Chuck Kroll has returned with a follow up post you can find here. I’ve posted a response just a few comments below that. Here’s an excerpt from his latest comments:

I do hope that Mr. Myers will be removed from his position as a teacher, for his obvious lack of tolerance towards others, and the fact that he used a state funded website to broadcast his hateful teachings. God only knows what he talks about in class.

I do believe that what I did was wrong, that is no way to speak to anyone, even if you do no Agree with them. But this was not about debate, or a free exchange of ideas or that Myers is an atheist, it is what he promotes (and he does not have a right to, not in the classroom, or in print.) That is, the desecration of anyone’s religion in this country.

Among the comments in my response, I’ve attempted to educate Mr. Kroll both as to the nature of Prof. Myers’ blog and how it isn’t “state funded” and as to the nature of what it means to have Freedom of Speech. I doubt, however, either attempts will sway Kroll or those like him of irrational thought, since they live in fabricated realities that are constructed of false dichotomies and spells of thinking that inhibit change or progress.

Doubtless, Kroll is sincere in his desire to have Myers “removed from his position” since those that promote free thought, rational discourse and knowledge that breaks the spells of afflictions to humanity like religion are feared by those that prefer their thinking done for them. Statements like this, I realize, are readily abundant on crank and pseudoscience sites where nutters speak of the “close-mindedness” of skeptics, but the difference is that rational discourse and thought can be defended. Cranks and the superstitious are consistently unable to justify their beliefs and “knowledge” rationally -instead they must rely on myth, fantasy, and delusion.

This, after all is the crux of the issue at hand: superstitious people clinging to deluded and irrational beliefs about a cracker becoming the “body of Christ.” What utter and complete nonsense. And to become upset enough to threaten the life of someone who states they are willing to use such a cracker for whatever purpose they desire is the act of a nut.

Sorry, but it just doesn’t.

There are more comments in the 1800Flowers.com post than any other on Breaking Spells (and I’m not ashamed to admit the Pharyngula Effect is fun while it lasts) and some of them revolve around the issue of “respecting” religious superstitions and not speaking out about nonsense and irrational ideas in favor of considering the sensibilities of the superstitious themselves.

Bullshit. I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works. You don’t get to hold or have a batshit idea that you’re willing to spread, indoctrinate, or otherwise compell others to agree with and still be protected from rational criticism or even ridicule.

Its no different than if someone held a belief that Elvis was still alive and abducting hillbillies from his UFO and not only expected others to believe it but wanted to enact laws that protected and promoted this ideology as fact. Anyone would be well within their rights to criticize this notion and ridicule would be expected.

A eucharist cracker is just flour and water. Anyone that truly believes that the mere act of consuming a cracker after a magical spell spoken over it becomes the flesh of Christ is not only ignorant and deluded, they’re batshit. Have these people ever stopped to consider that, if true, they would eventually be defecating Christ? Talk about “holy shit.”

Back to the comments.

At least one person here and several on Pharyngula and elsewhere commented that PZ shouldn’t disrespect the religious. And it’s a common response by believers, adherents, apologetics, and even sympathetic non-believers that atheists shouldn’t criticize the beliefs of others. There’s a taboo of even questioning religious doctrine in public. When critics and skeptics do question and criticize, they get accused of being “militant,” “shrill,” a part of an “anti-religious kabal,” etc.

Never is the superstitious person (a.k.a. the irrational believer/adherent) held accountable in such a fashion for criticizing atheism -the complete lack of a god belief. Indeed, religious nuts are completely free to ridicule atheism, protected by the comfort of their numbers. But the large quantity of believers doesn’t imply that religious belief is valid, sound, or cogent. At one time, most people in the world believed the sun revolved around the Earth. Their majority status most assuredly did not make them right.

Religious superstitions are just as open to question, criticism, and ridicule as any other human institution or ideal. Political beliefs, economic beliefs, social beliefs… even the belief in a favorite sports team are all open to debate, criticism, inquiry and ridicule. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have multiple political parties, a need for a prime interest rate, a reason to evaluate historical and anthropological data, or to wear a favorite jersey the day of the big game.

There mere fact that religion takes such a major and significant part in the lives of so many people makes it even more open to question, criticism, inquiry and, yes, even ridicule. If you aren’t willing to accept this, keep your religious superstitions to yourself; keep them private; and be embarassed for your lack of rational and critical thought. For, if you are publicly proud, you must be prepared to be publicly criticized.

