PZ Myers - The Desecration Delusion

oday, the front page of Prof. Richard Dawkins is advertising, "VOICES OF SCIENCE: PZ Myers - Buy it now on DVD." Oh, PZ Myers is also a scientist? Who would'a'thunk'it?!?!

Well, that is what I get for procrastinating. I had written up two nice little essays on PZ Myers' shenanigans and before I got a chance to post them he inflicted the coup de grace. Or perhaps better stated, he lowered himself to even greater depths of childishness and humanization.

Well, I am dyslexic so I think that I will post this first and then catch you up on what lead to it in later posts.

In his post, The Great Desecration (Posted on: July 24, 2008 2:00 PM, by PZ Myers) Prof. PZ Myers states, "It is finished," although considering the childish nature of his own personality and that of his screeching monkeys (see PZ Myers and Pavlov's Monkeys), he himself is not finished but has probably gained an ever greater audience of people who appear to have much too much free time on their hands by which to be consumed by expressing their prejudices.

What set off the, so called, great desecration was Prof. PZ Myers' expressed wish to desecrate the Eucharist (a communion wafer consecrated by a Roman Catholic priest). He begins his post by retelling Roman Catholic persecution of the Jews beginning in 1215 AD based on the alleged Jewish desecration of the Eucharist. Interestingly, when atheist Communists persecuted the Jews they needed no such superstitious pretexts.

After retelling various, rightly condemnable, actions of persecutions (condemned based on Judeo-Christian morality, of course) he writes:

"Catholicism has mellowed with age - the last time a Catholic nation rose up to slaughter its non-Christian citizenry was a whole 70 years ago, after all - but the sentiment still lingers. Catholicism has been actively poisoning the minds of its practitioners with the most amazing bull**** for years, and until recently, I had no idea that a significant number of people actually believed this nonsense, or that the hatred was still simmering there, waiting for an opportunity to rise up in misplaced defense of absurdity." [asterisks mine, italics his]

I am tempted to respond thusly:

"Atheism has mellowed with age - the last time an atheist nation rose up to slaughter its non-atheist citizenry was a whole 70 years ago, after all - but the sentiment still lingers. Atheism has been actively poisoning the minds of its practitioners with the most amazing claims for years, and until recently, I had no idea that a significant number of people actually believed this nonsense, or that the hatred was still simmering there, waiting for an opportunity to rise up in misplaced defense of absurdity."

However, this would not be entirely accurate since atheist Communists, as an example, slaughtered non-atheists and atheists alike and are still wielding bloody iron fists wherever they still reign.

Prof. PZ Myers has referred to the Eucharist by many derogatory terms which I do not care to relate here. I did want to mention that while I also disagree with the Roman Catholic concept of transubstantiation. I have actually devoted an entire blog to that specific subject from a logical, historical and biblical point of view. The point being that there are ways in which to deal with such issues.
If you are interested, see this blog: Roman Catholic Doctrine of Eucharist
And, for that matter these: Roman Catholic Maryology and Roman Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory.

Prof. PZ Myers misses the point of some of the statements from some who have written to him on this issue:

"Another common theme has been the attempt to turn away the desecration of a Catholic symbol into the desecration of an Islamic symbol. Obviously, it's not desecration they find disagreeable - it's the idea that someone would offend their weird sectarian sensibilities."

I would not think that this was not the case but would imagine that their point was that he would be afraid to spit in the face of Islam. However, even this is overstated since in the comfort and safety of America a besmircher of any religion, including Islam, is safe, sound and well on their way to becoming a celebrity that is hounded not by religious fanatics but by invitations to lectures, interviews, book authorship, etc. In fact, the letter he quotes to this effect makes this point clear.

Most of his post is simply not worth mentioning because of his childishness and also, I may add, the childishness and malevolence of those who wrote in to disagree with him. In conclusion he wrote:

"OK, time for the anticlimax_.I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus's tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt. By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper."

Finally, he ends by making various dogmatic proclamations:

"Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind." [bold in original

Yes, perhaps you also can become so enlightened as to abuse your authority as a professor of science in order to smuggle atheism into the science classrooms and to encourage and exhibit childish malevolence.

Oi vey!