Rachel’s Musings

PZ Myers posted the “desecration” of a cracker - the consecrated wafer used by Catholics during Mass - today, including a history of the murder of Jews who were - collectively - accused of desecrating crackers by (supposedly) stabbing them (and thus Jesus in the bizarre logic of the Catholic church). In commemoration of these persecutions, Myers also stabbed the cracker by piercing a rusty nail through it. However, he didn’t stop there. He also pinned down a copy of the Qur’an and The God Delusion. Yupp, that’s right: Richard Dawkins’ book. The point he was trying to make was that “nothing must be held sacred.” In addition to recounting history starting in 1215, PZ’s post includes some of the threats he has received, a brief update on the UCF student who started this particular episode of crackergate, and these words of wisdom right after the picture of the desecrated items:

I didn’t want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur’an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanities’ knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

The first comment shows how difficult it will be to break the religion-habit…