What bit of woo would you be MOST likely to believe?

[Pale Blue Dot]

They posited this question on "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe" podcast a few weeks ago and an interesting discussion followed. I believe alien visitation was the most popular answer.

I'm going to go with what Jay Novella said on the podcast (and for which he was roundly criticized): I would be most likely to believe in a MIHOP/LIHOP conspiracy for 9/11. Not any of the "steel can't melt" or "it wasn't a plane that hit the Pentagon" crap, but more a general feeling that it's not out of the question that one or two very high-ranking officials, who perhaps had ties to the Saudi government, could have fed information to Bin Laden that would have been useful - such as a good day or time to strike. This "conspiracy" would only have to involve a very small number of people AND, given the character of people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, would not be absolutely out of the question.

Of course, I realize that there is absolutely no evidence of this and there probably never will be - even if it happened to be true. But that's the object of this game: What bit of woo are you LEAST skeptical about?

[TZ]

1. Mmm

If pressed a version of LIHOP perhaps. I have a DU friend who does a lot of government investigations and has been very persuasive in her arguments that our government may have known that something was up, but didn't try to hard to stop it..The Bush-Saudi connection I suppose.

[varkam]

2. I think what Rebecca said is pretty good...

IIRC, she said that she is the least skeptical about the "bigfoot" thing. Not that the bigfoot is living in the woods per se, but that there are probably critters out there, maybe even some fantastical ones, that we have not yet discovered.

But since that may or may not be woo, I guess I'd have to say that I could buy into LIHOP, but not MIHOP.

[realisticphish]

4. between those two

i agree with you; LIHOP is far easier for them to pull off

[realisticphish]

3. i think

that it would be UFO's. I think that was steve's, and his reasons are pretty much mine. Nothing illogical about it in theory

[Heddi]

5. Hmmm

I would believe

LIHOP/MIHOP. I kind of do already, or at least I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility. I find too many "conveniences" about it and even ON 9/11 I remember sitting on the couch with my husband, watching planes fly into buildings and plumes of smoke fill the largest city in the world, and I said "Everything's going to change now. Things are going to be very different, I bet". And they were, and they are. If it wasn't planned or at least made easier (I like the OP's explanation, which is something I've never thought about before, and it makes sense), then it was the biggest most perfectly timed and planned gift the Fascists could have ever asked for. And I just don't believe that to be the case

Extraterrestrial life - The basic idea of "laws of probability" make it impossible for me to believe that planet Earth contains the only "life" (as we know it, anyway) in this very very infinite universe. I don't necessarily believe it is in any form we would necessarily recognize, but I think there is something else out there. Not carbon based, maybe not even "intelligent". Could be yeast, could be God. I don't know, but I think there is a very large chance there may be something out there.

Oh, and that vaccines cause your tits to fall off. That one i'm pretty sure of.

[realisticphish]

6. the thing about L/M

is that yes, there are massive coincidences, and sometimes things fall into people's laps. Look at the Reichstag; the historical consensus is that, pretty much, a communist burnt the place down trying to inspire a soviet style revolution. Hitler just used the events to his advantage, and did so brilliantly.

Or the Zimmerman telegram, which essentially pulled the U.S. into WWI, and more or less breaking Germany's back

I've just found so much anomaly hunting and post hoc reasoning re: 9/11 that i think people's political views get into the way of logic. I have found no reason to think that muslim terrorists did not fly large planes into the buildings, causing their fall. And as to an insider giving info, etc... why? Why would they need it? There's nothing significant about september 11th, and it's not as if their plan was horribly complicated. Get knife, board plane, hijack plane, fly into building. Not a lot more the men in black could have done to help them out.

I'm not trying to attack you or anything, I just don't feel that there is any reason to think that there was any aid or even non-hindrance by the Bush administration. There COULD have been, as the OP says, but I just haven't found anything that makes me think there was.

[Heddi]

16. don't get me wrong

I don't think that bush was sitting there giving a detailed flight plan to the hijackers or anything like that (and just for the record, I absolutely, unequivocably do not believe anything remotely related to remote controlled planes, planted bombs, missles hitting the pentagon, etc).

I suppose my beliefs are that there were warnings that were ignored and they were ignored because 1)they didn't care and 2)if there was an attack, then it could be used to further pre-planned ideas to go to Iraq, etc. I don't think the magnitude of 9/11 was ever considered. Maybe a plane, maybe 200 people that could be martyrs for Republicanism and a cause to go to war in the middle east....

But what...3,000 dead? 4 planes? I don't think they had THAT in mind AT. ALL. Never.

We were really good buds with Bin Laden for a while. We were working actively with the Taliban in the months before 9/11. The idea that this was being planned and we knew NOTHING about it is unbelievable--we know the attack plan was known (to a degree--BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN US) and nothing was done about it. It was seen as being a political advantage, maybe we can even THWART it...that would be a morale booster, right?

But it didn't happen that way, it happened the way it happened, and we're living the results now and for many years to come.

I remember on 9/11 or 9/12 when they found the rental car in boston, and in the trunk was the KORAN (omg! wtf! lol!) AND the flight manual in Arabic...I'm like "this is too fucking convenient". Seriously. And the lies afterwards---passports surviving a plane crash INTO a building which then BURNS FOR HOURS before CRASHING INTO THE GROUND....and a passport survives? A PASSPORT FROM THE BURNING PLANE?

I believe more LIHOP because it's proven they did nothing to thwart the attack, so they did LET it happen...on purpose? well it certainly gave us supposed cause to go to the middle east. However, once the attack happened, they went into full propaganda mode and THAT makes me have even more pause about it. It's horrible enough as it is, why the extra spin? The surviving passports, etc?

Sorry. Me no t ype good today and i'm having to curtailwhat I want to say because the FUCKING SPACE BAR WON'T WORK RIGHT argh. Of course, I could use the other computer, but that would entail prying myself off the sofa....

[HamdenRice]

26. Have you ever read the European press on this?

What do you think of this article from Le Monde (the NY Times of France)?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x678886

Incidentally, the author of the story was prosecuted under French law for violating their official secrets law, thereby confirming the authenticity of the leaked documents on which the story was based.

How can you reconcile this story with a theory of 9/11 that has the US not knowing what was coming?

[cosmik debris]

27. Bogus

The prosecution does not confirm the content of the documents, only that the documents were secret.

Not all secret documents are true, accurate or correct.

(unless they are recently discovered documents from the Soviet archive) :rofl:

[TZ]

28. I want to know

Why the European press (and from what I hear Le Monde doesn't have a sterling rep. they seem to like to publish a lot of stuff without evidence) is somehow more credible than other press?

[HamdenRice]

32. So do you approach evidence

with the assumption that everything in the press is wrong or that the facts are the opposite of whatever the press reports?

That's not a very "skeptical" approach to rules of evidence.

[TZ]

34. I approach it this way

The press very rarely gets it all right..or even close. How do I know? Experience watching the idiots trying to report on science particularly biology...There is no reason to think they report anything else differently.
They also misinterpret alot!
personally I think if you are looking for "facts" you can find more of those in the evening weather report than in the news.

[HamdenRice]

38. Assuming the press always gets it wrong is about as blanket a statement

as the idea that the pharma companies are only out to rip off patients and have no interest in safety and effectiveness of their drugs.

Given the professional rules of journalism, I would assume that what is printed in the NY Times or Le Monde is generally true (although what is left out is equally important).

Fox, is of course, a special case.

Assuming that the truth of events is the opposite of everything that's in the major credible newspapers isn't warranted by the facts and is a bit tin foil hatty and woo wooish in my opinion.

[TZ]

41. I don't think they get certain things wrong

For example where people are..or certain factual things..but they spin a lot of stuff and misinterpret alot. I believe the phrase "taking with a grain of salt" is actually fairly accurate.
I prefer going to sources myself..political experts and such..I have a lot of inside the beltway connections (including a congressional scholar relative-who is also a media specialist, a lobbyist and others..I tend to get my info straight from the horses mouth..and thats why I know that when the media reports on politics and political events..there is ALOT to be desired.)

[LeftishBrit]

50. Probably because American readers are less familiar with the faults of the Europaean press

than with those of Fox News, etc.

I will say right now that the British press as a whole is pretty dodgy. The BBC is not at all bad; but most newspapers are a different matter. The 'broadsheets' are much better than the tabloids; but even the former need to be read critically.

[HamdenRice]

31. Not a strong argument at all, I'm afraid

But then again, you never, ever provide logical, compelling or interesting arguments. So I'll just let your comment pass into the obscurity it richly deserves.

[cosmik debris]

33. That doesn't make sense,

But you seldom do.

[HamdenRice]

37. If it doesn't make sense to you ...

that may be a result of limitations in your understanding, rather than the sense in the post to which you are responding.

[cosmik debris]

39. Blame others.

Isn't that part of your SOP, or do I have you confused with some other pissy agitator?

[TZ]

35. ....

:rofl:

Sure, whatever you say HR...

[muriel_volestrangler]

52. As I pointed out in that thread, that's about a hijack from Frankfurt

and whether a warning about a hijacking from Germany of a transatlantic flight, from January 2001, should mean a permanent assumption that all US domestic flights were being targeted is highly debatable.

[HamdenRice]

54. No it definitely was not about a hijacking from Germany of a transatlantic flight

The author of the le Monde article mentions the German hijacking discussions merely as an example of the level of penetration by French intelligence of AQ. He is saying, French intelligence was there when they were trying to figure out what the target was. At first it was Germany, but then, with the French watching, they decided on their final targets, American Airlines and United.

The intelligence warnings to the Bush administration were not merely generalized warnings hijackings or terrorism, but warnings about the specific identities of the plotters and what they were planning to do.

[muriel_volestrangler]

55. The *only* time they mention hijacking, it's from Frankfurt

It's not 'an example', it's the sole time the article gets specific. American and United both fly to the States from Frankfurt, and, when you're deciding on a hijack, the place the flight goes from is more important than which airline you choose.

In fact, the AFP report says it also specified they were going to divert the plane(s) to Afghanistan:

The plan was to hijack a plane flying to the United States from Frankfurt in Germany and take it to Kandahar in Afghanistan, according to a file compiled by the DGSE external intelligence service and seen by AFP.

The presumed chief September 11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, ran an al-Qaeda cell in the German city of Hamburg.

The plot was allegedly drawn up by al-Qaeda with the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and Chechen rebels.

But there was no discussion of flying the plane to the United States to smash it into a building there, which is what Al-Qaeda hijackers did when they seized four planes in September 2001 in attacks that left 3000 people dead.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/france-told-us-of-alqaeda-plans-report/2007/04/17/1176696771679.html

What this shows is that al Qaeda planned, for over a year, to do some sort of hijack of a western plane; the article points out that American and United, whose planes were hijacked in the actual attack, were also on the list - but it doesn't say that French intelligence knew those 2 had been picked out before Sept 11:

From January 2001, the leadership of al-Qaeda was visible to the eyes and ears of French spies. The authors of this report even detail the disagreements between terrorists on precisely how to conduct the hijacking. They never doubt their intention. At first, the jihadists want to get an airplane going from Frankfurt to the US. They set up a list of 7 possible companies. Two will finally be chosen by the pirates of September 11: American Airlines and United Airlines. In the introduction, the author of the note announces: "According to Uzbek intelligence services, the hijacking of an airplane seem to have been discussed in early 2000 at a meeting in Kabul among the representatives of the bin Laden organization."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=678886&mesg_id=687057

The AP report, that you thought was so distorted, says the same, listing the 7 airlines:

The note listed potential targets: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Air France and Lufthansa. The list also included a mention of "US Aero," but it was unclear exactly what that referred to.

Two of the airlines, United and American, were targeted months later on Sept. 11.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-16-france-sept11_N.htm?csp=34

Personally, I'd guess 'US Aero' was 'US Airways', which also uses Frankfurt.

