3. Much ado over wafers. In 2008, U. Central Florida student Webster Cook removed a wafer from a Catholic Church as a prank. People in the church tried to physically prevent Cook from absconding with the wafer and Catholic conservatives set new records in the art of overreacting by calling his action a “hate crime” and demanding that Cook be expelled from school for his act of blasphemy. The school declined, but the student government agreed to play its part in squelching the free expression of anti-religious sentiment by impeaching Cook from student government.

Angry at this act of childish bullying over what he described as a “frackin’ cracker,” biology professor and atheist writer PZ Myers asked people to send consecrated wafers to him so he could also blaspheme them and show that they are not magical items but just simple carbs. The anger then turned to Myers, with demands that he be fired for desecrating a cracker. Myers’ employer, the University of Minnesota Morris, declined to censor him. On July 24, 2008, Myers threw the wafer in the trash with pages of the Quran and The God Delusion, to show nothing is sacred. Neither God nor Allah nor Richard Dawkins has struck down Myers for his insolence.