I was linked to a story today regarding a University of Central Florida student who smuggled a Eucharist out of an on campus Catholic mass.  A Eucharist is that little cracker they put in your mouth at communion.

I don’t know why he took it, I don’t know what his motivation was, and I don’t care, the fact that he took it doesn’t interest me at all.  What is interesting is the bible thumper reaction.

Catholics worldwide became furious.

Some choice quotes:

“We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was, however, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”
- Susan Fani, a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese

“It is hurtful, imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family.”
- Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese

For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage–regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance–is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.
- Bill Donahue, bible thumper extraordinaire

I got to eat the communion wafer a couple of times when I was young.  I didn’t know what it was supposed to represent, I was just sick of the endless cycle of kneeling and standing, and I was happy that I got to get up to do something, and eat something.

I was brought up Methodist, but visited a Catholic church with relatives now and again.  I have never been very religious, and I was only a Christian by default because that’s how my family brought me up.

That said, give me a break.  A hate crime!? Kidnapping!? Taking a hostage!? Beyond hate speech!? How about some perspective people, IT’S A FUCKING CRACKER! You can buy them online in boxes of 1000!

Apparently this student returned the cracker because he has received death threats. That’s the tolerant peace-loving Christians for you, the same ones who bomb abortion clinics.  As equal opportunity crusaders, they’ll stone you to death for stealing a cracker right along with the homos and heretics.

Returning the cracker isn’t enough, though.  The bible thumpers demand vengeance, and will settle for no less than his expulsion or death.  Apparently, to some people, ruining this kids education and/or ending his life is appropriate punishment for stealing a cracker.  Wait, he didn’t even steal the cracker, they gave it to him!

I was also linked to a blog article by a University of Minnesota Moorhead professor named PZ Myers.  Although I live in Minnesota, I had never heard of him, but apparently he’s a renowned biologist, a vocal atheist, and a loud critic of intelligent design and organized religion.  I ended up spending a few hours browsing his site and listening to various interviews and debates, and it’s pretty apparent he knows his stuff, and has a large following.

Anyways, at the end of his post he made a tongue-in-cheek offer to desecrate in some way consecrated communion wafers if his readers could get a hold of some and send them to him.  As I understand it, when a priest blesses the cracker it becomes consecrated and takes the form of the body of Christ.  I don’t mean symbolically, I mean they literally believe it becomes the body of Christ.  If that’s not wacko I don’t know what is, never mind the fact that turning the body of Christ into poop somehow isn’t sacrilege, but taking the cracker out of church is.

PZ Myers has posted several updates today on the Crackergate fallout. Thousands of wackos have not only sent him hate mail and death threats, but have deluged the university president with demands for his termination.  Thanks to tenure, his job is safe, and hopefully the president isn’t a member of the Christian Cult and can see the situation for the witch hunt that it is, but as a counterweight to the criticism he is receiving I sent a brief email to the President Robert Bruininks defending Myers against this insanity.  That’s what it is, insanity.  Logic doesn’t work with people who act on faith, faith is the lack of objectivity and reason, and that’s my problem with religion.  I watch every day as people disregard what they see and sense and what is logical and what we have evidence for while believing with all of their might and hate in something that all evidence indicates is essentially voodoo magic.

This is my first real rant on this blog, and I guarantee you religion is a topic that will come up again, probably often, but i’ll add a disclaimer now.  I personally know many religious people, the vast majority of my family, excluding me, is religious to some extent.  I realize that the worst of any group make the most noise, and the internet makes it easy for them to congregate. I’m quite sure there are many religious people who would agree that the Catholic reaction in this story is overboard.

I don’t hate religion or religious people, in fact I think religion helps many people to live honest, fulfilling, happy lives, albeit through ignorance.  So this may be the only apology you get: i’m sorry to generalize.  And you’re wrong.

I find that more often than not, my opinions greatly differ from those around me.  Thus the name of this blog, I Zig You Zag.

So another reason for this blog that I haven’t mentioned is WordPress.  I hear both good and bad things about it all the time, I also read several WordPress blogs daily, so I wanted to see what makes it tick.

My first impressions are positive.  Installation was simple and the backend is smooth and polished with a intuitive interface.  Granted I haven’t dug too deep yet, but so far figuring out the backend has been pretty painless.

So far my complaints are with the themes.  I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time on designing this site, so I figured i’d just find and install a cool theme and change some graphics and styles.  I tried about 20 of them and there was something wrong with every one.  Almost all of them had major cross-browser display issues.  Obviously this isn’t a flaw with WordPress itself, but I think it is a huge problem that there are so many untested and unreliable themes out there (it’s no surprise that most of the display problems were in Internet Explorer).

Anyways I ended up throwing together my own simple theme.  BTW the background image is a computer generated fractal from very cool free fractal gallery.

So a couple of months ago me and a buddy were drunk, and I was ranting about something and he said “you should start a blog”.  I’m pretty certain his tongue was firmly planted in his cheek at the time, or at the very least his judgement was impaired by the alcohol, but I haven’t been able to shake the suggestion.  It’s been haunting me, like a bad song that’s stuck in my head, I want to forget it but my brain won’t let me.

I’ve been online for a long time, I guess about 10 years now, and i’ve never had a blog, never wanted a blog, because I didn’t think I had a whole lot to say, or that anyone cared to read about it.  Ever since that drunken day when I was told to “get a blog”, i’ve realized that I actually do have a lot to say, i’m pretty opinionated.  Every thought or opinion that has gone through my head recently ended with “I could blog this, if I had a blog…”, well now I do.

Whether or not people want to read about it is a different story.  I’m not deluded or self-absorbed enough to think i’ll ever have a readership, but maybe the select surfer will find this page via Google and agree, or more likely disagree with me on something.  And who knows, maybe it will be therapeutic to put my various rantings and ravings down on virtual paper somewhere, at the very least I won’t have to repeat myself so much while i’m getting cockeyed.

Yep, this will be my rantings and ravings, exclusively.  There’s no doubt that I am a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy, my takes are usually negative, I don’t believe in god, and I think people in general are morons.   As a great man, the Common Man Dan Cole, once said “seven out of ten people are stupid”. That is what this blog is about, so stay tuned.