtually everyone over the age of 30 is pretty thoroughly set in his or her religious ways.
The key is to reach out to people with less rigid views. In short, target the children. One wins culture wars not by converting the other side but by outlasting them. Look at gay rights – it’s very, very obvious that the concept won’t be at all controversial in thirty years, and, throughout, it seems unlikely that all that many adults who were against the movement changed their minds. Without doing any research, I’d suppose that much the same could be said for civil rights.
And, as your post makes clear, younger folks aren’t all that likely to be offended by this. The anecdote you relate implies that lots of the other children at the Catholic school knew what was going on, and had no real problem with it. If children can be exposed to alternative authority figures laughing themselves silly at things like creationism or transubstantiation, they’re much less likely to accept these things uncritically after being immersed in that sort of mindset for 18 years. Our generation has much less of a problem with homosexuality in large part because we’ve all encountered homosexuals loudly being themselves. An ‘in your face’ attitude offends and alienates adults, but it’s the most effective way to get through to children. To loudly affirm the sneaking suspicions of 12 year olds everywhere that this whole thing is really rather silly is, in my view, the most effective way to encourage widespread secularization.
To address your girlfriend’s point (that phrasing is odd to me, but I don’t know if you’ve used her name on here yet), I don’t think that this sort of spectacle is necessarily contradictory to that. Yes, Donahue is going to be even more certain that atheists are trying to destroy Christian children and turn America communist, but, for the people whose opinions are really up for grabs, PZ, at least, has been very good about making clear that atheists have values. If I recall, virtually every one of his posts on this issue (and on similar issues) adopts a tone of moral outrage over the fact that the religious value system in question is abhorrent. In this case, he’s repeatedly made the point that Catholic doctrine holds that crackers are more important than human life, whereas he holds that a human life is more valuable than a cracker. The death threats he’s been sent very concisely make the point that some people who consider themselves Christians are actually pretty nasty. The effect of this sort of incident is precisely to convince certain people that atheists have the superior moral system. Yes, it convinces other people that atheists are dicks, but the vast majority of these people are effectively unconvertible anyway.
There’s also the obvious point that loud atheism is heard atheism. Gay rights wouldn’t be nearly as far along as it is now had it kept a low profile and been especially considerate of other views – parents would have had a monopoly on what their children heard about homosexuality.
As scaryreasoner points out, the other approach has been tried. The basic empiricist perspective has been a big deal in Western intellectual circles since the Enlightenment. The notion that there’s nothing to the interpersonal world that isn’t physical has been around for centuries. The notion that human reason could reveal facts about the world more reliably than the Bible dates back to Augustine, as you’ve noted. Explicit atheism has been big since almost a century ago. These movements didn’t grow very successfully, however, because they only reached impressionable minds through the filter of their parents or local church. I think their strategic problem was that they weren’t combative enough. They had serious discussions with establishment religions and agreed to disagree (and were occasionally persecuted for their trouble). But the establishment still had control over what children thought. Secular thought only really exploded after parents relinquished their children at 18 to go receive instruction from secular intellectuals shortly after WW2, and the horrors of the two world wars didn’t hurt (note: I do not think that the two world wars were a net positive).
That said, yeah, what Cook did was in poor taste. Strategically, though, I have a hard time saying that PZ is on the wrong track.
It’s very hard to proofread something in this little box, so I might be adding more later.
I appreciate your post. The wolf-pack at PZ’s blog would most certainly tear your entirely reasonable message apart. The oddest thing is that these folks think having someone like P.Z. as the public face of science is going to further their cause. It calls into question their judgment concerning everything else, including the interpretation of scientific evidence. The prestige and honor of science will suffer if reasonable folks working in science don’t publicly distance themselves from this kind of thing. The silly thing is these fools will argue out of one side of their mouth that their science is not merely a vehicle for their atheism, and then spend the preponderance of their blogging time acting like a mass of intolerant atheist barbarians, with atheism and anti-theism the main topic of conversation. If science loses its prestige because it becomes widely seen as nothing but applied atheism (and I do begin to wonder), these guys will have no one to blame but themselves. In short, my mind boggles at their strategic foolishness.
First… assuming he was over 16, Ames, your friend was technically excommunicated as of the moment he first made a Spam-on-Jesus sandwich. “Desecration of the Host” is a latae sententiae excommunication: automatically incurred at the moment of the offense, with the excommunicant having the responsibility to self-enforce. Oh, the joys of Canon Law.
