The ID Report

Post details: Part 4: The "Blasphemy Challenge"

02/25/07

by Denyse O'Leary 08:17:02 am, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, Commentary -Events, 389 words

Part 4: The "Blasphemy Challenge"

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

"Hi my name is Lindy and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and you should too."

As Newsweek continues the story,

Jan. 8, 2006 issue - 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.

The brainchild of filmmaker Brian Flemming, who directed the antireligion documentary The God Who Wasn't There and of atheist Web site RationalResponders.com 's cofounder Brian Sapient, the YouTube blasphemy challenge was a brilliant marketing device aimed and advertised directly at youth.

That is, it focused attention on the new militant atheism among a younger market segment that is most unlikely to buy and read books by Richard Dawkins , who provided the campaign with some help, or by Daniel Dennett or Sam Harris either.

As Jerry Adler's Newsweek article admits, most theologians do not interpret blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as simply making a statement of that type, so most of the kids are probably doing it for a lark, but their atheist elders are deadly serious. Atheists don't tend to have many children, so they must recruit.

Indeed, blogger Frank asks,

You want us to leave you alone. Fine. But why must you insult our spiritual background doing it? Couldn't you guys have made a video that said, "I'm a proud and open atheist" without bringing in the Holy Spirit or our Bible into it? You guys specifically chose Christianity. Why couldn't *YOU* guys leave *US* alone?

Well now, that is an interesting question. Part of the answer, as we shall see, is sheer spite at the unexpected robustness of spirituality. But a look at the social landscape might suggest other answers as well.

Next: Part 5: Why the acclaim for atheist authors?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

Pingbacks:

No Pingbacks for this post yet...

The ID Report

Recently (cached)
Recently (no cache)

March 2010
Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
<< <		> >>
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Last comments

Search

Linkblog

Links - Groups and Organizations

Access Research Network
Discovery Institute
Evolution News Blog
Evolution has become a favorite topic of the news media recently, but for some reason, they never seem to get the story straight. The staff at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture started this Blog to set the record straight and make sure you knew "the rest of the story".
Intelligent Design Network (IDNet)
Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center
Intelligent Reasoning
A blogger from New England offers his intelligent reasoning.
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)
Telic Thoughts
We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA)
www.themonkeytrial.com
Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.

Links - Of General Interest

A Brief View of Time and Those That Live There
Don Cicchetti blogs on: Culture, Music, Faith, Intelligent Design, Guitar, Audio
A Quick Guide to Sequenced Genomes
ARN Related Web Links
Creation/Evolution Quotes
Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones maintains one of the best origins "quote" databases around. He is meticulous about accuracy and working from original sources.
CreationEvolutionDesign
Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.
Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
John Mark Reynolds Blog
A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
Biola University.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day