“Stole” seems to be overstated. They gave it to him, expecting him to leave with it in his gut; instead he left with it in his hand.
What Cook did was impolite certainly. But the reaction from the Catholics was completely over-the-top. And it was this reaction that Myers was responding to.
OK, I messed that up. What I meant to say was that it is only hypocritical for people to complain about Meyers if they themselves feel it is OK to destroy sacred objects of others. Not all Christians feel that it is OK to destroy other people’s sacred objects. For these people it is not hypocritical to complain about Meyers.
Calculon.
Disagree.
First, you don’t get to tell me what I was thinking, to suit your convenience. I’m telling you right now I was not defending any specific responses to that guy’s offensive behaviour, merely pointing out that it would, in fact, be universally considered offensive.
For example, if Phelps snuck into a funeral home viewing limited to “grieving friends and family” of a dead gay serviceman, took snuck a snapshot for the dead guy, and posted it together with some graphic porn on the 'net to mock the person’s death, I’d say he behaved in a manner near-universally considered offensive by civilized persons even though he “stole” nothing of value. Polite people do not sneak into other people’s ceremonies on false pretenses to mock them.
This would not excuse the real, actual grieving mourners from issuing death threats against Phelps or the like. The two are seperate issues - (1) the act of giving offense, and (2) the legitimate response to giving offense.
I’ll answer as if you were asking me 
Myers argument about God is basically this- no evidence. Show me evidence, and we can have a discussion about it. But there ain’t no evidence. So there’s no reason to take the claims seriously. It doesn’t matter how eloquently one writes about the philosophical nature of God, if there is no evidence, then there’s no reason for Myers to take seriously the idea that God exists.
What bible passages are you thinking of? Are you sure you are not mixing up Christianity and Islam? Abraham smashing idols in Kaabala in Mecca is one of the important points in Islamic history, but is obviously not is Christianity.
Calculon
Can you be specific. I saw no emotional arguments in the book.
What bad things by non-religious ideologies does he excuse?
Dawkins makes no argument to the contrary. He only talks about how beliefs require no basis in truth to be perpetuated.
This would not be self-refuting. memes don’t have to be false.
That isn’t his thesis.
I would s=disagree with that review and suggest that you read the bok for yourself. Hitchens is certainly more polemic than Dawkins and doesn’t mibce words, but that doesn’t mean that his arguments aren’t based in logic.
I think that religionsist tend to try to focus on Hitchens’ and dakins’ criticisms of organized religion as a human institution, then try to use the vulnerabilities in those arguments (which do exist) to hand wave away the real meat of their arguments (especially Dawkins) against the metaphysical claims of religion. Those are the arguments which religionists can’t really refute, so they try a subtle kind of ad hominem approach instead.
“Stole” is not overstated. The sacred object in question is distributed only for the purpose of the ceremony. Only baptised, believing Catholics are supposed to receive communion (I do not, when I visit a Catholic Church, for this exact reason - I am neither).
See my response to Dio.
Firstly, to simply say “there is no evidence” is clearly absurd. Every religion has different reasons for why their religion is true. Some are better than others obviously, and not all are convinving. So for instance in the Christian sphere we could talk about the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus as evidence for the Christian belief. You may or may not be convinced by that, but there are legitimate arguments to consider. Likewise, other religions have other lines of reasoning that they use. I think the statement that “there is no evidence for religion” is really more an atheist statement of faith than anything else.
The criticsm of Dawkins that Meyers was responding to was that Dawkins simply refused to engage with the arguments for faith that religious people were making. Simply denying that there are any arguments at all (as Meyers seems to want to do) is the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “la, la, la, la”.
Calculon.
I can only go by what you post. I’m not telling you what you’re thinking, I’m telling you the impression I got from your own words. If that wasn’t the impression you wanted to give, then you should have been more clear.
He didn’t engage in any offensive behavior at the Mass. He didn’t disrupt the ceremony or bother anybody.
Cook didn’t trespass or “sneak in” to anything. Phelps’ trespass would be illegal. This is not a valid analogy. Moreover, a communion wafer is not a person and has no family. It can’t be a victim.
It’s actually a complete falsehood. It was given to him. Yes, it was given to him with the expectation that he would eat it instead of taking it home, but that does not constitute a legal obligation. He cannot be charged with theft. At worst, it was mildly impolite.
Calculon, I’m not talking about the bible. I’m talking about the Catholic veneration of Saints, like Gregory the Illuminator, who publicly destroyed many pagan idols in the process of Christianizing Armenia, and Saint Ludger, who destroyed pagan idols and places of worship around Cologne in the 8th century. These Saints and many others are revered, and that they destroyed pagan idols is not considered a mark against them in Catholic tradition.
I was perfectly clear. You are creating a convenient straw-man.
Sure he engaged in offensive behaviour at the mass. He just didn’t get caught.
Same as Phelps in the analogy ‘didn’t engage in offensive behaviour, disrupt the ceremony or bother anybody’.
Yes he did. He falsely pretended to take communion.
