Alex had an excellent post a while back talking about “why atheism can never be inoffensive enough.” This bit made bells ring for me:
Few things but faith could yield such results: blasphemy, even apparently when most benign, threatens the norms on which religion rests. The earnestness of faith, and faith itself, can’t be taken comfortably for granted when its sacraments are others’ standing jokes, and what can’t be assumed must be explained.
Some folks have a robust faith that can stand being laughed at, and I’ll frequently find my religious friends in on the joke (when they aren’t cracking it themselves). But there’s a disturbingly large number of people who want you punished for poking a bit o’ fun at their religion. Some of them are probably feeling entitled, some of them are probably afraid their sky god will smite them if they don’t smite us, and some are just assholes, but I suspect a majority of them are outraged by blasphemy because it jams a finger on the ol’ doubt button and keeps it pressed.
And being an atheist who’s not afraid to say “Hey, I’m an atheist” is enough to unleash their outrage. That being the case, I’m not gonna bother with trying to be an inoffensive atheist. I’ll calls it like I sees it, and if faith can’t withstand it, it’s not worthy of respect. If the deity is as powerful as proclaimed, if the religion is the rock people assure me it is, then it had better be able to at/with/near us. If not, it’s a sad, pathetic little thing that people might as well not bother with. If a little light blasphemy is enough to destroy it, it was never worth having to begin with.
If you’re ready for poking some fun at faith, you could head over to Loltheist, where you will find many fine illustrations of the concept of blasphemy.
