In a posting at his web site Pharyngula for July 10, 2008, University of Minnesota, Morris associate professor of biology and atheist activist P.Z. Myers, screeded on an episode featuring one Webster Cook, a University of Central Florida undergraduate who attended a Mass on campus. He had stood in line to receive the Eucharist. But instead of eating it as to take part of the Sacrament of Communion he took it back to his seat to show his friend and then held onto what Catholics call "the Host" for a week before returning it after several people threatened his life:

I find this all utterly unbelievable. It's like Dark Age superstition and malice, all thriving with the endorsement of secular institutions here in 21st century America. It is a culture of deluded lunatics calling the shots and making human beings dance to their mythical bunkum.

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them - my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure - but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address.
Just wait. Now there'll be a team of Jesuits assigned to rifle through my mail every day.

But if Myers was provocative, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue was more so.  In one of his counter-screeds, Bill Bluster declared:

"Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has 'declared a fatwa' against him. He should know better -- I don't need others to do the fighting for me. I'm quite good at it myself. But he'd better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won't be hard to connect the dots.

"Myers, who claims expertise in studying zebrafish, has quite a following among the King Kong Theory of Creation gang. Indeed, we've been inundated with hate mail from all over the world, and it all stems from those whose alleged god is reason.

Myers then responded in kind:

That is the true power of the cracker, this silly symbol of superstition. Fortunately, Catholicism has mellowed with age - the last time a Catholic nation rose up to slaughter its non-Christian citizenry was a whole 70 years ago, after all - but the sentiment still lingers. Catholicism has been actively poisoning the minds of its practitioners with the most amazing bullshit for years, and until recently, I had no idea that a significant number of people actually believed this nonsense, or that the hatred was still simmering there, waiting for an opportunity to rise up in misplaced defense of absurdity.

Let's consider a few points regarding this rhetorical barroom brawl which brought out the worst kinds of yahooism from their respective partisans: First, the "cracker" of which Myers speaks is the Eucharist. For Catholics such as myself  (who like Myers, are liberals and believe in evolution) believe it to be the Body of Christ.

One might argue that because communion wafers mean nothing to him, why should he have to worry about what they mean to others? But Myers has gratuitously insulted what I and many other Catholics of good will also believe to be sacred. He has recklessly lumped me in with Nazis, some of whom also professed to be Christians -- both Catholics and Protestants. And he creates simplistic categories of atheist/good/intelligent and faithful people/bad/ignorant.  Reality is nowhere near that clear-cut.

Why does Professor Myers feel the need to insult the beliefs of others? He claims to be a liberal. Yet such confrontational behavior is both illiberal and unenlightened. "I never will, by any word or act" wrote Thomas Jefferson, "bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."  While Jefferson avoided the shrine of intolerance, Professor Myers appears to be a pilgrim and cult follower. Myers' desecration of a Eucharist does nothing to ennoble the cause of reason. Instead, it only creates an atmosphere where fellow citizens with differing views of God and different religious practices opinions on the existence of God view each other, as Robert F. Kennedy observed; "as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered."

Secondly, Myers' allusion to that "Catholic nation" of seventy years ago is an obvious reference to pre-Second World War Germany. However, Germany in 1938 was far from being a predominantly Catholic country. Actually, the breakdown back then was about two-thirds Protestant (mostly being Lutheran) and one-third was Roman Catholic. Such rhetoric exposes Myers as an intellectually lazy and ignorant bigot, who violates Godwin's Law; (the use of inflammatory rhetoric or exaggerated comparisons to Hitler and Nazism). His "cracker" comment is a distraction from the point that Myers tries to blame Catholicism for the Holocaust! Didn't we last hear that one from John Hagee?

As for the self-appointed defender of all-things-Catholic, Bill Donohue, it is incredible that the Catholicism-as-Nazism analogy went right past him (or did it?). But beyond that, he really ought to know more about his own professed faith.

First of all, when Donohue derides those of us who believe in evolution as "the King Kong Theory of Creation gang" he derides many of his fellow Catholics, including the late Pope John Paul II who in 1996 described the theory of evolution, "...as more than an hypothesis." And contrary to what Donohue rants about, it runs contrary to a 2006 Vatican statement issued by the Vatican's astronomer Guy J. Consolmagno S.J., who flatly stated, "Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which [turns] God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not necessarily be a good thing to do." In fact, in 2009 the Vatican will be hosting a symposium on why evolution and creation as described in Genesis are compatible.

By the way, the initials "S.J." following Father Consolmagno's name stands for Society of Jesus. The astronomer-priest is one of the supposed anti-science Jesuits P.Z. Myers sarcastically claimed is coming after him. But back to Donohue, who said:  "Indeed, we've been inundated with hate mail from all over the world, and it all stems from those whose alleged god is reason."

Bill should know that Catholicism's emphasis on reason is one of the things that distinguishes it from Protestant fundamentalism. The natural law principles he and his fellow Catholic Right reactionaries constantly cite in opposing homosexual rights and embryonic stem cell research is nothing more than St. Thomas Aquinas interpreting such non-Catholic thinkers such as Aristotle and Cicero, all believers in reason.

The rub comes because Myers and his ilk want the conflict. They are provocative in their language because in fact they (just like Donohue and his ilk) do not respect the sensibilities of others. They feed on conflict and don't care about the consequences.

In one corner we have P.Z. Meyers who wants open conflict with the Catholic League and in the other is Blusterin' Bill Donohue who earns more than $325,000 a year obliging folks such as Myers. The strident clash with the strident, with no interest in cooperation or commonality; no search for seeking out that which unites us, not divides as Americans. Such engagements leave all sides only with bitterness, anger and the need to endlessly continue this unproductive game of one-upsmanship.

And still in this debacle of what passes for debate it is clearly Donohue who is the more pernicious actor. Representing an organization ostensibly based upon Catholic principles, he egregiously raises the stakes in a dangerously escalating game of highly charged rhetoric. His bombastic diatribes only encourage those who are threatening the Minnesota professor with bodily harm and death. Is that truly "the Catholic response" Donohue seeks? If it is, it ultimately harms the Catholic cause, one that should be based on pitying and turning the other check to the likes of P. Z. Myers. Jesus would not have resorted to rallying the mob -- and neither should Donohue.

All of this brings us to the terrible shootings at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville.   Jim D. Adkisson is the man accused of the July 27, 2008 killing of two people and wounding six others during a children's musical at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. According to the Associated Press:

A four-page letter found in Adkisson's SUV indicated he picked the church for the attack because, the Knoxville police chief said, "he hated the liberal movement" of the congregation.

Adkisson "stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country," investigator Steve Still wrote.

Adkisson was a loner who hates "blacks, gays and anyone different from him," longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

A search of Adkisson's home uncovered material from several right-wing talking heads:

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

While there is no evidence that the rhetoric of Savage, Hannity and O'Reilly dumped gasoline on the anti-liberal and otherwise hateful rages of a disturbed man, it certainly does raise the question in my mind. Meanwhile, professional and amateur provocateurs like Myers, Donohue and Adkinsson's favorite talk show hosts continue to dominate our public discourse with bogus issues, false outrage, and inflammatory rhetoric.

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