Atheist group crowns winner of blasphemy contest

AMHERST, N.Y. — Blasphemy. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. And the T-shirt reads, “Faith is no reason.”

The Center for Inquiry (CFI), an international advocacy group based in Amherst, N.Y., picked that brief phrase as the winner of its first-ever blasphemy contest.

Contestants were invited to submit slogans of 20 words or fewer that were critical of religious faith. The competition, launched to mark the inaugural International Blasphemy Day on Sept. 30, attracted 1,000 entries from 650 participants, but also drew criticism from online commentators, some of whom called it offensive and suggested CFI was soliciting hate speech.

One CFI supporter even distanced himself from the contest on the organization’s Web site, calling it “not dissimilar to the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Nazi era.”