I’m talking about the terroristic threats and over the top accusations made against a kid for not eating a cracker.
How about accusing him of “kidnapping” and “hate crimes?”
I doubt it would have caused much of a stir. If he was still in the church he could have just popped it in his mouth.
I don’t see how it can be offensive if no one is offended.
[quote]
You are once again moving goalposts. Crime is not the same as ‘giving offense’ and has no necessary relationship with it.
Accusing him of “stealing” is accusing him of a crime. He didn’t steal anything.
Illegally under what statute? Yes if had hypothetically done something illegal, then it would have been illegal, but he didn’t. There is no law against palming a communion wafer.
He didn’t do anything to their ceremony. The ceremony is the mass itself. He didn’t disrupt that. What he did was on his on time with his own property.
It’s not even that. Some parts accurately reflect some historical details or circumstances, but no hsitorian would call it “reliable” even in broad sense.
You already cited evidence for sky gods? I must have missed it. What was it?
You’re are confusing beliefs with evidence. A belief in the resurrection is not evidence. That belief is, in itself, the thing that is to be proven.
It’s sounds like you’re conceding there is no evidence for the resurrection, though.
Plantinga doesn’t actually say this. He only says that “it’s possibly necessary” that an ominmax entity exists. This assertion is not only unsupported (it’s the weakest part of his OA defense), but is manifestly contradicted by the Problem of Evil.
You’re reversing the burden of proof here and trying to make Dawkins prove that the possibility of sky gods is not 50/50. The deafulkt presumption is non-existence, not a 50/50 chance, but just for the hell of it, Dawkins own conclusion is based on two simple observations: lack of necessity and lack of evidence. Sky gods not only lack any empirical evidence for their existence, it is also not necessary to hypothesize their existence to explain anything. Moreover, their existence would violate the laws of physics and Occam’s Razor. They would be both superfluous and physically impossible, therefore they almost certainly don’t exist.
What about figurative “desecration of idols?” What about simply disparaging or mocking other beliefs? If a Catholic mocks Raelians or Xenu, do they have a leg to stand on to complain about people mocking a belief in transubstantiation?
It has to be sufficient to prove the event happened. There is no “least amount.” It’s not a question of degre. A claim can either be proven or it can’t, and extraordinary claimns require extraordinary evdience. You hav a taller hill to climb with a claim like the resurrection because you’re talking about something which is a *prima facie[/i[ impossibility.
When your aim is to point out that the very idea of having sacred objects is not only ridiculous but a useful tool in manipulating the rubes:
[QUOTE=PZ Myers]
Declare something cheap, disposable, and common to be imbued with magic by the words of a priest, and the trivial becomes a powerful token to inflame the mob — why, all you have to do is declare a bit of bread to be the most powerful and desirable object in the world, and even if it isn’t, you can pretend that the evil other is scheming to deprive the faithful of it. Now you could invent stories of Jews and witches taking the communion host to torture, to make Jesus suffer even more, and good Catholics would of course rise in horror to defend their salvation.
[/QUOTE]
desecration is inevitable.
If you are offended by what happens to a cracker I need to tell you something:
When people mock Raelians or Xenu, they tend to be mocking those beliefs because they are spread as a deliberate money-making scam. They are not inherently any more objectively “wrong” than any other religious belief - they are no more “wrong” than the literal religious beliefs of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, New Guinean ancestor worship, etc., from either an atheist perspective, or the perspective of those who are of the opinion they have the one, true religion.
However, the fact that all such beliefs are equally lacking in evidence does not mean that all such beliefs are equally deserving of mockery. What attracts justified mockery is the organization behind the beliefs. One is less likely to mock New Guineans for ancestor-worship, because it is a long standing part of their culture. It would be in bad taste, indeed a sort of bigotry, to mock someone’s native cutlure.
This is the same whether one, as I do, views them all as equally un-evidenced, or if one is (say) a believing Catholic, and views all of them except Catholicism as wrong. The better Catholic position is ‘you may be incorrect, but I will explain why your beliefs are incorrect in a respectful manner - unless you are spreading those beliefs as part of a deliberate scam’.
I’m not a Catholic. Neither do I believe in any other god.
That changes nothing. I’d feel no differently about someone desecrating a New Guinean ancestor-worship ceremony. The mana of such a ceremony “isn’t real”, but so what? The people you are insulting are real.
You are missing PZ’s point - he is desecrating the cracker because it has more power than it deserves and this power can be used for harm. There is nothing good that comes out of creating sacred objects, in fact by definition it’s causing harm by limiting critical thinking.
Crazed anger that someone else doesn’t share a particular magical belief is bigotry.
Not eating it s not “desecrating” it. We’re talking about somebody getting noticed holding or concealing the wafer instead of eating it. This is not likely to cause a stir during mass, no, because it’s not somthing the whole room is going to notice, and catholics aren’t going to leap up and disrupt mass whil it’s still going on, but someone might follow him outside and make inquiries. I’ve seen it happen. A nun followed a guy who was still holding his wafer and asked him what wasup. He said his stomach was upset and he was afraid he was going to throw up if he ate it in church (good cover story if nothing else). She told him the host was still consecrated and he either need to eat it or give it back. He ate it. I think he was actually on the level, even though all Catholics know you’re not supposed to walk out with the host. He had the distinct look of someone with a bad hangover.
Anyway, the point is that there was no major scene or disruption.
I said he didn’t do anything “offensive,” meaning that he didn’t do anything during the cermony to disrupt it or cause offense.
Cite for a legal statute which defines his action as theft?
This is obviously not the same thing. This guy literally did steal a handful of wafers from a Priest. Show me a case of someone being charged with theft for walking out with a wafer that was given to them during communion.
If a reader sent him some wafers, they probably weren’t even consecrated, which means that they really were still just bread, even in terms of Catholic belief. You can’t desecrate whate was never consecrated in the first place.
Certainly. Being Canadian, I’ll cite our own Criminal Code, where “theft” is defined as follows:
The key here is “fraudulently and without colour or right”. Wafers are handed out at mass with the express understanding that they are only given for use in the mass. They are not to be taken away.
Deliberately taking a wafer in the mass ceremony for another purpose, such as to mock the mass, is “fraudulent and without colour of right”, since you are lying about the purpose for which you are taking it, and it would not be given had you told the truth. There is no honest belief that the act is justifiable.