Yesterday was Blasphemy Day International — a day devoted to exercising free speech at the expense of religious myths.

Certainly those of us who had been awaiting for this day expected it to result in people being offended and, ideally, questioning the basis of why they held these religious beliefs in the first place.

However, I was not prepared for a text from my friend, the president of UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers (UNIFI), telling me that by 1:29 a.m. they had already had two run-ins with the police and numerous students.

For what? Sidewalk chalking. Yes, you read that correctly.

People became so offended by the group’s free expression that nearly 50 people went out that night to deface and silence UNIFI.

One clear difference between atheists and the religious (among many) is each group’s willingness to silence opposition. A good atheist is someone who is scientific-minded and, therefore, has no problem justifying his or her own beliefs and pointing out flaws in bad arguments. Also, a good atheist should have the ability to constantly rework his or her beliefs when presented with the proper evidence.

This process of analysis is almost entirely opposite of the process that religious people use. However, just because religious folk do not like to hear opposing viewpoints or see their gods, demigods, prophets and saints portrayed as fiction or disrespected does not mean that the rest of the world must abide.

In fact, when any group reaches the level of delusion that causes them to kill or riot simply because they feel offended, we as a community are faced with two options: avoid confrontation at the expense of our rights and progressive discourse or decide that we will not allow these extremist groups to dictate the limits of our free speech.

“But Brian, we will turn off the religious moderates if we go out with the intention of offending!”

First, I would question how moderate these “moderates” really are if they become offended by words or images alone. More importantly though, the reactions of these “moderates” are precisely the problem to begin with.

Religious belief has been allowed a free pass in our society, and even atheists and the non-religious are responsible for this. This idea that religious belief is different from other belief and, therefore, should be exempt from criticism is baseless. Withholding criticism in this scenario will allow millions of religious people to continue their blissfully ignorant lifestyle that they have come to enjoy, but at the expense of what?

I’ve already mentioned the cost of Constitutional rights as well as societal progress, but what about our moral obligation? In general, I think that most non-religious people can agree that religion causes and promotes absolutely horrific events to occur throughout the world on a daily basis. Are these people’s comfort worth suicide bombings, oppression of women, female genital mutilation, abortion clinic bombings, opposition of stem cell research (and science in general), continued spread of AIDs, slavery and child abuse? I’m not saying we should go to nursing homes or cancer wards to tell the occupants that their faith is pointless. I’m not advocating going to people’s homes to tell them they are wrong. I’m simply saying that as a community we should be indifferent as to whether or not the religious community is offended by what we have to say. We need to call a spade a spade.

It needs to be understood that no idea is immune from criticism, and blasphemy is a nice reminder of that.

It’s no surprise, however, that most religious people are not consistent with their willingness to limit free speech. Christians that felt the need to take soap and water to the sidewalk chalk were more than willing to erase the phrase, “Jesus is not your savior,” but decided not to bother with “Muhammad is not your prophet.”

This raises the question: Why is your deity so special that it requires freedom of speech to be limited, but others are not?

This is a question that I’m still awaiting an answer for, and I hope it will lead some people see the importance of true freedom of expression.

You may have rights, but a right to not be offended is not one of them.

Brian Gress is the Vice President of the ISU Atheist & Agnostic Society