This is more evidence that Bush was negligent in not taking reports like this, and "determined to strike in the US", seriously - taken together, they might have meant that all security, in the US and outside it, should have been on high alert until further notice. But this wasn't a warning of a domestic hijack, and it gave no clue about flying planes into buildings.

Your claim that anyone knew "the specific identities of the plotters and what they were planning to do" is completely unsupported by anything linked to in that thread.

[cosmik debris]

7. I won't know until someone slaps me up side the head and says

"What were you thinking?"

It would have to be something personal. I'm not going to commit to believing something that doesn't matter to me. It is just too easy to say "so what, I don't care who killed Kennedy!". If LIHOP/MIHOP is true, there is nothing I can do about it, and not much it can do about me.

[Lisa0825]

8. LIHOP.

I think they had strong indications that something was going to happen, and did little to prevent it, not thinking it would be as big as it was, because they knew it would further their cause. I don't think they would have allowed it to happen had they known the magnitude, but I do think that its possible that key items were ignored and/or buried.

[WoodrowFan]

9. my problem with LIHOP

My problem with LIHOP is that I think they would have arranged it for Bush to look heroic that day instead of sitting and looking like a fool. I just think they (i.e. the decision-makers in the Bush admin) didn't take the threat seriously and so got caught with their pants down. Bin Laden was a "Clinton-thing" and so, like global warming, not an issue they needed to take seriously. Oops.


What CT would I most likely think was true? I guess that the mob had JFK killed. The "CIA did it" never made any sense to me. The CIA proved their worth to JFK with the Cuban Missle Crisis so the idea that he was about to somehow disolve the CIA for the Bag of Pigs (two years later) is silly. Still, having read "Case Closed" I have no doubt LHO did it.

My other "most likely to be true" CT would be that powerful RW wealthy southerners were part of a plot to have MLK killed.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

20. I hold the same opinion about LIHOP

Though LIHOP is the most feasible of any alternative 9/11 conspiracy theory, it's still full of gaping holes (with you mentioning a particularly large one, that of Bush looking like an idiot).

[Pale Blue Dot]

21. In my pet, non-fact based theory,

Bush was out of the loop. In my theory bin Laden got help on the timing from Cheney or Rumsfeld, who deliberately kept bush out of it because he's an idiot and because they wanted plausible deniability.

Again, I'm not working with actual facts here, so cut me some slack. :D

[varkam]

40. That's a good point re: LIHOP...

that I had never considered before.

[Warpy]

48. With you right down the line

Had they known specifically what was to happen on 9/11, they'd have written Stupid a better script than just brushing his ass out of town for the day and having him sit like a bump on a log at a meaningless photo op waiting for somebody to tell him what to do next.

Jack Ruby was the giveaway to the Kennedy assassination, a minor mob figure with a cancer diagnosis sent in to shut Oswald up quickly and permanently. The mob had hoped to get their playground back after an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy had fouled that up for them.

Even Ray finally admitted he hadn't acted alone, so that one's more plausible than the lone gunman myth in the MLK shooting.

The other one I find more plausible than alternate explanations is that the anthrax mailings were an inside job.

[semillama]

10. To be honest, Sasquatch.

I've spent some time looking at what folks like Dr. Jeff Meldrum and Dr. Grover Krantz have had to say, and it becomes less easy to dismiss the possibility. I still think it's pretty incredible to think there's a large, unknown North American bipedal primate running around in remote areas of the continent and we haven't been able to confirm it with a body, but then I also think it's pretty incredible that there are hoaxers out there who can fool experts in primate locomotion and primate dermal ridge patterns, too. The Patterson-Gimlin film is still pretty troubling as well - I've read about recent analysis on the film and if that's a dude in a suit, it's an astounding feat on its own to produce something that comes across in a lot of biomechanical analyses as not quite human.

