Since that post yesterday I understand what Catholics and secular Jews mean. I could have done without, but it saves me a lot of head-scratching.
There was this time when an irate Catholic asked me whether I knew what the Eucharist meant. Communion with the Christian community? A sombre remembrance of the role of our life? No, nothing like that: The presence of the divine substance, that which made Christ God on earth, in the food we shared.
It's really rather decent and considerate: Instead of transferring the divine substance directly into us, a transfer left to the holy spirit, the priest lets Christ transfer it into bread and wine and those fill us then with it.
Of course, so could the holy spirit in sombre remembrance - the difference is: the holy spirit couldn't accidentally end up in a church mouse and these kinds of accidents seem to possess a strong fascination: If God is present as a substance, it would seem that we possess a certain amount of control over Him, which both angers and compels the faithful Catholic depending on who gets his hands on it.
And it's not just Catholics and that is where it gets very weird - and the more so since substance as the quality that distinguishes matter has taken quite a beating: all substances are convertible into energy and different forms of energy into each other so that there's really just different constellations of bumps on the quantum level.
Despite that Star Trek treats thought as an energy (Where No One Has Gone Before) and awareness as a substance (Errand of Mercy, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Lonely Among Us, Power Play, Transfigurations and probably many more). And it's not just Roddenberry: In the recently discussed Disclosure Day Steven Spielberg uses light as the medium to bestow telepathic abilities and mathematical comprehension, treating awareness and intelligence again as substances.
Considering how remote Aristotle's scientific understanding is from ours and seeing that he's not exactly fashionable, this is mighty peculiar. Now, when you say it's like Paris being the city of love, one of these American conventions to signal culturedness, you're probably right, but then again considering that this is not about encouraging people to visit the Louvre, but to stick to a particular understanding of divinity, namely that of a potion that can be filled into bottles and experimented with, creating life, sentience and good fortune in the process, this is not so innocuous, but a decidedly alien foothold in our culture, one that should be experienced as such by anyone concerning himself with it, so I must conclude that those who don't act accordingly are part of a common tradition that consciously keeps it alive.