True North

Some of my best friends are atheists.Me? Nah. I’ve never found the scientific case against God remotely compelling. The cases of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are so hate-clogged they’re pretty easily dispatched; indeed, I’d love to see debate between one of them and a genuine Christian thinker, especially one that wasn’t moderated by some NPR suckup; it’d be like a lawnmower going through a cabbage patch. Christopher Hitchens is more acerbic - and easier, since while he rejects “God”, he still buys the notion of some kind of universal energy of one kind or another.

But at least there’s an argument you can try to respect.

Well, for some of ‘em anyway.

The big problem with the latest wave of atheists isn’t their beliefs - because their beliefs are irrelevant. It’s all about their hatred of faith. Read their blogs, watch their cable-access shows - it’s less about “the case against God” and more “aren’t people of faith Christians stupid!” It’d be like packs of fundamentalist Christians filming themselves mocking (stereotyped) gay behavior for cruel, cheap yuks, if you can imagine that (and, as a rule, you do have to imagine it).

No. I mean just like it.

Reading the local Sorosphere’s fawning coverage of PZ “Meyers” Myers’ extended game of “monkey in the middle” with a consecrated host (the wafer from a Catholic communion that’s been blessed by a priest - which, orthodox Catholics believe, “transubstantiates” into the literal body of Christ as related in the Last Supper) is…depressing. Myers, a biology professor and one of the more prominent atheist bloggers, declaims about religion from atop what he seems to consider a mountain of logic. And he pays, indeed, some lip service to common decency, as most people, faith aside, would understand it…:

I don’t favor the idea of going to somebody’s home or to something they own and possess and consider very important, like a graveyard—going to a grave and desecrating that. That’s something completely different. Because what you’re doing is doing harm to something unique and something that is rightfully part of somebody else—it’s somebody else’s ownership.

And yet…:

The cracker [host, presumably] is completely different. This is something that’s freely handed out.

Well, no. It’s not.

I’m not Catholic - and, like most Protestants, I take an allegorical rather than literal view of the host. But it’s not remotely “freely” handed out. The Catholic communion involves jumping through some spiritual hoops (as does the Protestant communion, in most cases) to “commune” with God; in the Catholic tradition (stop me if I’m wrong, Catholics) involves being in a “state of grace”, of having ones’ sins forgiven, before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. Not everyone who walks into a Catholic Church gets communion. The host is no more “freely” handed out than is an “A” in one of Myers’ classes. I presume.

So the stunt Myers is defending - a college student, Webster Cook, who kyped a consecrated host from a mass, drawing all sorts of emotional reactions from Catholics, some of them terribly overwrought - was as much vandalism as theft.

To Myers, of course, it’s a big joke; like stealing a hat from a kid on the playground and tossing it around among the other little reprobates. It’s a cruel little giggle - after all, it’s not your hat that you’re having fun with! - and if the kid gets pissed and decks you, you can run to the principal and get him in trouble.

I was going to write “I’m not sure what bothers me more - the stunt, and Myers’ puerile reaction in support, or the local Sorosphere’s fawning coverage and belief that it’s “news” and that Myers is a profile in courage for doing it” - but I stopped. Neither does.

Here’s why: this is probably good news for people of faith. If this - and Dawkins, and Harris - is the best atheists can do, God is not only alive, but He is so confident in our ability to withstand the real challenges to our faith that He’s sent us some puffed-up, arrogant, self-important buffoons to laugh at.

Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.