Well, to be fair, the death threats were probably not a board decision. They appear to originate from a single, deranged employee named Melanie Kroll who is upset that PZ Myers, a professor of biology, was disrespectful to a cracker.

Actually, it isn’t really a cracker.

For those not up to speed on the developments of late with the Eucharist cracker fiasco being hotly discussed on the blogosphere, let me point you first to Gred Laden’s blog, where he has a list of relevant links. But here’s the gist:

A young man in Florida attends Communion at a local Catholic church and, when given the Eucharist (a little piece of tasteless cracker which is alleged by the superstitious to become the body of Christ after ingested), this young man absconds with the cracker tucked safely in a ziplock bag. He’s confronted and agrees to return it. It would seem that his intent was *not* to offend or desecrate. Nutjobs, whackos, and all-around assholes that consider themselves to be “true Catholics” had a different persepctive, however. They accused the young man of “kidnapping the host” and committing a “hate crime.” This, of course, is an insult to the victims and families of any real kidnappings and hate crimes.

PZ’s response was It’s Just a Fracking Cracker, which was one of the longest discussion threads I’ve ever seen on a blog. So long, in fact, he had to close it and begin a new one because of bandwidth issues. Among the comments in each of his posts were the occasional nutter that believes in the completely batshit idea that eating a cracker after a priest says a few magical words equates to eating the body of Jesus Christ. These nutters ranged from “you’ve blasphemed my religion and I’m praying for you,” to actual threats of violence.

And PZ has a policy that if he gets such threats that he will post the full emails, including headers showing IP addresses. And he did.

From: mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com
Subject: your short life
Date: July 13, 2008 8:07:31 AM CDT

[...]

Paul,

what I would like to know is how did you even
get a job at a collage.

when you are obviously a moron.
How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against
Fags, and atheist like yourself.

well sir, you don’t get to blaspheme and walk away from this.
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt

I kid you not. It turns out, one of Pharyngula’s commenters sent an email to the address listed and it comes back as belonging to Melanie Kroll who is “out of the office” over the weekend. Moreover, the email ends with the proprietary disclosure that starts, “This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by..." that is so common at the end of corporate emails and often added as default signatures without the sender's knowledge since it's configured by the corporate IT nerds. Not to mention that another of Pharyngula's commenters took the opportunity to do the Whois and domain searches on the IP address breadcrumbs in the original header (click the link above) and found it originates with 1800FLowers.com.

So, while death threats probably aren’t an actual corporate policy for 1800Flowers.com, it would certainly see that they are willing to employ individuals for whom it is. If that employee isn’t terminated, would this mean that 1800Flowers.com offers tacit approval of death threats to university professors? What of other potential customers of 1800Flowers.com? Would they also be fair game for death threats as a response to holding opinions that run counter to 1800Flowers.com employees?

I think I’ll be buying my floral arrangements from elsewhere.

EDIT (7/14/08): As the first three commenters below pointed out, we really cannot blame Melanie Kroll with any useful probability. The only thing that can truly be said at this time is that the email orginated at 1800Flowers.com. At the very least, Ms. Kroll is guilty of not securing here workspace, but she may very well be a victim of having her email account used by another employee.

Its still very likely an employee, so the title of this post is still accurate. And I still doubt I’ll use 1800Flowers.com.

The Templeton Prize is worth $2 million, intentionally more than the Nobel (about $1.5 million). The thought was that it would send the message that “spiritual” matters are worth more than “scientific.” The result, intentional or not, is an attempt to undermine science with religious superstition. Ironic, since the purported goals of the Templeton Foundation includes the reconciliation of science and religion. The foundation’s primary mission is to explore “the big questions” regarding the universe, life, and everything.

There have been many critics of the Templeton Prize, perhaps none so notable as Richard Dawkins, who wrote in The God Delusion this of Prize winner Paul Davies, author of The Mind of God

[It] seems to hover somewhere between Einsteinian pantheism and an obscure form of deism - for which he was rewarded with the Templeton Prize (a very large sum of money given annually by the  Templeton Foundation, usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion).

Dawkins also criticizes the Templeton Foundations support of the 2006 study by Herbert Benson on the efficacy of prayer, which basically showed that there was no efficacy to prayer.The important point to this is that it shows that the Foundation’s goals do indeed include supporting religious superstition in spite of their repeated insistence that they “support” science and are not a religious organization.

