Thursday, October 1, 2009

International Blasphemy Day

Yesterday was, apparently, International Blasphemy Day.

I took the opportunity to reminisce on my interactions with the neoatheists who organized the Blasphemy Challenge a few years back...and got to wondering how their little organization was doing. Having my response to them banned from YouTube as "hate speech" ended up driving more traffic to my old xanga site than almost any other post. Gotta love that controversy.

Remembering my own blas-phestival, I wandered over to the Rational Response Squad's web site, where I hadn't been for nearly two years. Jousting with them about faith used to be entertaining, even if their primary approach to Jesus people was profanity and ad hominem insult. I have an RSS feed-folder of people who are fun to debate, and I hoped to add them into that list of worthy adversaries. Yeah. I'm a troll. But I'm a kindly troll.

I found that they have not exactly prospered since they went onto YouTube and asked people to curse the Holy Spirit and get a free DVD. Since that effective little PR stunt, conversation on their site has dried up to nearly nothing. I fished around for any interesting threads on their forums, but most were completely stale. It was a cyber-shambles.

There was one interesting thread, in which it was suggested that one of the founders of the organization had actually turned to prostitution to finance their efforts. While in the church office yesterday, I made the mistake of clicking on the link that purported to provide evidence to that effect.

Oof. It was one of those "Sweet Lord Jesus Gotta Close The Browser" moments. Guess...it's...cough...true. Ahem.

And no, I'm not going to provide you with the link to her site.

So the most infamous recent blasphemers are now reduced to literally selling their bodies for cash, and their organization has collapsed into snarling irrelevance.

Sigh. I suppose I'm not surprised.