The Bible is Still Holy
Mar 8th, 2010 Posted in What's it all About? | one comment »This hurts me. On a university campus in Texas, the Atheist Agenda is putting on a smut for smut campaign. If you give them a Bible (or a Qur’an or Book of Mormon, or any other book held sacred by any religious group), and they will give you porn.
Why they would do this? Students wanting porn can go to the second hand store and get Bibles for under a buck and then they can trade that Bible in for a porn magazine that probably costs five of six bucks. So it’s got to be costing the group money to provide the porn.
There is no way they think they will help people break free from oppressive religions with this deal. No one who holds to a religion will wake up one day and say, “I think this book I’ve held as holy all these years is really smutty. I think I’ll trade it in for a porn magazine because porn is far more edifying.” So who do the Atheist Agenda people hope to attract with their trade-in offer? People who like porn, presumably.
Why?
Well, according to Melissa Ludwig, one reason for the campaign is to attract new members to the Atheist Agenda.
In the view of club members, religious texts are as smutty as pornography because they contain violence and torture and spark religious wars. But mostly, it’s a public relations stunt meant to ignite debate and attract new members to the club.
Why attract new members? And if you are attracting new members, why aim for members who like to look at porn? What can they offer you? What good will they be for the organization?
At their blog, the Atheist Agenda folks say nothing about wanting to recruit new members.
When asked why they do this, they give the following answer:
It’s symbolic. Pornography is vilified by the religious community, but in reality the values espoused by religious doctrine are far more reprehensible. So, in effect, it’s trading something appalling for something less appalling. We also like to get people to think, to talk to us, and to debate with us. That only works when they understand just what we’re doing, hence this FAQ.
So I guess that means they are doing this to help clean up the world of reprehensible doctrine.
And then that bit about trading something appalling for something less appalling. And yet, later in their FAQ they say that:
Women choose to participate in pornography of their own accord, and to say it objectifies them against their will presupposes their inability to make decisions – a mindset that kept them from voting and holding careers for a long time. If they want to display themselves in such a manner, and if consumers want to see, then both parties come away happy.
So it appears that they don’t believe porn is appalling at all.
I’m left scratching my head. What exactly do these people believe and what exactly are they trying to accomplish? It’s not clear. Right now it feels kind of like this a group of immature people who don’t know how to engage in debate without trying to bait and offend their opponents. They remind me of little children who want attention. They are quite excited about the attention they are getting, in fact. The blog posts recently have all been about the attention. But now that they have national attention, it would great if they had some kind of sensible message or beliefs we could discuss. Instead, with one breath they call porn appalling and with the next they say it’s actually good for the women and the consumers who are engaged in the porn industry.
What’s it all about, Alfie?





That’s what I get for not checking my Facebook more often. 


