A pretty edgy idea from Atheist Agenda at the University of Texas at San Antonio: Smut for Smut!
The concept: Trade in a holy book, and get some porn! I think it’s brilliant. Get those Bibles, Qur’ans, and Hubbard books off the streets where they’ll just harm somebody. Those things are full of the most vile misogyny, sex, and violence.
Pornography on the other hand, while not wonderful, is at least better than religion in a few important aspects:
- Nobody pretends that a god is behind their porn, and that if you don’t accept it, you’ll be damned.
- Nobody’s ever had a holy war over what kind of porn is better.
- Nobody tries to legislate other people’s behaviour on the basis of their pornographic values.
- Unlike religion, there are laws against exposing people to porn if they’re too young for it.
5 March 2010 at 1:36 pm
Um, dot point three is not quite true, if you think of (for example) the extensive child porn laws in Australia and overseas, but I get you're intended meaning. It all depends on what sort of porn you mean, most of which (we hope) is pretty innocuous.
"Pornography on the other hand, while not wonderful, is at least better than religion"
This is an interesting comment based on a funny discovery I had at a friend's dinner party a few years ago, where through a series of table jokes I found out I was the only person there without a subscription to the optional Foxtel porno channel.. Boring, I must be…
Most people think Song of Songs makes good poetry. After all, they read it at weddings. The same might be said about the Kabbalah and Tantric writings. But I get the point about misogyny and violence in sections of scriptural writings.
5 March 2010 at 8:47 pm
I saw a flier on campus by some atheist organization wherein they promised that an atheist would attend the church of anyone who made a certain donation to a charity fund. "Save an Atheist!" was the tag line.