Hysteria Marks Donohue and His Ilk

Hysteria Marks Donohue and His Ilk

Bill (rhymes with “shrill”) Donohue has another
press release,
this one possibly even sillier than the previous ones.

MYERS STILL WANTS TO ABUSE EUCHARIST; SHOWS DEFERENCE TO ISLAM

“The biology professor made it clear that he would never disrespect Islam the way he does Catholicism. When asked about those who abuse the Koran, for example, he said such an act was analogous to desecrating a graveyard. ‘That’s completely different,’ he said. ‘I don’t favor [that idea].’ But when it comes to the Body of Christ, he opines, ‘The cracker is completely different.’

Apparently Bill can’t use teh Googles well enough to find posts like
this one,
in which PZ muses on how best to desecrate a Koran.

The quotes from BillD’s paragraph, above, come from
an interview
in the Minnesota Independent. Here’s the passage they came from, in context:

MnIndy: What about the stories of US military personnel urinating on and otherwise abusing copies of the Koran in Iraq? Were you outraged by that, or is that a different version of this for you?

Myers: There’s a subtle difference there — maybe an important difference. I don’t favor the idea of going to somebody’s home or to something they own and possess and consider very important, like a graveyard — going to a grave and desecrating that. That’s something completely different. Because what you’re doing is doing harm to something unique and something that is rightfully part of somebody else — it’s somebody else’s ownership. The cracker is completely different. This is something that’s freely handed out.

Welcome to the quote-mines, Bill. Here’s your pick-axe.

Bill continues:

“This isn’t the first time Myers has shown deference to Islam. For instance, two years ago he was critical of the Danish cartoons that simply depicted an image of Muhammad. ‘They [the cartoons] lack artistic or social or even comedic merit, and are presented as an insult to inflame a poor minority.’

Here’s the post in question. Go read it and judge the extent to which PZ’s showing deference to Islam.

So now the Planet-of-the-Apes biologist

WTF? Is this supposed to be some sort of insult, like the earlier
“King Kong Theory of Creation“?

has divined himself an expert on the artistic value of cartoons. So thoughtful of him. He even went so far as to say that Muslims ‘have cause to be furious.’ (His italic.) Worthy of burning down churches, pledging to behead Christians and shooting a nun in the back, Professor Myers?

Y’know, Bill, if you’d bothered to read
the next few paragraphs,
you might’ve run across things like:

I see […] a people so muddled by the phony blandishments of religion that they scream “Blasphemy!” and falsely pin the problem on a ridiculous insult to a non-existent god, rather than on the affront to their dignity as human beings and citizens. […]

It also doesn’t help that their riots are confirming the caricatures rather than opposing them. Once again, religiosity turns people into mindless frenzied zombies, and once again it interferes with progress.

To say nothing of the addendum:

Somehow, people are assuming from this that I’m “sympathetic to Islam”. How, I don’t know; I thought I’d always been quite clear in my contempt for all religion

So either Donohue is “Warning: do not use hair dryer in shower”-level incompetent, or else he’s lying. I’m not sure which is less insulting to him.