Second, the fact of the matter is that although the tyrants are nothing more than personifications of malice mixed with superstition, and thus not real in any tangible, er, “real” sense and powerless except through the ability to motivate their followers, their collaborators believe them to be real and occupy the position of strength. Antagonizing them as Myers does just isn’t safe. Certainly not for a disorganized minority infected with rampant pacifism. No, not every theist is ready to start lynching infidels or form a godstapo. Yes, many theists do manage to be genuinely good people despite believing in what, were it real, would be a tyrant needing to be overthrown and executed just as much as every other evil dictator in history. But there’s a sizeable number of toadies and collaborators – in some places, including ones I’ve lived, a plurality if not a majority – who are eager to stamp out human freedom in service to their god and are only barely restrained from spilling our blood in order to do it. And, there’s an imbalance of political power in their favor – not to mention, ever since liberalism got ensnared by pacifism, an imbalance of force of arms. Might doesn’t make right, but right without might is useless. As things stand, atheists have right but no might. And Myers wants to stir up those who have might but no right?
Meaningful dialogue between atheists and the religious…the pessimistic part of me wants to store that phrase somewhere along side “when pigs fly.” If it happens, I would love to see it. I could see that taking place among a much younger generation though…we can always hope.
Matteo:
I appreciate your post. The wolf-pack at PZ’s blog would most certainly tear your entirely reasonable message apart. The oddest thing is that these folks think having someone like P.Z. as the public face of science is going to further their cause. It calls into question their judgment concerning everything else, including the interpretation of scientific evidence. The prestige and honor of science will suffer if reasonable folks working in science don’t publicly distance themselves from this kind of thing. The silly thing is these fools will argue out of one side of their mouth that their science is not merely a vehicle for their atheism, and then spend the preponderance of their blogging time acting like a mass of intolerant atheist barbarians, with atheism and anti-theism the main topic of conversation. If science loses its prestige because it becomes widely seen as nothing but applied atheism (and I do begin to wonder), these guys will have no one to blame but themselves. In short, my mind boggles at their strategic foolishness.
First off, Matteo, let me invite you to leave comments at my blog any time you want. That is one of the most intelligent and to-the-point comments i have read anywhere in some time. Bravo!
I will only echo what you said. I don’t like the false perception being created over at Pharyngula and other sites that science and atheism have somehow joined forces against believers. It’s ridiculous. The vast majority of scientists would no doubt prefer to be left out of the discussion completely. The atheist folks like to put PZ on their shoulders because they think it gives them some kind of cred, but the truth is that when he advocates ridiculous things like this, it sort of proves he’s just another person who has let emotion override good judgement.
To be fair, evangelicals brought science into the conversation first with their foolish push for ID in schools, but atheist make a mistake by assuming they are somehow the defenders of science. The truth is that scientist are the defenders of science and Christian scientists and atheist scientists should be joined together to protect their field.
Again – PLEASE come visit my site. I would welcome your opinion.
Ames,
Another great post. I think it’s rational atheists like yourself and rational believers that are the key to acceptance. As for a ‘dialogue’ I don’t know if that is even worthwhile. Atheists and believers are in such opposition ot each other philosophically that a ‘dialogue’ beyond acceptance is going to be fruitless.
Matteo, you’re certainly right about the reaction this would get on Pharyngula. I think the term they use is ‘concern trolling’, because -obviously- anyone who claims to disagree them on strategy is an enemy of atheism or science. And I entirely agree with you and PC both that lots of atheists do tend to try to co-opt science in ways that really don’t make sense. However, it’s not so much that science is in danger of becoming applied atheism, but rather that many atheists tend to see their beliefs as applied science.
However, science and atheism do share a necessary compatibility that science and theism lack, as the atheist’s only system for discerning truth about the world is science. Some theists are like this as well, but others, sadly, are not.
And to the extent that fundamental theism is opposed to both science and to atheism (creationism being the obvious example), it’s only natural that scientists and atheists will defend the same position. Many biologists may not particularly want anything to do with the fighting over evolution, but it’s very, very clear where the science of biology stands.
While I completely agree with your last post, PC, it raises the interesting question of how to make sure that atheists and believers both tend to be rational. And, for the reasons I gave above, I believe that what PZ Myers is doing is a fairly good strategy for decreasing the number of irrational believers over time. Decreasing the number of irrational atheists is an open problem, I’ll admit.
However, it’s not so much that science is in danger of becoming applied atheism, but rather that many atheists tend to see their beliefs as applied science.
And I don’t get that one. As someone who was raised in the Church, then spent most of my college years as an agnostic or bordeline atheist and then rediscovered my faith, even when I was the most opposed to belief, I never saw the logic in trying to use science to disprove God.
By it’s very nature faith is a belief in the supernatural and therefore it can be so easily molded to make a detour around the most sound of scientific arguements. A person of faith simply has to say, “God didn’t want to reveal himself – so that’s why the science doesn’t support his existence.” I’m not saying I agree with that arguement, but it’s an easy to use tactic and it makes it pointless for atheists to keep trying so hard.
