Shut up, Bill Donohue. Just shut up, please.

What a bizarre spectacle of a human being Bill Donohue is. He's a poster child for perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of religion, childish devotion to magic and shrieking hysteria when the magic is questioned.

It would just be silly and laughable if it weren't so dangerous, but people who believe in shit like the woo woo power of a name are the people who throw schoolteachers in prison and threaten to execute them for letting children name a stuffed toy Mohammed. That kind of lunacy would not be possible without the accompanying belief in magic.

But let's leave teddies behind and talk about the woo woo power of Catholic baked goods, also known as transubstantiation.

(Heh. I was going to link to the Wikipedia entry on the subject but for the moment it says this:

Transubstantiation (in Latin, transsubstantiatio) is utter, utter shite. It is arse gravy to the nth degree, and believed only by delusional fools who actually think that they are devouring the flesh of a man who has been dead for millennia.

Probably not going to last, but it did make me giggle.)

Anyway, a few days ago P.Z. Myers posted this response to the shocking abduction of an innocent communion wafer.

Today I visited Pharyngula, as I am wont to do, and found this follow-up story.

I mean, are they kidding me with this shit? Really? REALLY? You're going to try to get the guy fired over your stupid fucking cracker hysterics? You know why he wrote about how insane and ridiculous you are? Because you ASKED FOR IT.

The wrenching irony of Donohue's attempt to paint the Catholic Church--THE CATHOLIC CHURCH!--as some poor hapless victim of prejudice...I don't even know what to say. It defies comprehension. I see it a lot lately from Christians, this withdrawal into victimhood. Oh, the mean secularists are making fun of us. You know, my son asked me the other day if we "know" there's no gods, and I answered, "We can't 'know' anything of the sort because we can't prove something doesn't exist. However, the advocates have had several thousand years to present their evidence now..." At which point he giggled and nodded. And that's tangentially my point here: You guys have had it so cush for so long--hundreds and hundreds of years of ass kissing and power--and now that more people are raising our hands and saying, "um, yeah, magic cookies? I don't really think so," you're aghast. Well, get used to it.