Atheists Take On YouTube: The Blasphemy Challenge.

Alex

Talk about creating controversy: filmmaker Brian Flemming and atheist Brian Sapient's new project called The Blasphemy Challenge asks people to upload a video clip of themselves blaspheming against the Holy Spirit onto the popular website YouTube:

With that five-second submission to YouTube, a 24-year-old who uses the name "menotsimple" has either condemned herself to an eternity of punishment in the afterlife or struck a courageous blow against superstition. She's one of more than 400 mostly young people who have joined a campaign by the Web site BlasphemyChallenge.com to stake their souls against the existence of God. That, of course, is the ultimate no-win wager, as the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal calculated—it can't be settled until you're dead, and if you lose, you go to hell.

The Blasphemy Challenge is a joint project of filmmaker Brian Flemming, director of the antireligion documentary "The God Who Wasn't There," and Brian Sapient, cofounder of the atheist Web site RationalResponders.com. Their intent was to encourage atheists to come forward and put their souls on the line, showing others that you don't have to be afraid of God. The particular form of the challenge was chosen because, by one interpretation, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, a part of the Christian Trinity, is the only sin that can never be forgiven. And once something you've said gets posted on YouTube, as any number of celebrities can attest, you never live it down.

Link | Blasphemy Challenge website

If you don't know the bit about Pascal, it's called Pascal's Wager [wiki] where Blaise Pascal outlined why it's a better bet to believe in God.


Comments (37)

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I overeaded a bit and found somebody investigatin in the Bible. I suppose it's a random chosen book to investigate about any god existence. You could take The Cora and start killing not believers or something.

And yes, that's my creational beliefs. I may be wrong, it's my theory but snaps really good with the evolution fact. I mean that a simple form of chemical equilibrium reacts to the media destructing itself and generating some other results. The breeding material species are now reacting in a manner this great: took consciousness. It's an amazing thing that phisics and chemicals know we are reacting and keeping alive.
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Since the New Testament is a purposeful Roman deception and the so-called "God" of Abraham is a Babylonian inspired "strong delusion," these people have nothing to fear. Besides, the true meaning of blasphemy is to tell lies about the Creator for profit. That means that religion is blaspemy.

The Creator of the universe prefers that people use their minds to think and seek truth and wisdom. That is the complete opposite of "faith." Freewill infers the ability to make mistakes in order to learn from them.

Here is Wisdom !!
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I think the simplest way to look at all of this is that some people believe in gods because they want to. They don't care if it's rational. There's no evidence to support the existence of the supernatural, but that just doesn't matter to everyone.

That's why there's usually no point in presenting a rational argument against an irrational belief. Very few people can let their rational thought processes overwhelm a deep-seated emotional desire.

I believe that's why we see some very intelligent people who are superstitious in spite of themselves. We humans are able to compartmentalize our thinking. The critical standards of evidence that we'll happily apply to real-world experiences fall apart when held up to our personal belief systems.

In our normal day-to-day lives, we wouldn't dream of accepting extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence. However, when it comes to what happens to us after we're dead, all too many of us are willing to conveniently abandon rational thought for the sake of the comforting thought of life after death.
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How typically American and pedantic to make light of a serious thing.
Yeah it's important to have a sense of humor, but really, isn't this rather childish? How are you going to explain this to the kids? Oh, they'll remember this moment, when the whole town's signs went silly. They'll remember.
And the drunk drivers will be saying "Oh, I thought they were joke signs, not really serious about us actually reading them and understanding that they're not jokes."
Nice.
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we can only hope. anyway we have people who spraypaint HAMMERTIME under the stop on the signs in madison. pretty amusing, actually. the city doesn't bother to pay people to clean it off cause there haven't been any complaints yet.
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Seriously, if they took the money from this project and just had a police presence every once in a while giving out tickets to violators at these intersections they'd save money, lives, and make a more effective statement.

It's fine to take it lightly, but a cop showing up even every now and again gets the message across pretty quick "don't cruise through this stop sign". And if that doesn't quite work the cost of the ticket for a moving violation as well as the added points to your insurance will speak volumes.
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Ey, weeks ago I was thinking about write "in the name of love" in the signals to make everybody think: "I hate that song" and pass away.

I´m not liying...
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I see a multitude of problems with this as well. I see people taking the signs less seriously and I doubt those who roll through stop signs fail to see the sign in the first place. Seems like a waste of time and money if this was intended as a serious campaign. The money would have been better spent in patrolling and driving re-education.

If was done just for the fun of it though, then I'm for it.
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I think it's a rather clever solution that will get the stop signs a bit more attention while not adding ill will towards cops as an overbearing cruiser presence might.
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@k

dude, when every pompously official-sounding message of government already has the credibility of an arsonist giving fire-safety tips, you oughta think about the benefits of cutting through the clutter to reclaim some little bit of attention. Or you could just take a breath and take what seems like a much-needed vacation.
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Got to agree with the nay-sayers. Who cares about creating ill-will towards the police? They're there to ticket people who aren't obeying the law.

And the possibility of people interpreting the stop signs themselves as fakes is too big a risk to take with people's lives.

"I'm sorry I ran over your daughter, but isn't that a funny sign?"
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