I don’t know what to make of the story of PZ Myers desecration of the holy communion. It begins with a college student named Webster Cook was given the piece of ‘Christ’s Body’ at Holy Communion, and apparently not knowing that the wafer is supposed to be consumed immediately, walked off with it in his pocket to show it to a friend. The noted militant secularist PZ Myers defended the lad on his blog, and made a throwaway statement about wanting somebody to send him a piece of consecrated wafer so that he could desecrate it.

Having provoked outrage in the wider world he then went on to put up a blog post reflecting on some of the email he has since received. Suffice to say, much of it is just as bad as you might expect. My favourites have got to be “I won’t mince words. Myers is an evil man. And as evil men, particularly evil intellectuals, tend to be, he is also a mad man as are most of his acolytes and followers.” and “If you REALLY want to do a courageous, revolutionary act, defecate publicly on a copy of the Quran”. What PZ Myers then goes on to say, though, is probably among the greatest acts of baiting and goading I have ever seen performed by an atheist upon the Catholics. It’s glorious:

OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat… it’s just a cracker. I wasn’t going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.

By the way, 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 humanity’s 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.

I just don’t know whether to be euphoric, shocked, appalled or a combination of all three.

Thankyou, PZ Myers, for your outstanding contribution.