Legality isn’t the issue. Presumably, there is no “illegality” in going to a funeral home that is open to “friends” any more than there is attending a mass under false pretences. In each case, the building is open to a self-selected group of the public.
It is a perfectly valid analogy. The cracker isn’t the “victim” any more than the photo of the dead guy is the “victim”. In both cases, the offense is pointed at those attending the ceremony in good faith being mocked.
With the risk of this turning into a “does God exist” thread…
The “historical reality” of the resurrection of Jesus? Come on. That’s not evidence, any more than a thousand year old document stating a ghost was scene in a London chapel is for the existence of ghosts. All supposed “evidence” for the existence of God requires certain assumptions to be made- like the bible is an accurate record of history- that Myers (and I) are not prepared to agree with.
Historical (and sometimes partly/wholly mythological) figures are often venerated, even though they engaged in behaviors their present-day followers would consider offensive or worse.
For example, Jews no longer in general agree that genocide is a good idea, though it figures prominently in the OT; and Americans by and large do not approve of race-based slavery, though many revered founding fathers practiced it.
Malthus, certainly. And I think it’s hypocritical.
No you weren’t. You made a flippant, critical post about a victim of bigotry and death threats instead of condemning the bigotry and death threats.
If he didn’t do anything to cause offense, he could have been doing anything offensive.
In your analogy, Phelps was commiting a crime by terspassing into the funeral home. Cook committed no trespass. If Phelps obtained his photograph legally, I would defend his right to photograph the guy blowing goats if he wants to.
Which does not constitue a “trespass” or any other crime, and which did not disturb the ceremony.
My impression was that in your anolgy, Phelps was crashing a funeral home illegally. If he goes in legally, I have no problem with it.
I disagree that they were being “mocked,” but even if that’s the interpretation you want to insist on, they don’t have to read his blog, and they are not actually harmed by it.
The problem here is that this hypocrisy is pretty well universal among all long-lasting groups, and thus unremarkable. No-one would take seriously a position that Jews have no right to complain about the Holocaust, or Americans have no right to complain about being enslaved.
Name me one good thing about religion that Dawkins talks about.
They part where he argues that religion is responsible for all of the bad actions of it’s followers, but secular beliefs are not is a classic example.
It is a while since I read the book, but I think you are softening his argument. If that was simply the point then why bring it up. The fact that different people believe contradictory things is simple evidence of that principle. You don’t need memes at all to show that. Moreover, your statement could be said of atheism as well. The belief that there almost certainly is no God requires no basis in truth to be believed too.
To insist that something is false because it is a meme is self refuting
That isn’t his thesis.
Maybe I will read the book one day, but I doubt it since I have many other things I want to read more.
However I disagree with your claims of the irrefutability of Dawkins metaphysical claims. Here I think he is clearly out of his depth. Telling I think is the fact that he hardly mentions any philosphers or theologians from this century in his work. So for instance in talking of the ontological arguement, he says nothing of Alvin Plantiga version of the argument, nor indeed does he even seem aware of it. You might protest that “The God delusion” is not a book for specialists, and that is why it was omitted. However even popular books need to have an overview of all of the relevant material, and given the influence of Plantiga’s work it is misleading to say nothing of it.
On this point I think I agree with Antony Flew’s criticism of Dawkins is that he doesn’t argue against the strongest forms of arguments, but simply argues against simplistic charactures of them. In fact in reading “The God delusion” I never got the feeling that Dawkins had a deep understanding of any of the metaphyical arguments that he was making.
As well there are a number of refutations of Dawkins arguments out there. I personally recommend the one’s by Alister McGrath. I think it is telling that as far as I know, no professional philospher (with the possible exception of Dan Dennett) has taken to defending Dawkins arguments, even the atheist ones. They simply don’t stand up to the riguers of modern metaphysics and are therefore being ignored.
Calculon.
Actually, the Bible makes almost no attempt to prove the existence of God, and it is perfectly possible to argue for the existence of God without any reference to Scripture.
Which is another piece of evidence that Meyers was trolling - the nature of the Eucharist has nothing to do with the existence of God, and the Roman Catholic church makes no claim at all that the wafer is physically different from any other unconsecrated wafer.
He wasn’t refuting any kind of argument - he was aiming to offend. That doesn’t establish the truth of his position in any way. Burning a cross doesn’t prove that black people are inferior, it simply asserts it in a deliberately offensive way. Likewise with Meyers’ desecration - it doesn’t prove anything about God; it just shows that Meyers was behaving like an asshole.
Regards,
Shodan
That suggests that he has little grasp of the notion, actually. Who holds an individual physical copy of a Richard Dawkins book sacred?
I’ve seen only excerpts of that, but I’ve read Dawkins at length on scientific matters. The Ancestor’s Tale, for example, mentions theism only passingly (and unnecessarily) once or twice, and to my mind constitutes a stronger case against conventional notions of God than the more philosophical discursions.
I agree with your general feeling about Myers and the Eucharist stunt.