The Clockwork Chartophylax

PZ Myers – noted atheist, cracker perforator and squid fancier – was in Dublin tonight to lend his support to Atheist Ireland (AI) and their campaign against the Dermot Ahern blasphemy law and for a secular constitution and education system in Ireland.

And I got to meet him! (And a gracious, soft-spoken gent he was – not a lick of fire-breath or a squirm of tentacle in sight).

PZ Myers in Dublin

Fanboi frothing aside, PZ spoke on several topics along with Michael Nugent of AI, ranging from the many ways that the Dermot Ahern Blasphemy Bill is both stupid and dangerous to his experiences in dealing with evangelical pastors who accuse him and science lecturers in general of undermining their children’s faith. As PZ put it – it’s as if fundamentalists are teaching their kids that the sky is green and that they will go to hell if they think anything else. All universities do is ask those kids to look up.

Earlier PZ had been on the Tom McGurk show on 4FM and was subjected a tirade of righteous outrage from Senator Ronan Mullen. The good senator’s argument basically amounted to calling PZ stupid -  his arguments were “intellectually weak” and he didn’t understand “the nuances of western society” where people are free to express themselves as they wish – just so long as they don’t do anything that might offend a religious person, that is.

Ronan wants to avoid people being gratuitously offensive about religion – though what he didn’t say was that he actually voted against the blasphemy bill when he failed to get an exception allowing religious people to blaspheme against other religions put into the text.

Ronan’s heartfelt love for western freedoms didn’t stop him expressing a bit of fatwa envy though – PZ wouldn’t think of pulling such a stunt in a Muslim country – ha-ha, so there! What Ronan also failed to mention was that several Muslim countries have expressed their their enthusiasm for the new Irish blasphemy law and want to use its form of words for an international law to ban defamation of religion.

PZ Myers is plotting your downfall. Or thinking about squid. Probably both.

Ronan did think, though, that as a scientist, PZ shouldn’t be so irrational and admit that all the claims of the great religions are possible – except for that Creationist stuff, of course. The Virgin Birth, the Flood, Muhammad travelling from Mecca to Jerusalem and back  in a single night on a flying horse – all perfectly possible, but the literal truth of the Creation – sure only a gullible fool could believe that.

Tom McGurk, meanwhile, was hardly the paragon of journalistic impartiality. First, he claimed that the Blasphemy Law had been brought in because of  “Constitutional changes in other parts” what ever the hell that means. Then Tom got audibly annoyed when PZ said that the Eucharist was an empty superstition to him and snapped back that PZ was unqualified to discuss the matter. (So Tom McGurk thinks a  man is not qualified to discuss his own opinions about the Eucharist – that’s what priests are for, eh, Tom?)

Tom then claimed that the Eucharist was the central part of post-Renaissance tradition in Europe, neatly missing the point of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

McGurk then tried to claim that the blasphemy prohibition in the Constitution was to protect Jews from anti-Semitism in the 30’s – a claim that appears to be as untrue as it is ironic, given that host desecration was used as pretext to launch pogroms against Jews in Medieval Europe. Though the 1937 Constitution did offer protection to Jews in Ireland, it was provided explicitly in Article 44.1.3  (which was removed by the Fifth Amendment in 1973) and not by the blasphemy provision in Article 40.

Tom couldn’t see why anyone would be upset by a blasphemy law .  No, Tom thinks that blasphemy laws are just great “to stop people like you [PZ] writing this kind of crap”. The thought that his assertions about the Eucharist could be seen as blasphemous by any number of religions obviously never crossed his mind.

McGurk later claimed that PZ’s desecration of the cracker and his reasons for it was “close to racism” and that PZ would be arrested in the US if he’d said similar things about blacks or Jews – because attacking religious symbols and beliefs is exactly the same attacking people because of their race or religion. Tom’s clearly not heard about the First Amendment, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t have much truck with people having the freedom to say what they like.

But then, as a rugby commentator done good, it’s clear Tom’s not exactly qualified to discuss theology, European history or American Constitutional law.

So seriously, dude, stick to the odd shaped balls.

Posted on February 2nd, 2010 under Ireland, atheism • Tags: 4fm, atheism, atheist ireland, blasphemy, dublin, Ireland, law, myers, PZ, pz myers, ronan mullen, tom mcgurk. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback