In case you’ve been out of touch, a student in Florida took Our Lord Jesus Christ hostage a few weeks ago. He walked out of church with a consecrated communion wafer to show to a friend, rather than promptly eating the true flesh of the 2000 year old man. Ignoring the question of whether Jesus really did say, “Eat Me”, this little event became big news. First, the college and the church denounced and eventually impeached the poor kid. Demands that he be expelled and/or excommunicated flew. (Orlando Sentinel summary article [1]).
Then famous rationalist and biologist PZ Myers got into the act. He published a post in which he suggested that those incensed need to get a reality-based life: “It’s a frackin’ cracker [2]” said he. Myers even suggested that someone should procure for him one of these blessed wafers, so that he could personally desecrate it.
Then the spam hit the fan. Thousands of comments and emails and demands for his expulsion and his firing and even death threats followed. Well, back and forth over several posts. One woman made international news for being fired [3] for using a company computer to send her death threat.
Finally, Myers posted “The Great Desecration [4]” beginning with “It is finished.” He discusses the way the church has used just the allegation of wafer misuse in history to spur mobs to mass murder (with specific examples). He posts a few of the more lucid (and publishable) denunciations of his proposed desecration, with commentary. And finally, he shows a picture of the desecration itself. Not only does he drive a rusty spike through the cracker (wondering in print if Jesus has a current tetanus shot), he nails it through the Koran and into one of Dawkins’ books, then artistically covered it all with the traditional banana peels and coffee grounds.
Desecrating the Koran was a suggestion made by many of his Catholic detractors, who suggested that he didn’t dare offend the Muslims, but only picks on Catholics (the group from whom he received the most death threats) because they are so kind and forgiving.
Desecrating Dawkins is to point out that he is not selectively suggesting that the Biblical injunction against worshipping images be used only against Judeo Christian churches. But that all icons be examined from the point of view that the symbol is not actually the object. Or to quote Korzybski [5], “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing”.
Print this post [6]
[7]