How Did You Celebrate Blasphemy Day?

I made a joke about putting aerosol cheese on communion wafers.

If we can’t mock people who believe that crackers can be magically converted into the flesh of a 2000-year-old, half-human dead guy, then the terrorists have already won.

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As many pointed out in the previous thread, “blaspheming” means exercising precisely the kinds of freedom of speech that many religious types would like to ban under the guise of “hate speech” or “religious tolerance” or something else equally odious.

That alone is a good reason for doing it.

Also, it’s fun.

I think the campus group I’m part of (Kent State Freethinkers) did pretty well. We decided to combine Blasphemy Day and Banned Books Week into a general “Free Speech Day”. We had a table with candy (of course) and plenty of Post-It notes and posterboards, encouraging people to exercise their free speech by writing whatever they wanted on them. We also had printouts of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons with a bottle of Elmer’s Glue and hobby shop googly eyes. No Muslims came to the table, though… I like to think that if they had, even they would have been unable to keep from grinning at the sheer silliness of Googly-Eyes Muhammad and his bomb-turban.

The only voice of opposition we got was a middle-aged religious guy who showed up towards the end, stared in disbelief for awhile, and finally started talking to our club leader about the table being an example of atheists’ pervasive disrespect for society and the collapse of (religiously derived, of course) moral values in society. It took him less than five minutes to bring up Hitler–I was keeping track.

A bunch of new people signed up for our e-mail listserv, so that’s nice. Our posters are still torn down wherever and whenever they’re put up, though. Apparently even a generic poster with a picture of a sunset or a galaxy and info about the group’s URL and meeting times is too offensive for some people.

It was a quite a fun evening for me. I spent the evening blipping songs both appropriate and innapropriate, to the #blasphemyday hashtag on twitter, and laughing uproariously at the growing stream of blasphemy trickling in.

http://blip.fm/drunkenmadman

Unfortunately, Sydney Atheists did’t really have the opportunity to do any IRL action, but if this is made an annual event, we’ll be on it for sure next year

Celebrated Blasphemy Day and Banned Books Week simultaneously by reading The Satanic Verses.

I wore a tshirt that says “I’m not anti-religion, just anti-hypocrisy” at college and work. It’s not that offensive, but makes people think. If someone commented about it, I told them about this day and what was it about. It was kind of surprising that many didn’t know about the danish cartoons and how the muslims went apeshit.

I also blogged about it in both English and Spanish.

I blasphemed on my blog. I had no intention or illusions of converting anyone. I was merely expressing my opinion about gods.

Our student group showed Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

At Kent State our group had a combination Banned Books Week and Blasphemy Day celebration we simply called Free Speech Day. We had 6 big pieces of poster board and markers and, for three hours, we had random people who walked by in the student center write whatever they wanted on the boards with markers. It was great. So people talked about hating their classes, some religious stuff and some people just putting up their frat greek letters, and some people just writing profanity because they could. Everyone was fairly cordial and loved it.

I pretty much just denied the Holy Spirit. Again.

Oh, and I pointed out a logical flaw in religious belief. And I got into an argument with an agnostic.

I know. Weak. Totally weak.

Another local sceptics group had something planned, so we had decided to attend/support their event rather than competing with one of our own. Unfortunately, life happens and we found out on September 29 that their event was no longer happening.

So after franticly e-mailing everyone in the Humanist Association of Ottawa, we managed to get five of us downtown. Four of us wore the “there’s probably no god” bus ad shirts and one pinned that famous quote by Epicurus to the front of his shirt, and a sign that said “Jesus says he loves me, but he never calls” to the back. Thanks to the wonderful HAO president, we also had stickers (some had the bus ad message, while others had things like “Blasphemy is a victimless crime”).

We sat in the food court of a mall for a while and just chatted. We weren’t approached, but we could hear groups sitting around us starting to talk about God and their own beliefs (stimulating discussions, yay!). Later, we went to a bar and had a fun time. While there, we struck up a conversion with a couple of guys who had come for the live music. They were very interested in learning about the UN blasphemy resolution business and in hearing that there was a Humanist group in Ottawa. One of them said he is a member of a local debate society and will be proposing debates on some of the topics we’d brought up.

As we were paying our bill, the owner of the bar read our shirts and gave us one of those nod-winks.

We definitely didn’t want to be evangelizing or force ourselves on people, so that limited what we were able to do with the little prep time we had. Still, we got people talking and asking questions, we got to explain what Blasphemy Day is all about, and we had a great time in the company of fellow Atheists. All round success, I say!

Thomas Verenna: “Blasphemy Day has no real message other than to say “We’re here, now STFU and watch while…”

Mr. Verenna is an effing moron. He thinks blasphemers would be telling anyone they had to shut up? Need any help constructing that straw man?

Look. I– I’d had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, ‘That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.’

Bigger than Jesus. And with better rhythm.

If we have no message to send — no way to uplift people — they’re not going to drop their faith just because we mock it.

I think you miss the point of Blasphemy Day. It is not to try to get people to drop their faith.

As I said in a reply to the other thread, as long as criticism of religion is not acceptable in polite company, I have no reservations about setting aside one day a year to engage in the most brash over-the-top criticism of religion we can think of, and to do so with pride. THAT is the point of Blasphemy Day — to show that we will not be intimidated into limits on what is and isn’t fair game for harsh criticism.

If the suggestion was to intentionally engage in blasphemy every day, then I’d agree with you. Absolutely it is important to show people that atheism is a positive humanist philosophy, and we should spend many, many days each year trying to further this goal.

But it’s also important to show people that we can say whatever the fuck we want without the sky falling in, and that no matter how much they try to make us feel ashamed, we won’t. Spending one day a year furthering that goal? I don’t see the problem…

(Oh, and to answer the question, what I did on Blasphemy Day was draw another “lolgodz” cartoon, as well as engage in some “blasphemy” against good ol’ Chuck Darwin, just to prove that nothing is sacred.)

RE: the Aerosol Cheese Comment….

Can I put it on a triscuit instead of the standard communion wafer? High-fiber Jesus rules!!! ;op

I didn’t do anything for Blasphemy Day. But I do enjoy ridiculing religion on an almost daily basis. I don’t need a special day for it either.

I’m not trying to convert anyone, never have, never will. If they can’t see how stupid their beliefs are, then tough cookies. IMO, they have it coming and I don’t feel bad at all.

I didn’t know of its existence but since I blaspheme every day, I’m good.

That said, why in heck shouldn’t you blaspheme without a good reason? Gimme a break on that one, Hemant. Like I should be careful not to sin because someone else’s sky daddy thinks it’s a sin?

Besides as the saying goes, I’m doing my best to piss off the religious right. It’s like being called a bitch. I know I’m doing something right.