One of my favorite words. Excerpted from my comments here on PZ Myers’ desecrating consecrated wafers from Catholic mass:
Transubstantiation, scientifically, must be a claim with an empirical nature: ie. it either is true that the substance is changed or it isn’t.
By using the word ‘appearance’ to include taste, texture and every other perceivable or scientifically testable quality, the Catholic church has cleverly made it impossible to verify that the ‘substance’ – which is something entirely apart from everything about it! – has changed. What the hell is substance, then, if it isn’t the type and formation of the bloody molecules? What is it if it’s not every perceivable description of the object? It’s completely and utterly preposterous of course, but that doesn’t stop the Catholic church insisting upon it.
Wine is not wine but blood, but it will still, under the closest of examination, seem and be exactly like wine. Cracker is not cracker but flesh, but it will still, under the most careful, thorough, microscopic, scientific scrutiny, seem and even be exactly like cracker. Substance is not substance but sub-sub-metastance. Can’t we call bullshit about something so blatantly absurd?
Eating Jesus is a particularly bizarre concept, and people like PZ Myers are exacting an overdue level of honesty and brutal irreverence about it and other religious ideas that can only help us all move beyond such mysticism.