UPDATE – Interview with PZ Myers on his thinking, on Donohue, and the radioactive fallout to date
“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ,” Donohue said. “We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.”
Talk about asking for it — how about molesting actual bodies of children entrusted to your care, in religious sanctuaries in the Name of Christ?
But those are real, live, and already born, babies. Do we want to waste valuable outrage on them?!
Nance
Hmmm, you know, that brings another break in this frame to mind. . .
Within this literal context,about pre-born souls being sent from heaven, infused at the moment of conception or into the sperm or whatever the specific theology is, and then returned to heaven as spirits when called back from human life, etc — I heard someone eulogizing Tony Snow and his faith the other day by saying that to Tony, “death was a promotion!” —
So why then, does it make the slightest bit of difference to the grand plan? Seems like the soul is eternal in any case and would be blameless plus a lot happier not having to be born and endure the hard human life at all. . .
You know how they say a little learning is a dangerous thing?
So I went shopping in Dante’s circles of hell, to see where Donohue’s viler than vile crime would fit. I’m thinking the Sixth Circle, for heretics? Trapped in flaming tombs sounds vile all right, until you look at all the worse levels and worse torments as eternal punishment, which would involve violence against other humans.
Although I see the Inner Ring of the Seventh Circle has a dedicated place for “violence against God” which is defined as blasphemy, so would that fit the cracker crime better? (the original fellow, I mean, not PZ Myers who I suppose Donohue will condemn to much worse than that — let’s see. . .)
Whoa! Check out what’s happening in the Eighth! Flatterers are steeped in excrement, seducers and simonists suffer whippings from demons while marching endlessly and getting the soles of their feet flamed off, and corrupt politicians — now we’re talking! — “are immersed in a lake of boiling pitch, which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their corrupt deals.”
(Literally, right? — Donohue inists Catholicism isn’t symbols and beliefs but actual, physical reality. So the wafer doesn’t represent the Body of Christ, it IS the Body of Christ. Same for the Circles of Hell?)
Anyway, it looks to me like there’s a WHOLE lot worse than pocketing the wafer instead of downing it, and viler than threatening to put it in silly hats or break it into little pieces while taking video and uploading one’s demonstration to the Internet. Like say, trying to score political points in the news by using religion to incite violence (and academic repression and secular civil penalties) against real living people.
Puts me in mind of this summer’s US Supreme Court ruling that child rape can’t merit the death penalty. Seriously, what political power of story could say that and then back Donohue, and still manage to keep the faith among civilized, thinking people?
Hey, how cool would it be if this were literal and physical instead of symbolic?
Btw, remember Greg and the Ladenhosen?
PZ Meyers continues to be better than them. Thus unlike that other so-called science blog, Pharyngula continues to DESERVE the respect of Thinking Homeschoolers. Even under death threat hysteria, his blogging maintains its integrity :
And there’s this:
Now to the original “education” angle — once again it was a Florida public campus controversy, sigh, with freedom of speech issues, student sponsorship money and the university judicial process involved:
At least it wasn’t UF this time or I suppose the Church Bouncers would’ve just tasered the kid, to make him show the proper respect at their event. But I see the university police ARE getting into the act after the fact so don’t count tasering out yet. . .
July 5
July 7
July 15
Religion not representing education, government, politics but religion that IS education, politics, government. That’s all perfectly acceptable now, did you know that?
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