I also just enjoy reading about some of the truly weird and truly impossible bigfoot stories as well - such as the woman down in Kentucky who claims she has conversations with a Bigfoot family whose hobbies include running down deer for food and braiding the hair of her horses!

Then there was the recent crackpot who claimed there's evidence in the PG film for a "Bigfoot Massacre" at Bluff creek, and you can make out a gunshot wound on "Patty" as she strides away...

[TZ]

12. Mmph. I forgot about cryptozoology

Actually it would be the woo I would most LIKE to believe. I would sooo love it if there was a Loch Ness monster et al that were modern day plesiosaurs..that would be very cool.

[semillama]

19. Once you start looking into cryptozoology, it's easy to get hooked

At the very least, it's imaginative, entertaining reading. And a lot of cryptozoology folks are interested in not just the mythical beasties, but in the "ethno-known" but not scientifically described creatures out there - the animals that are known to native groups but are unknown to science. The discovery of a herd of Wood Bison up in northwestern Canada recently, for example, caused a bit of a stir among the CZ crowd, and of course the whole Homo floresiensis controversy has special interest in the world of CZ because it appears to be fossil evidence of an ethno-known cryptid hominid, Ebu Gogo.

And if you want some really fascinating reading, pick up Dr. Jeff Meldrum's "Sasquatch: Where Legend Meets Science" - which lays out the scientific analysis of the evidence of Sasquatch. It's great reading just for how foot anatomy can be inferred from footprints.

[WoodrowFan]

45. it is fun

it is fun. I'd like to think the Jersey Devil was real, it'd be a great story. And the discovery of any previously overlooked animal is cool.

[jberryhill]

49. Especially if it is a tasty animal /nt

[dropkickpa]

56. Me too!

If for no other reason that it's fun, silly, and HARMLESS. Oooo, dinosaur in the lake, it's not going to cause someone to hate someone else, harm the health of anyone, encourage bigotry, and anything else that's just yucky. It would cause an even greater surge in little kids love of dinosaurs, which is just cool!

[onager]

11. Probably a JFK conspiracy.

And for many of the excellent points Woodrow Fan made.

Damned if I can figure out exactly WHO was conspiring, so in true Woo-woo Style, I will just spin some of the factlets I know right off the top of this sadly abused thing I call my head.

If any of this tickles your fancy, you can read MUCH more about it with an easy Google.

The CIA Angle: Castro took power in Cuba on 1 Jan 1959, and shortly thereafter, the CIA started trying to kill him.

I've read that, many times from 1959-63, Cuba sent back-channel diplomatic messages to the US, telling them to knock off the assassination attempts. AFAIK, not a single CIA hit on Castro ever stayed a secret. And no wonder. The CIA worked with the Miami Cuban refugee community, which was riddled with Cuban intelligence agents. (You and I can figure that out, apparently Allen Dulles couldn't.)

So maybe Cuba sent its final message on 22 Nov 1963. Thru a former member of the "Fair Play For Cuba Committee," Lee H. Oswald.

I think the idea that the CIA plotted to kill JFK is way off base. He did threaten to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces" after the Bay Of Pigs fiasco. But by 1963 he was reportedly getting along much better with the spooks.

The Mob Angle: the CIA was also working with Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss of New Orleans, on Castro assassination attempts. And Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, with whom JFK allegedly shared a mistress, Judith Campbell Exner.

The mob bosses felt burned by the whole Kennedy family. After getting out the invaluable Cemetery Vote for JFK in Illinois and West Virginia, they were rewarded by Robert Kennedy conducting more than 10 times the number of organized-crime investigations that Eisenhower's Justice Department ever did.

Wild Card: Those investigations pulled in the Teamsters, at the time loaning the mob its pension fund to build Las Vegas casinos. According to one story, Jimmy Hoffa was working in his office on 22 Nov 1963 when an aide ran in and said "Kennedy is dead." Supposedly Hoffa only asked: "WHICH Kennedy?"

[CanSocDem]

13. I was going to ask....

if, on some events, you don't believe the "woo".....then what do you believe???? The government analysis?

Nice to see that some of you haven't fallen that far yet....

