Wait... It's WHAT Day, Now?

I must not have gotten the memo - I was under the impression that the idea behind the #BlasphemyDay hashtag was to call attention to prosecutions for blasphemy, like this one in Greece (which was apparently instigated by the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn political party), which I have to admit that I don't get at all. (Is it the name people are hacked off about, or was he posting things that got people's underwear in a knot?)

Instead, it seems to have turned into the "'Christian' - 'Atheist' Internet Fight Club," with a bunch of people duking it out to see who can say they're the most outraged over one thing or another. Strikes me as being a colossal waste of time.

I get the idea behind criminalizing blasphemy, even if, to me, it seems to cast God as an overly-sensitive control freak. (Does the idea of blasphemy even exist outside of the Judeo/Christian/Moslem tradition anymore?) After all, were it me, and I could create the whole of the Universe, simply by speaking a Word, you'd have a REALLY hard time even getting on my radar, let alone managing to piss me off merely by saying something. If anyone would embody "sticks, stones and hydrogen bombs are beneath my notice so your words are pretty much meaningless," it would be a deity. But if I were under the impression that a deity would punish me and others for letting someone speak their mind in the wrong way, I guess I'd be pretty invested in making sure that everyone showed the "proper respect." On the other hand, I have some difficulty empathizing with the personal insult aspect of it. I'm pretty sure that I could find literally millions of people who would have a problem with me for one reason or another, for who I am, what I've done, who I work for, where I live, what I believe et cetera. But I couldn't name any of them off the top of my head, because I more or less ignore them. Scratch that - it's more accurate to say that I don't give a rat's patootie anymore. It bothered me when I was young, I guess because I saw a threat there, but now that I've realized that I'm part of a species where threatening people with death is often treated like a competitive sport, I've grown to tired to care what other people think of me. And, until I manage to cobble together an Orbital Mind Control Laser, which would let me actually do something about what others thought of me, I'm going to keep on not caring.

Anyway, if we're going to have something like Blasphemy Day in the first place, we might as well use it to promote tolerance and the like, rather than as an excuse to demonstrate how stupid and insulting we can be.