The Great Desecration

It is done. Despite the numerous death threats (on himself and his family), in an act of solidarity, and to prove a cracker is just a cracker, PZ Myers desecrated a Eucharist (SPOILER: With a historical nod, he put a nail through it.) and disposed of it in the trash, along with some pages from the Q’uran and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (nice touch).

Here’s hoping the lunatics who’ve made physical threats against Myers and his family don’t follow through with anything.

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 humanities’ 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.

I won’t make a judgment or endorsement on this whole situation, mostly because I don’t know how smart or effective it was, only time will tell. Call him insensitive, call him a blow-hard jackass, but you certainly have to admit Myers has some serious cajones, going forward with this thing, despite all the threats.

UPDATE: Myers has tallied up the votes, and it’s (nearly) unanimous…

“[T]he current tally: somewhere well above 12,000 hate mail messages from religious people, mostly Catholic; two reasonable messages from Catholics who said that while they are unshaken in their faith, they approve of my opposition to cracker idolatry; and zero comments of any kind from admitted Muslims.”

And this is just one example, but pretty indicative of the hate mail Myers has been receiving…

“hey jew if you got balls say somthing about your jewish backround fag. or the moslems”

Charming.