Open Letter to PZ Myers: The Cracker Incident
July 11th, 2008
Dear Dr. Myers:
I have long admired your blog and your many contributions to science, to science education, and to the fight against irrationalism. I share your perspective on many things, and greatly respect the ways in which you have given it expression. You are doing a great service both to the community of rational thinkers and, if they only knew it, to the superstitious and anti-intellectual as well.
I was aghast, but, sadly, not surprised at the events involving the “Eucharist” cracker at UCF. I am appalled at the hostility expressed toward the student involved and at the university’s failure to support him, still more so at the threats of violence and retaliation directed at him and at you for supporting him. You have my best wishes for your safety.
All that being said, however, I’d like to call on you to reconsider your most recent post on that matter. It is easy to laugh at the overheated antics of religious kooks, and certainly even the most mundane religious beliefs are absurd upon inspection. But, as you know all too well, I’m sure, religious people take them very seriously. It’s mind-boggling how people wrap themselves up in these ridiculous claims - “miracles”, crackers-into-flesh (but you can’t see it!), Jesus on tortillas and whatnot - but it’s not as hard to understand that, given that they do believe this nonsense, they do care about how that nonsense is treated by others.
At the point of believers’ emotional investment in their nonsensical beliefs, we are not talking about the rationality of those beliefs but about how those beliefs impinge on the believers’ values and well-being. In that way, crazy as they are, believers are no different from atheists or other rational people. That is, in caring about what they believe in, rather than their actual beliefs, they are just like us - their values (however unfounded) guide their lives, they are invested (however irrationally) in living up to those values, and they hurt (even if unnecessarily) when others gratuitously trample them.
That, I think, is where you tread in soliciting help in openly desecrating religious paraphernalia (asking for someone to steal a Eucharist cracker so you can publicly destroy it). I understand deliberately contravening religious claims to prove their falsity (calling on God to smite you, for instance); that serves a kind of scientific purpose in rationally testing the factual claims believers make. But your plan, as far as I understand it, seems to consist in mere taunting: flaunting your “sacrilege” to show up those who threatened you and the student.
Allow me to suggest, with respect, that that is beneath you. No one could deny your grievance in becoming the target of death threats and an attempt to destroy your career for your beliefs. But a malicious lashing-out in revenge is mean-spirited, even in the face of such gross provocation. If your plan was not intended as vengeance but rather some sort of counterstrike or defensive move, I have to say it still seems to consist merely in gratuitous outrage rather than any practical step toward securing the rights of non-believers. I really can’t see how it constitutes any useful “fight[ing] back against Bill Donohue”, or “countercampaign” against a witch hunt - as your blog post terms it. At the very least, it will cause real hurt to many people who have nothing to do with this incident, far more so than it will make any overt contribution to resolving it. And on those grounds - causing hurt to no purpose, or for purely personal satisfaction - it serves the same base impulse that has been aimed at you. It may not be my place to tell you how angry you have a right to be, after such unconscionable behavior was directed toward you. But I want to say that it is the part of decency to be magnanimous where possible, and it is incumbent upon rationalists to fight their battles with logic and not malice.
However misguided and often offensive, superstitious and irrational people are part of our world - indeed the majority of it. I do not for a moment suggest we should surrender any of our freedom to their constant trespasses: stamping their silly slogans on coins, currency, and government buildings; making children mouth cant and dogma upon command in the public schools; writing their phobias and perversions into discriminatory laws to oppress the many groups and subgroups they despise; resorting to violence and terrorism when they cannot oppress by other means; and all the immeasurable rest. But we owe them, as to any moral person, the minimal decency of regard for their feelings, whether or not we share those feelings or endorse their reasons for having them. We owe to their silly beliefs and rituals, not the condescension of uncritical approval, but the moral respect of tolerance.
We are entitled to, and desperately need to, defend our own rights, freedoms, and scope for belief and practice, but we should avoid going out of our way to give offense in regard of others’ beliefs, even where we reject them. And I can’t see that deliberately soliciting and committing “blasphemy” or “sacrilege” or whatever it is will serve any purpose other than angering the people who get angry about that sort of thing. Most of them don’t deserve that, however wrong they are about other things. If nothing else, it will live forever as a treasured example of atheists’ “hatred for Christians” and the “war on Christianity” - and so for our sake if not for theirs, I’d ask you not to do it. But more importantly, I’d ask you not to just because it seems mean, and, though we shouldn’t surrender what really matters, we shouldn’t be mean.
Thanks for your time and consideration. I know I can rely on your judgment.
With best wishes,
/s/ Kevin T. Keith
www.leanleft.com
www.sufficientscruples.com
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan also condemns Myers’s proposal, while managing to work in the word “bigot” - directed at Myers. Maybe I need to rethink this . . .
Categories: Church & State, Culture, Education, General, Media, News & Current Events, Religion | 43 Comments