Reported to have been a “a very nice fellow” [Pharyngula], Templeton Foundation creator, Sir John Templeton, died today at age 95 of complications associated with pneumonia.

Reference:

Benson, H., et al. (2006) ‘Study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients’, American Heart Journal 151 (4), 934-42.

[Via Pharyngula]

The Family Research Council asks: “Do you believe that America, as a nation, was founded upon Christian principles?” They’d like your answer. As of 12:30 today, the results are:

Go vote. Give them your opinion.

I had the pleasure of discussing morality and atheism with a commenter who I would assume is a Christian although his/her actual beliefs haven’t been specifically discussed. In responding to the second of two posts the commenter left, I realized that I rambled on far longer than a general comment, so I thought I’d go ahead and repost it as a separate post of its own.

In this post, you’ll see me discuss the capacity for Morality (big “M” ) among humans, giving rise to the cultural establishment of moral (little “m” ) codes. I make an analogy to the human capacity for Language (big “L” ) which gives rise to the cultural establishment of languages (little “l” ). I don’t know if this analogy holds -I haven’t really thought it through- and I’m not arguing that the capacities of Morality and Language are part of the same genetic mechanism or have the shared origins.

I’ll begin with Robin Leboe’s comment today and follow with my response, both of which can be found in the Myths of Atheism: HIlter/Stalin/Pol Pot were evil because of atheism thread.

Robin Leboe, on July 1st, 2008 at 8:26 am Said:

Leaving aside the definition of atheism for the moment, the properties of atheism can be examined regardless of how it’s defined. For instance, one attribute of atheism I’m sure we can agree on is the lack of a transcendent source for an objective moral law.

If there is no transcendant being then any truly objective principles under girding existence are illusory. Your reference to evil in the post above hangs in a vacuum. Any attempt to codify right and wrong takes a leap into another realm i.e Platonic ideals.

Right and wrong are simply not an inherent property of ‘being without gods’ and morals are relegated to utilitarian, pragmatic, subjective or emotive trappings. A function of culture at best or the opinion of an individual at worst. Neitsche was very honest in driving home this point when writing of the ‘death of God’.

It is this lack of ultimate moral arbitration that people often point to when they speak of the atrocities advanced by cultures who have, by your definition, disavowed themselves of a belief in God.

On the other hand, atrocities committed by religious zealots can clearly be seen to be in opposition to the moral law they espouse. The teachings of Christ leave no interpretive room whatever for the inquisition or crusades. Many societies and institutions have been hijacked by lunatics, both theist and atheist. As it is often said, it’s not a good idea to judge a philosophy (or faith) by its adherents.

Thanks for the cordial discussion and taking time to respond to my previous reply.

I’m willing to take the transcendent source point further and say that you can insert “for anything” after “transcendent source.”

Transcendent refers to that which is “beyond comprehension” or “independent of the material universe.” I, of course, see no good reason to believe such a definition is needed since there is no evidence of anything existing “beyond the material universe.” In addition, I see no reason (and history bears this out) that this material universe can at least be potentially comprehended. I concede that I know very little of the universe and will likely learn only a fraction more when compared with the potential things that can be known, but I refuse to accept that there is anything unknowable about the universe or that anything exists beyond the knowable universe. Gods, magic, ghosts, and hobgoblins included.

But that’s me. If anyone knows otherwise and can demonstrate that knowledge, however, I’m open to revising my position.

Moving on to your other points, the very argument that morality is “divinely established” is an argument that isn’t sound nor is it cogent. That’s because the premises fail. If the conclusion is “God establishes morality,” then the premises followed by the conclusion must be:

1. humans have not the capacity for morality without God;
2. only God can provide morality;
3. morality exists in humanity;
4. thus God exists and establishes morality.

The premises fail for several reasons. The actual god in question is not identified. There are thousands upon thousands of extant and extinct religious cults in human history through present day, most with pantheons of gods. Yet, morality has flourished throughout human history. Were humans prior to the very recent cults of Judeo-Christian doctrine immoral? Hardly. We have a very detailed and accurate account of moral behavior in ancient societies. Indeed, our own democratic-republic form of government is based largely on one such pantheistic, but moral, society.

Further, there are countless similarities cross-culturally that exhibit very similar moral behaviors that are independent of a single religious superstition. For instance: in no extant or extinct culture that I’m aware of is it morally acceptable to murder one’s parents in order to take their property.