I am not familiar with the history of atheism to know if this heavy reliance on science is new or not, but it’s just dumb in my opinion because it won’t work. Most honest people of faith will admit there’s nothing rational about it. i certainly do. So why try to persuade us to the contrary. Likewise an atheist committed to ‘rational thought’ is going to be hard to persuade to abandon that in favor of faith. That’s I favor a policy of leaving each other alone.
I’ll second PC’s accolades for Matteo, and further join this debate when I’m less tired… Forgive me for ducking it right now.
You’re exactly right. Regarding atheists and science, I don’t actually get it either, but that’s certainly where many of them are coming from. Granted, theism confuses me to no end as well.
As best I can understand it, it arises from two other beliefs that many atheists have. First, there’s the idea that mathematical reasoning and science (or more generally, empiricism) are the only things we’ve got that have ever managed to yield interpersonal knowledge. Second, many atheists believe that all obviously nonsensical statements of fact can be probabilistically determined as true or false by these two processes. This leads them to claims like “there is no such thing as a soul”. It must be true or false, and if it were true one would expect that science and/or reason would give us some indication that it was. That we have no such indication is taken as evidence that the claim is false. Likewise, atheists are sometimes utilitarians due to the fact that happiness is the closest thing to an objective ‘good’ that science can directly study.
The problem with ‘leaving each other alone’ is that this matters. Lots of theists (and some atheists) think that their metaphysical beliefs have moral significance and ought to be made into public policy. Further, one’s beliefs lead one to act in certain ways to third parties. I’m sure it’s extremely difficult for both Christian fundamentalists and very committed atheists to watch the other group raise children – it smacks of child abuse to both. For many people, ‘leaving each other alone’ is like agreeing not to beat your own child while turning a blind eye to what your neighbor is doing to his. It’s better than having your neighbor discipline your kid, but it’s far from ideal and it’s something that’s probably worth fighting for.
And so it seems to me that we don’t have a shot at anything like mutual respect until the extremes of both groups become less powerful. However, the more pressing concern is that we all respect each other’s beliefs about objects of our shared experience, and so we absolutely need the understanding that the best tool we have for understanding the physical world is science. Metaphysical disagreement isn’t as important when it comes to getting everyone to get along, but it’s vital for our democracy that we all be working from the same set of basic facts regarding what the interpersonal world is like. And that’s why I tend to criticize theism more harshly than I do atheism, and that’s why I’d be glad to see PZ Myers convert fundamental Christians to extreme atheism. The sin of theism is that it sometimes lets its metaphysics intrude on its physics. The sin of atheism is that it sometimes lets its physics intrude on its metaphysics. But it’s the physics that we really need to get right first.
The heavy reliance on science is new, as far as I know. However, atheism as a mainstream belief simply hasn’t been around for that long. Serious philosophical examination of atheism has never really done that to my knowledge. French Revolutionary atheism and Communist atheism claimed to be concerned with pure reason. The idea that empirical facts disprove religion is very new, though the idea that empirical facts make a particular notion of religion unlikely has been long understood (Christianity and the problem of evil, for example).
I think Gotchaye overthinks this is in comment (although it’s an interesting comment). I also despair at atheists who think any discussion is worthless.
This is a really simple thing. People can reach out to common ground, or they can retreat to their castles and chuck rocks at each other. One is productive, the other is a waste of rocks.
From Gotchaya,
And so it seems to me that we don’t have a shot at anything like mutual respect until the extremes of both groups become less powerful.
So true and I believe that same philosophy could be well-applied to just about any school of thought (environmentalists come to mind).
He didn’t take the host without permission. The priest gave him the host voluntarily. At that point it is Webster Cook’s cracker.
He was given the host to consume as part of Communion, not to take away with him. So let me clarify: he used something given to him in a manner for which he had no permission.
Two points of Cook’s account (posted, albeit not from a primary source, at http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-980368) are germane here.
First, Cook states:
He could have easily asked the celebrant for permission to do this prior to the mass, and there would have been absolutely no problem. His friend might have been invited to sit in the front row and observe the entire ceremony.
Second, he states:
I find this highly unusual. It suggests that either there are very overzealous members of the church monitoring the communion service, or that there was some preexisting tension between Cook and some of the parishioners that singled him out for scrutiny. Regardless, and not justifying the alleged physical restraint, it indicates that someone had a serious problem with what he was doing.
After the first five words, the rest is meaningless. He was given the host.
After it’s given to him, he needs no one’s permission.
True.
benjdm, remind me never to give you my camera to take a picture of me! ;-)
I’ve never quoted on here before, so this might be entirely wrong.
[quote]After the first five words, the rest is meaningless. He was given the host.[/quote]
In everyday life, we understand that there can be morally binding strings attached to a freely given object. As James points out, if he were to hand you a camera, asking if you would take his picture, that hardly means that he’s given you the camera in perpetuity – it’s wrong of you to just walk off with it, even though he never told you that you’d have to give it back.
