Symbol Wars

Over at Pharyngula, there's a huge bunfight on the subject of communion wafers. It's pretty much been discussed to death, but I'll put my two cents in as well, because this is the web, right?

I'll skip lightly over the specifics, except to note that I'm unlikely to be sympathetic to the Catholic side of this argument. I am, after all, not just an atheist, but a protestant atheist. And they are complaining that somebody held onto a communion wafer for several days instead of... eating it. This is a hate crime? If the KKK would confine themselves to illegally downloading hip-hop tracks and conspicuously not playing them, the world would be a better place.

So I am sympathetic to PZ's wish to ridicule them. They deserve it. And yet... deliberately abusing a communion wafer is a flag-burning. Communion does no harm to PZ- it's mostly done in churches, in semi-private; it doesn't wake people up like church bells, or kill people like making condoms illegal. Or even damage them like hidden sexual abuse.

I don't know what PZ plans to do with the wafers he's being sent, but whatever it is the message will most likely be one of pure hostility - he'll look like a jerk. Yes, communion is silly; but let's confine the argument to areas where the church does real harm. Publicly ship condoms to Africa, for example. Attacking the church for things it does wrong sends a message "leave the rest of us alone". Attacking it just for being itself sends a message "we know where you live".

Of course, the people threatening the original wafer-taker (I hesitate to call him a thief; the church was handing these things out, and just didn't approve of his use of it) are of course much worse than PZ. He's not threatening anyone, except perhaps for the Eucharist, which as a representative of an omnipotent deity can probably take care of itself. Especially given it was expected to be eaten. And there's no way PZ deserves to be sacked for this, much less threatened with physical harm.

All that said, I'll be interested to see what PZ does do. I hope it's something genuinely creative; something that actually makes people think, instead of some clumsy toilet-flushing incident.