Very clearly, the preceding two paragraphs show that morality is a human endeavor and not a divine one and, therefore, humans provide their own morality, much in the same way we provide our own language. Language (big “L” ) is a human endeavor. We establish individual languages (little “l” ) based on the capacity for Language. Perhaps the human establishment of morality is a function of the capacity for Morality (big “M” ) [incidentally, I'm hypothesizing here more than arguing a position in order to show that divinity need not be the answer when one is ignorant of an explanation].

The only premise in the divine establishment of morality argument that is valid is that humans have morality. If morality is established by humanity (since it exists cross-culturally, independent of religious doctrine, and prior to modern concepts of God, then it clearly is), then humans have the capacity for morality without gods and gods are not necessary to provide morality.

The very evidence for the existence of morality and zero evidence for the existence of God invalidates nearly completely the argument that morality is established by God. There is, of course, the slim chance that a hidden god has created morality -but this begs the question and provides not a single bit of cogency to the argument. After all, how would one know he/she was praying to the right god if that god is hidden?

I won’t pretend to know why humans have a capacity for Morality any more than I know why they have a capacity for Language or Music. There is much about cognitive science that is unknown (though advances in the last decade are tremendous!), but I certainly see no logical or rational reason to settle on a god-explanation simply because I don’t have an answer. Thankfully, there have been enough rationally minded people in the history of scientific discovery who have sought answers beyond the god-explanation for lightning, weather, crop failure, disease, etc

Thank you again for taking the opportunity to post on an atheist blog and participating in discussion. I realize that many of the blogs and forums in the “atheosphere” are rather harsh and hostile to Christian and theist posters. I also realize that my own casual use of terms like cult, superstition, and the like are likely to be taken as offensive to the believer and religious adherent, but is an honest position and opinion that I hold and not intended to be solely pejorative.

The state of Texas recently made it legal for clergy to abuse children.

No shit. [via Pharyngula]

I’ve been thinking of writing a post that looks at exorcism from an anthropological and psychological perspective for some time now, and I’ll probably return to this topic again in the future.

For now, however, I think its important to make a quick post regarding a recent Texas Supreme Court decision that essentially makes it okay to abuse children if the reason is religious.

Here’s the background:

Demonic Possession in Christianity
Demons have been taking possession of humans since the days that the alleged Christ (one of several Christian deities) allegedly walked the shores of Galilee. Many may recall the story in the Gospels that tell how Jesus casts demons out of hapless humans and into a bunch of swine who then run off and drown themselves in the sea. But there are other examples in history, such as the Benedictine abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, who in the 12th century CE, was accused of being demon-possessed when she herself claimed to be singing in tongues -words spoken by channeling the Holy Spirit (another of several Christian deities).

Ignatius Loyola, of the 16th century CE, found himself speaking in tongues during prayer and wasn’t sure if it was the voice of God (a primary Christian deity) or a demon (a minor Christian deity).

The Roman Catholic Church defines demon-possession as:

when Satan enters and takes over the physical and mental capabilities of a victim, however, the soul and will remains free. Satan acts through the victim without the victim’s consent, thus the victim is morally blameless. Satan does not act alone when he possesses an individual. He works side by side with many evil spirits such as spirits of lust, hate, destruction, suicide, revenge, anger, anxiety, desperation, death, torment, etc. Such an example is found in Luke 8:30 the case of the possessed man in the territory of the Gerasenes: “Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him “.

And how do the religious identify the possessed? The link above offers these signs and symptoms:

• Victim speaks or understands unknown languages without ever studying the language being spoken or heard
• Victim clearly knows things that are distant or hidden
• Victim can predict future events (sometimes through dreams)
• Victim has an intense hatred for holy things
• Victim shows a physical strength far above his age or normal condition

One is left to wonder how the observer is to know that a bit of babbling is actually an “unknown language.” Isn’t an “unknown language” by definition unknown? Likewise, the remaining signs on the list have their faults, which I’ll not go into. Rational thought reveals them.

There are also reasons listed as to why people become “possessed” to begin with:

• Pure Diving Permission (goddidit)
• Subject to a Curse
• Grave Hardening of Sin (sexual perversion, drug use, abortion)
• Proximity to Evil Places or Persons (hanging out with drug users, perverts, abortionists)

Conservative Protestants

The religious nutjobs in the United States who believe in demonic-possession are legion, to borrow a cliche. The Religious Tolerance website echoes a report by ABC’s Good Morning America that over 500 deliverance ministries in the U.S. specialize in exorcising people and, they say, it’s big business. The site also refers to J.F. Cogan’s Demon Possession Handbook for Human Service Workser, a book that attributes many human failings to “demon-possession” including, spousal abuse, child abuse, physical disabilities, childhood learning disabilities, mental illness, etc. Oh, and all serial killers are demon-possessed.

