Idols of the Tribe

For a biologist, PZ Myers is remarkably clueless about evolution, or, at any rate, he affects to be.

Why should I think so? Because he seems to imagine that a nearly universal human trait is just a deviation that can be cured, preferably with ridicule and contempt. Religion, I mean.

His latest publicity stunt is asking for people to send consecrated communion wafers to him to desecrate.

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

Elsewhere he says he plans to commit some anti Islamic sacriledges on the same day, and claims:

The point of desecrating the host isn't to make people angry -- it's to demystify and desanctify nonsense. It's how we wake people up -- by showing that their beliefs are powerless.

I call bullshit on that. In the first place, it's silly to think that desecrating a few hosts would prove anything to anyone. The only magic power I've heard claimed for the host is the ability to repel vampires, and having consumed a few in my youth, I can say that it's been fully effective for me in that capacity.

A more serious flaw in Myers' evolutionary comprehension is his apparent failure to realize the role of gods, flags, and other tribal totems in human culture. The natural, or at least primitive, unit of organization is the hunting gathering band, but at some point when it became necessary to organize into larger groups for survival, gods and tribal totems were invented to unify the clan. Individuals can only keep track of a limited number of relatives, but the god, king, or flag can be everybody's father.

The point is that when you attack the totem, you disrespect and attack the tribe. Everybody understands that if you go into a group of a different ethnicity and shout a racial epithet aimed at them, you are asking for a fight or a war. Similarly, if you replace some gang's grafitti with your own, you have issued a challenge - often a mortal challenge. In earler times, an insult or slight could result in a duel. These things all have an evolutionary logic - your prospects for survival depend on you and your affiliation being respected.

A religion is a tribe, among other things, and those that have survived have developed defensive mechanisms. When PZ promises to desecrate a sacred totem of a tribe, he is disrespecting that tribe, and challenging it to war. The power of the totem isn't any peculiar intrinsic magic, it is in its power to unify the anger of its followers. One can hope that there are no Catholics in America willing to do murder to avenge his disrespect, but I would be less confident of Muslims.

PZ's real motive, I suspect, has nothing to do with what he claimed above. Instead he is stotting - showing off to win the adulation of his tribe, or his religion as I characterize it: Atheism Church Militant.

Sean of Cosmic Variance has his own take on this affair. He is an atheist of a slightly less militant stripe, and doesn't really approve of Myers, but (in my opinion) can't quite articulate why it bothers him.