A host of implicit understandings underlie these sorts of exchanges. If both parties are aware of these implicit understandings and if each believes that that the other is likewise aware, we usually think of them as morally binding. The obvious example of this sort of thing is ordering a meal in a restaurant. All I do is tell the waiter what I’d like to eat. He then brings me some food, and I eat it. However, I’d be very much in the wrong if I were to just get up and leave – there’s an implicit understanding that food in a restaurant is to be paid for. For me to just leave, knowing that the waiter was expecting to be paid and knowing that he would not have served me had I disabused him of that idea in advance, would be to deceive him about my intentions.
Whether the situation with Cook is similar is debatable. It seems to me that he was more-or-less expecting the congregation to object to him leaving with the wafer, in which what he did was at least somewhat blameworthy. But reasonable people can differ on this one, I think, and it looks like a reasonable case can be made that he was being a jerk about the whole thing regardless.
[…] a chance. This is counterproductive in the extreme. Ames at Submitted to Candid World has an excellent post on […]
Not to dogpile on benjdm, but the “he was given the host, he can do with it what he wants” argument is not really very sophisticated thinking. The host is part of the ritual; it carries significance that no thinking person can claim they don’t recognize. They may not LIKE the significance. They may disagree with the significance, or claim its a false assertion. Fine. But feigning this innocent “some guy gave me a cracker, apropos of nothing, and clearly it’s now my property to do with as I please” premise only makes sense if someone is out to pick a fight.
Which, if anyone is taking bets, is where I’d put my money.
~ John
Your post echoes my own thoughts on the matter with an eerie precision. Are you sure you don’t read minds, Ames?
Fine, since you all seem to disagree with me. I’ll assume Webster Cook didn’t have the ‘right’ to not eat the cracker he had been given, and the church has the right to seek restitution. What is the church’s legal case? On what basis will they sue for restitution? Explain this to me, because I don’t see it.
Loaning a camera to someone for them to take your picture is not the same situation. You’re expecting to get it back – the same as with any other loan. This is a cracker that was expected to be consumed – legally, I fail to see how you can say it was loaned instead of given.
Likewise, the food I’m given in a restaurant is expected to be consumed. That doesn’t mean I have no obligation to the restaurant after the waiter hands it to me.
The church doesn’t have a legal case, but it’s obviously incorrect to assume that everything morally wrong is also actionable. Lying to your mother is wrong, but she can’t sue for that.
And nobody here is saying that what Cook is a monster. For my part, while I think that he shouldn’t have done what he did, I’m more offended by the grossly disproportionate reaction it caused, and for that reason I sympathize a great deal with PZ’s response.
Then we’re in agreement. Rights isn’t shorthand for legal rights?
Despite the lawyery nature of this blog, I don’t think that approaching the issue from a legal perspective is very helpful. Without knowing much about American law, I doubt that Cook did anything outright illegal. But human behaviour is governed by much more than just legal rules – just because you have a legal right to act in a certain way, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s appropriate to do so if you want a reasonably harmonious relationship with other people. For instance, standing too strongly on one’s rights have led to many a conflict between neighbour that could have been avoided with a little flexibility.
In any case, the important points here seem to be, item that Cook broke the unwritten social rules that he were expected to follow when he decided to participate in the ritual; and item that PZ Myers shows an unfortunate lack of understanding of these unwritten rules, of the significances that are attached to the consecrated host beyond its purely material characteristics, and of the whole situation and its context in general.
Personally, I would really expect a more sophisticated analysis from a person of his obvious intelligence and education, but I guess such things don’t always go together.
I definitely agree that the “legal rights” on the wafer are aren’t a vital matter; I excluded them from the post for that matter. To call this “theft” is to miss the point, as aAKjeldesen ably put it.
I would definitely agree that P.Z. is being rude and insulting. (shrug).
“PZ Myers has decided to take on Catholicism, by calling for atheists to take communion wafers and either deface them, or send them to him for the same.”
It wouldnt be so bad if it were only PZ Myers expressing his intent of desecrting the wafer. A brief glance at the comments at his blog involving “cracker-gate” (as they like to call it) will reveal the prortion of atheists share his view that “its just a cracker”.
This was anything but a rational attempt to point out why he thinks religion is wrong. But rather a taunt aimed at people who never tried forcing their beliefs on to Myers or even had a problem with Myers not holding the “cracker” as sacred.
In short – I dont thinks Catholics have a problem with someone not holding the cracker sacred in the first place. But Myers expressing an intent to willingly desecrate it CREATES a problem for the Catholics.
Ive also written more on this at my own blog http://www.reasonbomb.wordpress.com