Says PZ:
"I don't want to hear another word from Catholics about my destruction of a mass-produced cracker. Their extremists use violence and the destruction of private property to deface a work of art in a museum."The image of Piss Christ is available on computers around the globe; it can be printed in photo quality; it likely will never pass from our society until our society has utterly failed and disappeared. Like PZ's destruction, the act was symbolic. Quite likely the artist Andres Serrano still has the negative and possibly copies.
PZ, on the other hand, claims that the photo is not irreligious and that it looks kinda nice to him:
"It's not even a particularly anti-religious work — that luminous golden glow is as reverential as the bloody, gory, suffering Christ figures mounted in Catholic churches all around the world."
PZ's hypocrisy has floated straight to the top, as does all things PZ. It's fine to destroy religious artifacts unless the religion is Atheism: then it is violence and the destruction of private property. Interestingly, stealing an artifact from a private organization during public attendance, wrestling with the protectors of the artifact, and then publicly destroying it... well that's exactly what PZ and his pet Atheists did.
The only difference is that the wafer did not attack Atheism, nor did it demean Atheism, it had no conceivable connection to Atheism. The Piss Christ was a direct attack on Christianity in a most onerous way. And so was PZ's attack on Christianity. What PZ and followers can't handle is the same, in reverse.
For the PZ Atheists, attacking a wafer is a courageous act of superior moral rectitude, while the attack on the photograph is sheer barbarism.
4 comments:
I have yet to read this all (because it deserves a special attention), but about atheists who contradict between each others, and the way they are full of contempt in their way of life, while attacking believers. I was thinking about some atheist I know. This person once told me that having faith of something superior "to get by" the loss of someone close is nonsense. His answer: a thanatologist. And I kept thinking...isn't this actually more expensive than advice from a priest? In the end the beloved one is dead, no matter what, but, isn't going to a thanatologist and a priest the same sort of advice for self-reassurance?
A registered nurse I am acquainted with told me that when someone dies and the hospital is filled with wailing and screaming and angry grief, it is always a group of non-believers.
Christians might shed a tear but in the same fashion as for a parting friend who is getting on an airplane to move away.
At my age I find myself at more funerals, and I see the truth of that.
They're barbarians because they destroyed two pieces of art, in a museum, using violence and assault with a deadly weapon. How much more clear could this be? These are not the acts of civilized people. Threatening a guard with a hammer is not "symbolic".
It's true as you say, the "image of Piss Christ is available on computers around the globe" and the work itself will not be lost, but this makes the act when compared to the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas a difference in scale, not in kind. The Buddhas were irreplaceable and unique. Piss Christ is neither. But both acts are the acts of barbarians.
This is nothing like Terry Jones' burning of the Quran. As I commented on an earlier post "U.S. Government Burns Bibles", Jones owned the copy of the Quran he burnt and he has the right to do so. I can now add to that, Jones' Quran was neither irreplaceable nor unique. It's only the religious notion that everybody else has to respect their holy book which made the act notable.
As for calling a mass-produced cracker a "Christian artifact", it is not. That's like calling the church leaflets I find in my letter box "relics".
Finally, "Piss Christ" was not an atheist artifact, and is more frequently characterized as an attack on commercialism of religion and cheapening of spiritual values. In that way the work would be "Pro-Christ, anti-Church". We atheists have much more fun images, such as Raptor Jesus.
Denial of fact doesn't remove the fact. The communion wafers had one purpose only: Christian sacrements which were stolen and violently, from a Christian service. The reason they were stolen was specifically for their destruction as a public act of desecration. Whether you call them Christian artifacts or not does not change what they are.
PissChrist was, in fact, declared an attack on Christians who the artist had judged as behaving badly. Only an Atheist would consider urine to be a compliment. If I were to urinate on your front door and call it a compliment, then you would be obligated to acept that judgment, yes?
And obviously the Atheist religion is focused on desecration as its rite.
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