The Blasphemy Challenge of the RSS

[Sorry, it's the RRS, but with the links out there already I cannot change it now].

Some theists are calling on atheists to denounce the Rational Response Squad's Blasphemy Challenge. I have never endorsed or scoffed at the Blasphemy challenge. Up until now the only thing I wrote about it was to describe what the Bible said about it here.

But it seems me to be a lot of college kids having fun and getting a lot of attention by expressing their first amendment rights. That's what takes place so much on the internet. And college kids can be rude and offensive, and supremely confident. They do things we'd never attempt because they don't know "it can't be done." Many of us who are older were like that when we were in college.

I judge people for where they are and what is expected of them. I don't expect from college students what I would expect of the adults they will become in several more years. BK over at Christian Cadre calls it foolishness. Ed Brayton says what they're doing is "pointless, juvenile and stupid." But isn't he just telling them to grow up? And wasn't he himself a college kid who did pranks and had fun at other people's expense? I guess it was okay for him to do, but it's not okay for those in the RRS, eh? And Ed did grow up. So will they. I don't expect them to get their point across by studying for years to be a Bertrand Russell, as Jim Lazarus might suggest of them. That is totally unrealistic to expect this from them. They cannot do that. So they do what they can, and that's all they can do.

What have they done? They have raised awareness of atheism. Has it been positive? Probably not for those who disagree with them, but then they'll just disagree anyway. Those who do disagree should be smart enough to know these are college students, and not representative of the many other intellectual atheists out there, so they, like me, judge them as the young kids they are. If not, these people are ignorant, and maybe that's what Jim is trying to say. Maybe all he's trying to say is this: "don't judge us all as if we are the RRS." But I think educated people already know to do that. If people like Jim want to look down their noses at the tactics of college kids, then let them. He should realize that white people looked down at the tactics of black people who asserted their rights, too. "How dare she refuse to sit in the back of the bus?" "How dare he go to the bathroom in the white man's restroom?" "How rude can you be?" "That just reinforces my stereotype of what I think about black people." Now granted, we're not talking about rights under law, unless you want to talk about First Amendment rights. But for these college kids who encounter street evangelists on college campuses who hold up signs saying "Fags are going to hell," maybe this is their response on their level, and that's all they can do?

Raising awareness. Confession. Isn't that what Christianity does? Christians want a public confession of their faith in front of the church, because a confession solidifies their belief. But there is no atheist church to attend for a public denouncing of Christianity. The internet is their church. So they do so on YouTube.