Punctum Saliens

After an anonymous commenter (apparently he or she is not afraid of the Holy Spirit but is afraid if me) called me a moron in response to my post about the The Blasphemy Challenge I decided to do a little more investigating. Yes, I admit that I did not read very much on TBC’s website (tsk tsk). But I went back and viewed their very brief FAQ. Here are some more comments …

Why do you care?

It isn’t just adult Christians who are indoctrinated with the frightening ideology of Christian belief. In fact, most Christians are indoctrinated as children. These children are told that they must believe the following: That 2000 years ago a man died, stayed dead three days, rose from the dead and then flew into the air above the clouds– and right now this man is with them as their invisible companion and savior from Hell, if only they will submit to him. If this bizarre theory were not religious in nature, teaching it to children would probably be considered child abuse.

Personally, I don’t see anything frightening at all about what TBC’s FAQ says Christian children must believe. And this is not all that bizarre when you look at any religious belief. It’s also not at all bizarre when you compare it to the fairy tales and myths that are routinely believed by children. Things like “Santa Claus is watching you to see if you are naughty or nice” and “he knows when you are sleeping”. That is closer to child abuse than the Christian tenets listed above. TBC is missing the whole point — in my opinion. It’s not the Christianity that is the enemy — it’s the Fundamentalism.

How will The Blasphemy Challenge help?

Religious dogma has one chief means of support: Our unwillingness to criticize it in public. If we talked about religion the same way we talk about science, history or other fields involving truth claims, dogma would wither in the light. The Blasphemy Challenge, by addressing a truth claim of Christianity, is intended to provoke this sort of conversation.

A couple points here. First, how is asking people to blaspheme “addressing a truth claim?” The only way to determine that the “truth claim” is false is to demonstrate that the expected outcome does not happen. The only way to demonstrate that the expected outcome does not happen is to wait until all the people who blasphemed are dead and see if they ended up in Hell or not. But, anyone who blasphemed who was not a Christian would be in Hell anyway so there would still be no proof that it was the blasphemy that put them there. So, the only real test would be to have a Christian blaspheme and then see if that peson ended up in Hell. But I doubt that a true believer would want to blaspheme unless, of course, they would be willing to lose their eternal soul in the hopes of saving others. So, clearly this experiment is far from scientifically valid. If only the Bible said that anyone who blasphemes would be immediatley struck by lightning. Now that would be a verifiable result. But, alas, that is not the case.

Second, I think people have been criticizing religious dogma a lot longer than TBC gives them credit. But criticism is very different in the scientific community and in the religious community. If anyone has ever criticized a Christian Fundamentalist you know what I’m talking about. They do not take criticism well and usually it just makes them cling to their beliefs with more tenacity and close their ears and minds more tightly. Pissing off the Fundamentalists is not the way to get them to talk to you. I will guarantee that no “conversation” will be provoked by this.

Is it true that you are targeting young people with this campaign?

Yes. As young people are the most vulnerable to religious indoctrination, we feel it is important to reach them with the concept of challenging the doctrine they are told to unquestioningly believe.

In my opinion, Brian Flemming is as fanatical about being not Fundamentalist as the Fundamentalists are about being Fundamentalist. (Again, I saw the movie and these are my opinions. And these are opinions from someone who was in a situation very very similiar to Flemming’s.) Just because you don’t like Fundamentalism is no reason to trash all religious beliefs. If you don’t like Fundamentalism, then attack Fundamentalism! Don’t attack religion in general.

The FAQ talks about “religious indoctrination” and battling this by “challenging the doctrine” that Fundamentalists preach. But TBC is not about challenging any doctrine. TBC takes one idea out of an entire religion — an idea that it’s impossible to prove is wrong — and tries to base a new “anti-religion” on it. This is “religious indoctrination” of a different kind but it’s still indoctrination. “Don’t believe anything!” is as bad as “Only believe this!”.

Isn’t this just “fundamentalist atheism”?

That is a remarkably stupid question. The Rational Response Squad encourages people to inquire, argue, reason and doubt — not to believe something because they are told to. Free inquiry is the opposite of fundamentalism. The Blasphemy Challenge may be activist in nature, but it is hardly fundamentalist.

Again, I saw the movie and in my opinion the movie was very fundamentalist atheist. I got the impression that the movie was all about throwing out Christianity in its entirety and not about questioning your beliefs. TBC talks about free inquiry but also seems to say that you can’t believe the Christian dogma even if you want to. I’ll give my opinion one more time: It’s not Christianity that’s the enemy — it’s the Fundamentalism. Yet I see TBC attacking Christianity.