The Atheist Experience Facebook page

I know this won't be of interest to many of you, but for our Facebooking friends, here's a curious thing. Over on Facebook, there's an Atheist Experience page that looks for all the world to be official. Except it isn't, and never has been. We have no idea who put it up, and whoever did seems to have abandoned administrating it. It currently has over 7740 "likers," all of whom clearly hopped aboard thinking it was an official page, and who have in fact built up something of a little community there. So it would be a shame to have to get it taken down, which is why Jen is looking into whether Facebook will simply let us take it over. We don't relish having it taken down and starting up our own from scratch, but that's what we'll do if we must.

We don't have a problem with fans doing fan stuff. After all, most of the people who have become fans of the show did so after discovering YouTube clips posted by other fans. And we're aware that on the intarweebs, a lot of stuff is simply going to be out of our hands.

What bugs us is that this page was set up to look official when it is not, and thus whoever created it is guilty of deceiving our viewers. If this had been set up as a fan page (there's already a fine fan group, run by the Macalpine clan, though I have no idea what the difference is between "pages" and "groups" as Facebook sees them, or why they created two separate but nearly entirely similar things in the first place), then hey, fine. If we get to take the page over, we'll definitely use it in a more (I can't believe I'm about to use this fucking word) proactive way, posting frequent Wall updates relating to ACA activities, blog posts, video clips, and other stuff of interest. As it is, we can use it to do none of those things, and fans meanwhile are posting stuff to its Wall addressed directly to us, oblivious to the fact we aren't even seeing it. So, you know, we'll keep you posted.

Of course, if the person who did create the page happens to be reading this, dude, let us have admin privileges and take it off your hands. We won't send ninja after you or anything.

Oh, we've hit the big time now for sure!

Today I was made aware of a Facebook group called — are you ready? — "catholics against 'the atheist experience'". That I know of, this is the first expressly anti-AETV Facebook group yet formed. Not that it's a big thing or anything, with only 55 members at this point, the vast majority of whom appear to be atheists. The Wall posts are a blast to read.

Saith the group's creator, Nathan Boucher, who is only two years out of high school...

so i came across this video today on youtube about these atheists who have a show...Now it is freedom of speech but what really annoyed me was the host was totally bashing catholics and he actually gave out the audience consecrated hosts or what he said were.

its not right to make fun and mock that which you don't understand!

Which I do believe can be roughly summarized as "hurr de durp durrr." I suspect Mr. Boucher is referring to this clip here.

First, the fact that students in this country continue to graduate from high school with writing skills as abysmal as the above remains this country's greatest shame. Secondly, we don't make fun of and mock the church and its practices — both spiritual, like communion, and material, like boy-fucking — because we do not understand them, but because we do. Religion promulgates ignorance, medievalism, tribalism, and anti-intellectualism, and protects the grossest immorality under the shield of its authority. Frankly, mockery of such vile filth is fairly light treatment. What we should be doing is arranging to have Pope Ratzo arrested and imprisoned for life. We've been letting the Church off lightly if all they can whine about is mockery and ridicule.