The trend is clear: disavow any human responsibility and deny that it is human nature to do bad things or be imperfect.

The Court Case in Texas

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday threw out a jury award over injuries a 17-year-old girl suffered in an exorcism conducted by members of her old church, ruling that the case unconstitutionally entangled the court in religious matters.

[...]

Laura Schubert testified in 2002 that she was cut and bruised and later experienced hallucinations after the church members’ actions in 1996, when she was 17. Schubert said she was pinned to the floor for hours and received carpet burns during the exorcism, the Austin American-Statesman reported. She also said the incident led her to mutilate herself and attempt suicide. She eventually sought psychiatric help.

She was still in high school and was at an event sponsered by her church’s youth ministry. Initially the girl and her family were awarded $300,000 after a jury found the church liable for abuse and false imprisonment. Now the TX Supreme Court has said that physical abuse and imprisonment are okay aslong as it’s done with a religous intent.

I’m going to delve more into demonic-possession and exorcism in future posts, focusing on both historical and modern cases of this spell of thinking which inflicts humans the world over. I’ll also examine the anthropological, sociological, and psychological aspects of belief in demonic-possession.

Holly Dunsworth is a paleoanthropologist and she writes today’s This I Believe segment titled I Am Evolution. Here’s an excerpt:

Of course I believe evolution.

But that is different from believing in evolution.

To believe in something takes faith, trust, effort, strength. I need none of these things to believe evolution. It just is. My health is better because of medical research based on evolution. My genetic code is practically the same as a chimpanzee’s. My bipedal feet walk on an earth full of fossil missing links. And when my feet tire, those fossils fuel my car.

It’s a short read and you can even click a link to listen to it if you want.

As if my link to AiG in a previous post weren’t enough, I’m going to toss out another to “Creation on the Web” where a former substitute teacher is prattling on about being “expelled” from his part-time teaching gig in a post there titled Censoring Intelligent Design.

The author opens his article by boasting about his “glory days” as the substitute teacher that put on “the biggest elementary school patriotic concert in Arizona state history” at the behest of a governor and a senator. Then he goes on to describe subbing for a science class that showed a movie which he described as “actively disrespecting the Christian families in the school.”

According to the substitute teacher (now author) the video “was a mix of science and anti-religious propaganda” and “the kids sat there like little sponges soaking it up.” It must have been painful for someone so steeped in superstition to have those superstitions challenged. Here’s a quote from the article:

To summarize, it portrayed early religious people—specifically Christians and Jews as it used biblical terminology—as primitive and superstitious. For example, when talking about comets it stated that religious people once thought they were signs from God or the devil. It then explained how science came to the rescue and explained what comets really were. A similar statement was made about lightning being a sign that God was angry. Once again science rescued man from religious superstition.

The author then described how he presented creationism (in the form of intelligent design) to the students as an alternative to actual science and reality and wondered why the district no longer has a need for his services. Duh.

This is the gist of his article. The rest is spent whining over losing his substitute teaching job and not getting an answer why (clearly, he knows why) and with attempting to argue the same tired and debunked social Darwinist, Nazi Holocaust, anti-science, science isn’t perfect crap that creationists do when they really don’t have a genuine and rational argument. Or, perhaps the author truly believes that nonsense -if so, the Washington School District (Glendale, AZ I think) made the correct decision in sacking the guy. He has no business pretending to be an educator.

So if you move to Glendale, AZ, at least you know the school district has something going for it. It’s willing to sack poor educators and willing to provide rational and objective education regardless of the sensibilities of the overly superstitious, like Roger Paull. Because not a single thing that Paull cited in the quote above is inaccurate. The video he remembers was probably The Soul of Science (Paull calls it “science of the soul”), which is a four part series originally published in VHS format in 1996 by Hawkhill associates. The series was designed to provide an overview of the “where, when and why of scientific research and discovery.”

Interestingly enough, this very video is included in the course syllabus for a class titled “History of Scientific Discovery: 1500 to Present (Great Moments in Science).” A class listed by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities no less!