Jimmy Akin on the “Science” of PZ Myers’ “Cracker” Plan

Jimmy Akin on the “science” of PZ Myers’ “cracker” plan (aka Myers’ proposed plan to procure some communion wafers, desecrate them, and post the results online):

[L]et’s suppose that [a dispassionate scientific demonstration of the falsity of Catholic belief regarding the Eucharist] was his aim. He’s a scientist. How good would the science of the proposed experiment be?

Rotten.

In order to have a scientific demonstration of the falsity of Catholic belief regarding the Eucharist, you would need to have a proposition of Catholic theology regarding the Eucharist that could be falsified by his experiment.

But the Catholic Church does not claim that anything special will happen in the empirical realm if you desecrate a host. Lots of hosts have been desecrated in history, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, nothing special happens in the empirical realm.

Catholics would say that this is because Christ has chosen to make himself vulnerable in body to such disrespect, just as he made himself vulnerable to death on the Cross, though he informed his disciples that all he needed to do was ask and his Father would put twelve legions of angels at his disposal to defend him. The voluntary vulnerability of Christ as the Lamb of God is a central theme in Christian theology.

Whatever the Christian explanation for the fact that nothing unusual normally happens in the empirical realm when a host is desecrated, the fact is that the Church does not maintain that anything is supposed to happen.

Akin has also posted an MP3 from his radio show with a response to Myers’ actions. You can read Myers’ post that started the hullabaloo here.

Note: Myers has since stated that his post was intended more as “satire and protest” than anything else.