An atheist student organization at the University of Texas-San Antonio caused controversy on campus last week by holding their annual "Smut for Smut" event, a campaign in which students can exchange their Bibles for pornography, WOAI-TV reports.
Members of the campus group Atheist Agenda set up exchange booths on the northwest side of campus and held up signs reading "FREE PORN," the station reports. They also held discussions and answered questions from students about the campaign's message.
"[The purpose of the event] is to send a message that the stuff in the bible, and the Quran, and the Torah, and all that sort of thing is, in our case worse, in our opinion worse, than pornography," University of Texas-San Antonio student Kyle Bush told WOAI-TV.
In a blog post the group published ahead of a previous "Smut for Smut" event in 2010, organizers said they got the idea for the campaign from a University of Texas-Austin group called the The Knighthood of Buh, which held a similar event several years ago.
"It’s a clever reversal of the projects some religious groups have in which they collect porn and distribute bibles, and we owe the idea to the Knights," the group explained in the blog post. "It’s symbolic. Pornography is vilified by the religious community, but in reality the values espoused by religious doctrine are far more reprehensible. So, in effect, it’s trading something appalling for something less appalling."
One student unaffiliated with the organization told WOAI-TV that she believes "God can definitely use [the campaign] for a greater purpose" and explained that it has brought lots of Christian organization groups together to "stand up for their faith."
But "Smut for Smut" has faced its fair share of criticism at well -- even among fellow atheists.
Hemant Mehta, a writer who blogs about atheism and other topics on his site "The Friendly Atheist," has said that though he understands what the group is trying to do, there may be more effective ways to deliver the message than the "Smut for Smut" campaign.
In his post "'Smut for Smut' Is A Bad Idea," Mehta wrote:
I get the point. The Bible has smut and violence and that needs to be pointed out. It’s not all rainbows, flowers, and Jesus.
But if the group’s goal is to get people to consider atheism as a reasonable way of looking at the world, it’s the wrong way to go about it.
I can’t imagine anyone changing their mind over such a campaign. If anything, they’ll just push atheists (and their ideas) further away.
Find out more about Atheist Agenda by visiting their Twitter account and check out "The Friendly Athiest" for Mehta's full response to the event.