Personally, I am most likely to believe that there has been a corporate conspiracy over the past 50 years to DE-educate American citizens.

This, of course is 'deep' woo, so you may not even be aware of it yet.


.

[TZ]

14. Yes of course

I didn't learn anything with my zoology degree. All I learned was what my dad's employer (GE eeek scary!) wanted me to beleive.
I would say its the American education system thats failed the American people sadly (and perhaps OTHER school systems).
Critical thinking skills obviously not taught ....
And as I said before, alot of the stuff the 9/11 commission talked about is pretty logical actually IF you actually look at things rationally--obviously there were warning signs that our government didn't take seriously..but anybody who thinks the BOOBS we have in govt could do something so smart..Thats why I laugh at the conspiroids..those idiots could never pull that crap off..Yes..I'm saying this: Al-Quaeda showed it was more intelligent than our so called intelligence organizations
To think the government always tells the truth...and the government NEVER tells the truth two sides of the same coin of fuzzy logic.

[CanSocDem]

15. What's more amazing....

"...obviously there were warning signs that our government didn't take seriously..but anybody who thinks the BOOBS we have in govt could do something so smart..."


...is that you still think your "government" is in charge.(...of anything.)





.

[LeftyMom]

17. I'm kind of fond of the one that Aliester Crowley is Barbara Bush's father.

Okay, that one turned out to be an April Fools Day hoax, but Bar still looks suspiciously like Evil Uncle Al in drag.

And, hoax or no, it still makes more sense than homeopathy, the crapture or 9/11ths of the crap in the 9/11 forum.

[mr blur]

18. That Big yak is behind EVERYthing,

Other than that it would seem the height of arrogance to assume that we would be the only signs of life in the Universe

[Evoman]

22. Probably that alien lizards have take over the government.

It's the most plausible.

Not only that, but the aliens are actually evolved dinosaurs. Dinosaurs had many more million years to evolve.....that they evolved into greys, left earth after a human-caused apocalypse, and now have come back to settle the score seems entirely plausible.

I mean c'mon...read the Old Testament....the snake in the garden of eden? A dinosaur collaberator that caused us to turn against god (our dinosaur overlord). Not only that, but it explains our fear of snakes.

LIHOP and MIHOP....you guys are dumb. It's obvious it's the dinosaur aliens with their human cloak technologies.

[Heddi]

23. hear hear

I, for one, welcome our reptile overlords!

[LeftishBrit]

30. Well, in the case of Cheney, he's *obviously* an alien lizard!

[frogmarch]

24. I'm least skeptical about

the bit of woo that states Richard Gere cleanses his colon by letting a hamster run around in it. No, wait. Here's one I might believe under certain circumstances: ETs have visited, and/or are visiting, Earth.

[jberryhill]

25. That a lot of people post idiotic crap to DU for the purpose of making us look crazy /nt

[LeftishBrit]

29. Probably same as you.

I am sceptical about a full-blown MIHOP or even LIHOP theory, since I think that more would have come out about it by this stage (people accused of terrorism would have blamed others to save their own skins). But I wouldn't rule out something in between LIHOP and my favoured theory of LIHTGI (Let it happen through gross incompetence): a possible LIHTC (Let it happen through corruption) whereby some American government officials colluded with some Saudi officials to 'look the other way' on certain individuals and their activities. It need not have involved actual awareness of and acceptance of terrorist plans; but been more in the nature of acceptance of bribes or pressure to allow certain dodgy types to operate freely without a check on their plans and records.

My own 'conspiracy theory' is that Blair may have gone along with some of Bush's plans in return for favourable treatment of his son, who got a very good scholarship to Yale, and an internship that normally wouldn't be given to non-Americans.

[YankeyMCC]

36. I would like to believe in extraterristrial

life similar to us in socialization and technological and moral development. But just because I wish it were true (and enjoy stories where such beings exist) wont make it so. :(

[CreekDog]

42. Well, I take communion

imagine the beliefs that precede that. :wow:

[TZ]

43. okay now I'm curious..

