[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Catholic Crackers.

You know, it's funny. People sometimes ask me why I'm not religious, and up until now, my answers were usually a reasonably polite statement somewhere along the lines of "If I'm going to worship something, I need proof that it actually exists. Otherwise, I've got better and more productive things to do with my time."

For the most part, that's been pretty good at giving them the answer they need.

However, all that's changed, and I have a much more valid reason for avoiding religion.

Student Who Took Religious Icon Getting Death Threats
Last Edited: Monday, 07 Jul 2008, 11:38 PM EDT
Created: Monday, 07 Jul 2008, 11:36 PM EDT
By Cheryl Getuiza
FOX 35 NEWS

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) --A UCF student claims he’s getting death threats for messing with something sacred.

Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn’t eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it.

Catholics worldwide became furious.

Yep. The kind, godly folks are issuing death threats because this college kid pocketed a communion wafer. A wafer. A cracker! A tasteless, flat, unleavened mass of dried, crusty flour.

It boggles the mind.

So, now, when someone asks me why I'm not religious, I think I will just flatly tell them that I have absolutely no desire to become so bat-shit insane that I'd issue a fatwa for something so insignificant as not eating a cracker.

For example, I hardly would want to wind up like this crazed loon:

"It is hurtful," said Father Migeul [sic] Gonzalez with the Diocese. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

[...]

Gonzalez said intentionally abusing the Eucharist is classified as a mortal sin in the Catholic church, the most severe possible.

If it's not returned, the community of faith will have to ask for forgiveness."We have to make acts of reparation," Gonzalez said. "The whole community is going to turn to prayer. We'll ask the Lord for pardon, forgiveness, peace, not only for the whole community affected by it, but also for [Cook], we offer prayers for him as well.

It's a cracker. Get over yourselves. How is it possible to kidnap a freakin' cracker? I mean, you can buy boxes and boxes of them.

Perhaps the funniest thing I've encountered in all of this is the demand that I respect their religion, and you really have to stop and ask yourselves, not so much why, but how could anyone ever respect something so petty, so small, so childish and so horribly insane?

Seriously. If your delusions are so crippling that you believe you are justified in issuing death threats against your fellow human being for reasons so comically insignificant as stealing a cracker, how far do you believe you are from blowing up newspaper buildings for printing a cartoon that offends you?

I respect people. And, in the past, I've tried to respect all religions, but I think religion is quickly destroying the world. It's turning man against man, and countless people are dying every single day as a result of religion. There are just too many wars. So, in light of that, the last thing anyone should do is respect something which is so malignant to humanity as a species. For the sake of the generations which will inevitably follow us, all these mixed up, divisive beliefs built around the foolish, elitist notion of eternal entitlement should be marginalized so humanity can regain its common sense and reason. After all, threatening someone's life for stealing a cracker is not what anyone would consider reasonable. And, if it is reasonable to you, then I truly do pity you.

So, from now on, I think this story, and others like it, will most likely provide all I need so as to answer those who question and scold me for not blindly following something which can so easily be used to foster violence and hatred.

It may be a little more dangerous, but at least I'm not going to be beating peopleup for really silly reasons.

-Dan

P.S. PZ Myers wrote a delightful and very entertaining piece on this, and it is well worth the read.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 7/09/2008 12:28:00 AM