I don't tend to make political or religious posts on my blog. Let's be honest, I don't make many posts on any subject on my blog! So, please feel free to ignore this post.
However, I wanted to post on this subject. P Z Myers, the author of the blog Pharyngula and biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, has (intentionally) got himself into the cross-hairs of Bill Donohue's Catholic League, for the (according to Donohue) heinous crime of desecrating a cracker. The back-story can be found quite easily on Pharyngula, and many other places around the web, so I won't go into it here.
Myers has been taking a lot of abuse for his threats against crackers, with many idiots describing his behaviour as inciting hatred of Catholics, and calling for his dismissal from his position at UMM. As you may be able to tell from my tone so far, I'm entirely on Myers side in this. It is not inciting hatred to say that someone's beliefs are nonsense. It is not inciting hatred to say that they're idiots for believing something ridiculous. It is not inciting hatred to damage a cracker.
It may be inciting ridicule, or scorn, or contempt. But so what? There's no opinion, belief, or practice that people shouldn't be able to treat with ridicule, scorn or contempt. Someone may fervently and honestly believe that the cracker in question is the actual body of their god. Who knows, David Icke may believe the nonsense he spouts as well. I'm also sure that plenty of Daily Mail readers believe the tripe printed in their paper. And I don't see why any of them should be exempt from having the piss taken or their beliefs mocked. No one should.
I completely fail to see why a religious belief is priviledged over any other belief (and there are plenty of far more eloquent discussions on this subject at Butterflies & Wheels than I can make). I see no difference at all between saying that the Bible is a dangerous book, stuffed full of appalling immorality, and providing a lousy guide for how to behave, and making the same statement about the Daily Mail or the Independant, say. I see no difference at all between saying that people are idiots for having religious beliefs and saying that people are idiots for being Tories, Greens, or Socialists.
I'm also with Dawkins in his point that it makes no more sense to talk about a Christian child than it does a Conservative child; both are systems of belief that people either absorb as they're growing up (and in many cases fail to throw off), or they're belief systems that they adopt as adults. In either case, it's a very different thing to an innate characteristic such as the colour of their skin, or their gender, or their sexual orientation, and certainly shouldn't be protected in the same way through anti-discrimination legislation.
Anyway, vent over. This blog shall now return to its normal program of sporadic posting on non-controversial subjects.