Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge

Forget the Blasphemy Challenge (and if you don't know what it is, do the research). I can understand why lapsy Christians, as part of breaking free of a lifetime of laboring under an overt or tacit bullshit threat, would bite. But to me it's no more meaningful than scampering up and down the nearby sidewalks screaming "STEP ON A CRACK, BREAK YOUR MOMMA'S BACK!" while stomping like crazy with both feet on every crevice and cranny in sight (and there are a lot of them) just to prove that I stone cold don't give a moldering shit about wooperstitious penalties. Although, come to think of it, I may have to try this just to see how the locals -- many of whom are consanguineous and skittish and impressionable -- react. If this doesn't work, I'll scamper back and forth under a ladder while smashing mirrors over the heads of black cats, yelling "BAD LUCK ME! BAD LUCK ME!"

Blaspheming is a victimless crime and a pointless exercise. Instead I want to see YouTube videos of people ambling around church parking lots during Sunday services and placing pro-rational "tracts" on people's windshields. I'm not talking about in-your-face "God doesn't exist, get used to it, ya f*ckin' hayseed!" stuff, but something genuinely useful and even seductive. Material that simply asks readers not to trust Pastor Blowmuff out of the gate; to consider that science is not in fact a natural adversary of a moral or spiritual or introspective life; to understand that evolution is not a tool created for the express purpose for battering Jesus into submission, but is simply one more aspect of how nature works, with or without my, your, or the Holy Ghost's approval.

These would employ easy-to-follow diagrams featuring smiling cartoon characters. They would employ lists of common myths about biology, geology, scientists, and human sexuality, and brief explanations of why these are wrong. They would invite readers to visit Web sites such as Talk.Origins (URLs would be more likely to inspire responses than book titles). Even lifelong and seemingly hopeless victims of the faith byrus might be helped out of the primordial darkness by such an offering.

I wouldn't bother with even mentioning the word "atheist" in these handouts, though. Not at first. All this would do is rile up the flock. You wouldn't try to get a Klansman to change his views about African-Americans by pointedly using the n-word -- something with which KKK members are intimately familiar and in one context only; to fundopaths, the a-word summons forth imagery just as loathsome.

Has this ever been tried? Obviously I'm not the first to conceive of such a plan. I would suggest this as a starting point. It's huge, lovely, and just far enough north so that riots may not ensue.