Have you heard about PZ Meyers and whats been dubbed "cracker-gate"? (there are links in R/T about it) Are you offended by his actions?
I'm just genuinely curious to hear your opinion of this...:hi:

[CreekDog]

47. I hadn't heard but your post prompted me to read about it on Wikipedia

Wow, what a story! :crazy:

So, now about Meyers. Meyers is not a Christian, doesn't believe that communion is literally the Body and Blood of Christ, so it is actually consistent with his belief to mock the whole episode, even by desecrating the communion host. I think he's acting disrespectfully, but people who don't share beliefs also don't share beliefs on what deserves respect and what doesn't.

Of course in terms of Christian theology, Meyers didn't harm God as badly as he could have. A more effective way of harming God would be to harm ordinary human beings rather than a communion host. While I do subscribe to the literal "Body and Blood" within communion, I don't know whether or not Jesus felt any injury (ahem...try to stifle your laughter over there :spank: ) when Meyers ran a nail through the wafer. But Christianity teaches that Jesus suffered more grevous disrespect and injury than anyone on the cross anyway and teaches that God(Jesus too) felt it was preferable to ordinary louts like us suffering the same. Therein lies the irony for me. Some good sermons could come out of this story in my opinion.

The other irony for me are the Christians who responded by making death threats and the like. That's the problem with human beings defend their God. Proper instruction should have taught them that this is not only NOT the way God would want to be defended and that God needs no human defender.

That's all I got. :hi: :rofl:

[mr blur]

57. I'm heartened by this bit:

"On July 24, 2008, PZ Myers, in his post, "The Great Desecration," wrote that he had pierced the "cracker" with a rusty nail and simply threw it in the trash together with old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. He added a few ripped-out pages of the Qur'an and The God Delusion, and included a photograph of these items in the garbage. He wrote that nothing must be held sacred and encouraged people to question everything"

A good sk(c)eptic if you ask me.

[WoodrowFan]

44. same here

Same here. And yeah, I've made the occasional joke to my wife along the lines of "I hate when I get Jesus stuck in my teeth" but I'm Presbyterian and we don't think it's literally Jesus, but a ceremony performed to remind us of him and of his sacrifice.


And to answer Turtlesue's question, I think that PZ was rude but frankly the uber-catholics are wayyy over-reacting. They should know that even most Christians think it's "just a cracker" (although we don't phrase it that way). I understand what the original student was trying to do (have a wafer to show a friend with questions) and that he didn't do anything especially wrong. I hope PZ's university tells the uber-Catholics to go take a flying leap at a rolling communion wafer. He's right, IT'S JUST A CRACKER!

[salvorhardin]

46. They did, in so many words

Here's a message that was sent to the members of the Support PZ! Facebook group this past Friday (July 25th).

To members of Support PZ
You can all go home now ;) !
July 25 at 10:47pm

UNIV. OF MINN. REFUSES TO PENALIZE MYERS
July 25, 2008


The Chancellor of the University of Minnesota, Morris (UMN) released a statement today regarding the intentional desecration of the Eucharist by Professor Paul Z. Myers. "I believe that behaviors that discriminate against or harass individuals or groups on the basis of their religious beliefs are reprehensible," said Jacqueline Johnson. Importantly, she added that the school's Code of Conduct prohibits such behavior. However, she also stressed that academic freedom allows faculty members "to speak or write as a public citizen without institutional discipline or restraint...." Nowhere did she say Myers would be disciplined

Frankly, I didn't expect anything more or less to come of this. I think the majority of Catholics roll their eyes at the Bill Donohues of the world. Unfortunately the press, always eager to sensationalize, give people like Donohue a large megaphone to spout their idiocy.

[WoodrowFan]

51. good

GOOD ON THEM!

[regularguy]

53. That I'm actually some sort of God.

:evilgrin:

[TheBaldyMan]

58. Stepping on the cracks in the pavement turn you into a slug.

it's either that or belief in fairies.

Both seem far more credible than 9/11 nuttiness.