Souls on the line

Atheists stake their souls for what they don8217;t believe

8220;Hi my name is Lindy and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and you should too.8221;

With that five-second submission to YouTube, a 24-year-old who uses the name 8220;menotsimple8221; has either condemned herself to an eternity of punishment in the afterlife or struck a courageous blow against superstition. She8217;s one of more than 400 mostly young people who have joined a campaign by the Web site BlasphemyChallenge.com to stake their souls against the existence of God. That, of course, is the ultimate no-win wager, as the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal calculated 8212; it can8217;t be settled until you8217;re dead, and if you lose, you go to hell.

The Blasphemy Challenge is a joint project of filmmaker Brian Flemming, director of the anti-religion documentary The God Who Wasn8217;t There, and Brian Sapient, co-founder of the atheist Web site RationalResponders.com. Their intent was to encourage atheists to come forward and put their souls on the line, showing others that you don8217;t have to be afraid of God. The particular form of the challenge was chosen because, by one interpretation, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, a part of the Christian Trinity, is the only sin that can never be forgiven. And once something you8217;ve said gets posted on YouTube, as any number of celebrities can attest, you never live it down.

For better or worse, though, hell may not be so easy to get into. Despite the seemingly clear language in Mark 3:28-29 8220;all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven8221;, most theologians are reluctant to pronounce anyone beyond repentance and salvation. Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, says the passage, read in context, refers to a very narrow and specific definition of blasphemy: maliciously attributing God8217;s miracles to a demon. Merely 8220;denying8221; the Holy Spirit, by this reading, doesn8217;t qualify. 8220;My response,8221; Land says, 8220;would be to pray for these people: 8216;forgive them, for they know not what they do8217;.8221;

To which another self-described blasphemer, whose real name is Michael Lawson, replies: 8220;We want to show that we really mean it when we say we don8217;t believe a word in this book,8221; he says. He means the Bible.

God could not be reached for comment.

8212;jerry adler / Newsweek