So here is a philosophical question for you.

A university employee—an associate biology professor, if that matters— has gone out of his way to publicly pronounce his intention to desecrate a core religious symbol of a well-established religion, and promises to post pictures of that desecration to a personal web site.

Should that associate professor be surprised if outraged followers of that religion—or people of other religions, or no religion at all—find that his pledge of desecration is offensive? Should he be amazed that a common response to his intentional affront be a call to have his position with the university terminated? Should his position be terminated?

Such is the situation for PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota-Morris, who went well out of his way in protesting a college student's misuse of an Eucharist (consecrated communion wafer) by blasting the Catholic faith in particular (and Christians in general), asking readers to steal and send him a Eucharist, which he would then 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] 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...

I know this probably comes as a shock to many of you, but Myers' intolerance and contempt has him in a bit of hot water. He is receiving threats, and University President Robert Bruininks (email) has been getting messages calling for Myers to be terminated.

In an attempt to rally a defense of his actions, Myers is hoping to inspire a letter-writing campaign of his own in an attempt to save his job.

It's all quite interesting.

Apparently Myers thinks freedom of speech is the freedom to use that speech to abuse others and call for their beliefs to be mocked and violated, without any consequences.

Vox Day has an amusing take on the matter, while a smattering of liberal blogs (including a generally reasonable post by Jeff Fecke) have lept to Myers' defense.

My own response to Mr. Myers would be that while he does have the freedom of speech, he is not free from responsibility for his speech. He has the right to say what he wants (with all the usual caveats), but others also have the right to express their opinions in response, including calling for his firing.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:56 AM | Comments (37) | Add Comment
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