Obnoxious Bitch
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Atheists Turn the Tables on Christians
Beyond Belief Media and Brian Flemming, the filmmaker who gave us one of the best movies of all time, The God Who Wasn’t There, has launched a campaign to bring the truth to churchgoers. According to their press release of April 11th:
Hollywood—April 11, 2006. Declaring War on Easter, Beyond Belief Media has launched a preemptive attack on the Christian holiday, the company announced today. “Operation Easter Sanity” has already begun.
Using its documentary THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE as the chief weapon, Beyond Belief Media is covertly planting DVDs of the film in churches throughout the United States. The popular movie, currently ranked #1 on Amazon.com’s independent documentaries list, is critical of the irrational beliefs of Christians and asserts that Jesus Christ did not exist.
A total of 666 DVDs will be hidden like “Easter eggs” in sanctuaries, church yards and other holy areas by Beyond Belief Media’s national team of volunteers. The DVDs will be slipped into hymnals and other locations where they are likely to be discovered by unsuspecting worshippers.
Some DVDs will be planted by undercover operatives among actual Easter eggs at churches holding egg hunts on Easter Sunday.
“People go to churches to hide from the truth,” explained Beyond Belief Media president Brian Flemming, a former Christian fundamentalist. “At no time is this more apparent than Easter, when Christians get together to convince each other that a man died, stayed dead three days, rose from the dead and then flew into the air above the clouds.
“Our nonviolent campaign sends the message that nowhere in the country is safe from the truth. Wherever Christian leaders are indoctrinating children with 2000-year-old fairy tales, the truth may just find its way there.
“Our ‘War on Easter’ is of course completely without violence of any kind. Christians believe that beating a man to a pulp and nailing him to a cross somehow solves all the world’s problems. Beyond Belief Media does not.”More details as well as “battle reports” from field operatives are available at:
http://www.waroneaster.orgABOUT BEYOND BELIEF MEDIA
The mission of Beyond Belief Media is to provoke conversation about the dangers of religious belief.
A quick look at the comments from Christians on the War On Easter site illustrates that while they are happy that their brand of proselytizing is protected by the First Amendment, the Beyond Belief Media volunteers doing the same is somehow more along the lines of “a hate crime.”
Calling bullshit on delusional thinking is a hate crime? Wow… we’re living in fuckin’ Bizarro World!
I support the War On Easter. And for good measure, I’ll also take this opportunity to say I deny the Holy Spirit!
However, the most heinous of my sacrilege and blasphemy is the following admission: Marshmallow peeps are GROSS!!!
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How is leaving a DVD in a church any different from leaving a Chick tract in a phone booth or a bar? If the first one is a hate crime, so is the second.
...which leads right into the reason I am not comfortable with the whole notion of ‘hate crimes’. Example: assault is already illegal in its own right. Adding more punishment for the thoughts in the assailant’s head at the time only creates a precedent for ‘thought crimes’.
decrepitoldfool on 04/16 at 10:25 PM -
Good point, DOF! I’m rather uncomfortable with the idea myself. Assault is the same crime regardless of the “reason” for committing it upon a fellow human being. In my opinion, the punishment should be the same whether you beat up someone just because you’re a violent asshole, or because you’re a violent racist asshole or violent homophobic asshole. If you’re the sort of person who assaults another human being, the thoughts in your head at the time are immaterial - it’s just as fucked up to beat someone up because they’ve got red hair, or glasses, or drive a car you don’t like, as it is to beat them up because of their race, religion or sexual orientation. Choosing to express yourself through violence makes you a nutjob, period, and you SHOULD be locked up because you’re a danger to the rest of civil society. There are far better ways to make your opinions known, and they won’t get you thrown in the hoosegow.
As for the comparision of the WoE volunteers’ actions with those of people who distribute Chick tracts, you’re also right on the money. Just as I can toss bible tracts into the nearest trash receptacle because I don’t want to keep them (I admit I DO read them first, because I find them hilarious), Christians who can’t be bothered to check out a DVD they find can simply toss it.
However, as we well know, Christians just can’t be happy unless they feel they’re being persecuted, and to them, their not being given special treatment over and above the protections of every other group of people is persecution. They’re completely blind to the contradiction inherent in claiming, often in the same breath, how they deserve to be specially accomodated because they’re “the majority” and how speaking out against their worldview should be classified as “hate speech.” In truth, I suppose it speaks volumes about their ability to utilize the cognitive dissonance necessary to continue to believe in and practice their religion.
OB on 04/23 at 10:33 AM