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PZ Myers’ Puerility

Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 8:40 am Posted in Atheist Inquisitions, Blogs I Read, Religion, Society

PZ Myers is trying to make a point.  But the only point he has made is that as he continues to cling to his atheist agenda of who knows what in the name of a fabricated idea of liberalism, he presents us with an infantile fanning of the juvenile flames of everything that is stupid about culture in the West.

So he placed pages of the Qu’ran with pages of The God Delusion with a “consecrated” wafer and coffee grounds.  He also included a banana peel and a nail through the wafer for good measure.  He then follows with this unbelievably long diatribe.  He desecrated the host!  Oh no!  What to do!

It’s not even very good art.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/24/desecrated.jpg

Utter foolishness and puerility on both sides here. This stuff is evidence of the variant effects that account for the erosion of a respectable liberal culture.

Sadly juvenile from an otherwise smart scientist.

This does not absolve Donahue and his ilk who speak for a specific grouping of Catholics not representative of all. It is all stunts of self-aggrandizement and whining that only divert attention from either doing good theology or good science.

Moreover, this nonsense is an affront to the respectability of the academic community. It is embarrassing that anyone of letters would engage in such juvenile whining in order to promote their pet project which has nothing to do with reasoned behavior, responsible liberal citizenship, or biology.

These stunts galvanize stupidity and puerility which is evident by the content of the comments people offer on the post itself.

Shameful actually that our public discourse has become this.

(HT: Ken Brown)

Viewing 5 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    My links didnt go through, but you know what I'm refering to.
    • ^
    • v
    Drew,
    I’ve been following the carnival on Pharyngula. Somehow I can’t really blame PZ for it though, at least not completely. He has a rude following, which is arguably his responsibility to control, but a case can be made for letting folks post what they want. I think if his blog were like most, with about 20 comments per post, it would go unnoticed, but when you get thousands of comments per (controversial) post, things get out of hand. The post that initially started all this, was nothing special at all until the minions got hold of it and started to make so much noise. It snowballed from there. If we look at what PZ wrote though, it’s not at all what his minions are talking about, which is why your comment #1624 really spoke to me. It was by far the best comment on the entire page of over 2000 comments.
    Last night I contemplated what I would have done if I were in PZ’s place right after my minions had blown this up out of proportion. I posted it on my Da__Vinci blog over at Xanga. Here is what I wrote.
    Well the Great Desecration of the Eucharist is up at PZ Myers, Pharyngula site.
    You really have to have followed this to understand the impact that it will have.
    A bit of history according to DaVinci:
    PZ posted an article on his blog Pharyngula, about this story. He went on to brag about how he’d desecrate that cracker and so forth, and made a request to have these “frackin crackers” mailed to him. The Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights got wind of it and smelled blood, no pun intended. PZ’s comments went through the roof, totaling thousands. He had to continue in a new post it got so wild. Today is the day PZ chose to do the desecration, which was a huge anti-climax BTW, and again thousands of comments. Now I don’t blame PZ for any of this, except that he seems to be almost reluctant to abandon his obviously out of control minions. No, he had an honest post about what he thought, and I respect that and enjoy reading him. His minions on the other hand are something entirely different. He gets three basic kinds of comments, those of dissenters, those who attack the dissenters, and those that try to come up with brilliant one-liners. It’s a very compelling circus; I’ve even sniped a few times.
    The thing is, PZ’s minions are making him look bad. I’m kind of embarrassed for him myself, I know he didn’t intend for all this to happen, but he’s taking it in stride, and those strides are getting mighty long. I thought about what I’d do in PZ’s place, and it seems to me there had to be a point when he realized that the post was getting a little out of hand, but it just wasn’t logical or ethical to in any way retract what was said. The minions took the cracker and ran, made a huge noise and that’s when the Catholic League got wind. So I’m thinking what would I have done at that point and I think it would have been no different than what PZ did. Continue the program to its conclusion and do not make it spectacular at all, like throwing a change up pitch.
    It’s been an interesting saga, replete with, a person being fired, multiple death threats via email, soaring stock of many pharmaceutical companies that sell blood pressure medications, and witty one-liners.
    It’s either really sad, or really good entertainment.
    Desecrated Eucharist with a banana peel, coffee grounds, and a couple pieces of paper.
    Which is just a silly as a blessed cracker causing hate mail.
    That was his whole point, but being the teacher he is, PZ went to the lab of life and gave a demonstration.
    Thank you Prof Myers.
    • ^
    • v
    Drew, just for curiosity, what is your basis for asserting that Myers is a "smart scientist"?
    • ^
    • v
    "It is all about responsible liberal citizenship."

    Yep! Pretty much that's it.
    • ^
    • v
    After reading the previous article (Should Atheists Respect Religion) I visited the links to PZ Myers' site. "Puerility" is a very respectful way of describing what I encountered there.

    The question for me is not whether atheists should respect religion, but whether anyone at all should respect PZ Myers. Let alone pay him any attention. Who reads that garbage? This is as puzzling to me as is the existence of "shock jocks" and over-the-top ideological radio talk shows.

    I have just started reading Rawls' Political Liberalism, which specifically address the question of respect and toleration in a free, pluralistic, liberal democracy. How can we maintain freedom, justice and political stability in the face of a plurality of "comprehensive doctrines" including many claiming to have a monopoly on "the truth." The introduction contains a brief but insightful sketch of the history of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience in Western civilization. It is all about responsible liberal citizenship.

    Already it is a very interesting read. I am not even past the introduction, so I cannot speak definitively, but he states that he will introduce the concept of a reasonable comprehensive doctrine, and that his definition of reasonable will be drawn so as to specifically allow religious doctrines. It will be interesting to see how this concept can be applied to notions of respect vs. mere tolerance and even opposition to other's basic beliefs.
 

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