In 2005 filmmaker Brian Flemming made a controversial movie called The God Who Wasn't There. Following in the vein of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 the film aimed to tackle a heated debate, stir up controversy and challenge the commonly held beliefs and opinions of viewers. Except this time the topic wasn't gun-laws or the Bush Administration. Rather it focused on the much more combustible subject that is Christianity.

Flemming utilised luminaries such as Richard Dawkins, who is an extremely outspoken atheist and critic of creationism, to support him in his picture. Dawkins, who was voted as one of the world's top three intellectuals alongside Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky, and the others were intended to add a certain amount of credibility to the movie. Nevertheless one can say that all three of these movies, while purporting to be educational, ended up being perceived as merely antagonistic by viewers who did not share the views of the director. In a movie with a one way dialogue anybody not immediately receptive to a film's message is unlikely to be swayed from his stance – whether it be a movie challenging a religion, supporting it like The Passion of the Christ, or poking fun at it as Dogma did.

Bearing this in mind it is little surprise that Flemming's picture, following on the tails of a host of other controversial movies, didn't necessarily cause quite as much controversy as some of its predecessors did, even though it probably qualifies as the most confrontational of the mentioned films. The movie came, ruffled some feathers, and moved on not leaving a necessarily significant cultural wake.

Enter social media.

In December 2006 Flemming teamed up with Brian Sapient, founder of the newly formed Rational Response Squad, a group of atheists whose mission is to confront theism, and embarked on a daring marketing ploy to simultaneously get both the movie and the organisation into the spotlight.

According to the Bible blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is the only unforgivable sin. It states that to do so qualifies as an eternal sin and that the perpetrator will be condemned to eternal damnation. So what Flemming and the members of the RRS decided to do was to come up with The Blasphemy Challenge. They offered to give away 1001 dvds of the movie but, as the tagline goes, “There's only one catch: We want your soul.”

Flemming and the members of the RSS challenged supporters of the movie and of the RSS to draw a line in the sand and place themselves at a point of no return. By uploading a clip of themselves onto YouTube entrants stood a chance of winning a copy of the dvd – as long as somewhere in the clip they uttered the line, “I deny the Holy Spirit”.

Although in all probability all 1001 dvds have already been given away (a search for “blasphemy challenge” no YouTube gets you about 2,700 results) users are still uploading videos of themselves speaking the phrase (the latest addition was uploaded a few hours before I wrote this post).

There was an immediate outcry among Christian communities, with some claiming that Flemming and the RSS should be held accountable for sending thousands of people to Hell. Others took a more pragmatic approach and responded in kind. Soon Challenge Blasphemy and Praise the Lord Challenge emerged as counterpoints to the original challenge. Although nowhere near as popular as the Blasphemy Challenge these two still managed to get a few hundred users to upload clips of themselves demonstrating their faith in Christianity, either by praising God, or praying by name for members of the RSS and entrants of the Blasphemy Challenge.

Who knows the long-term consequences that such challenges are going to have? Seeing an everyday person so poignantly making a statement about his or her beliefs is going to cause a much larger reaction than any work produced by a “celebrity” who viewers will immediately be suspicious of and assume has an ulterior motive.

Maybe social media will allow the general populace to become more tolerant and respecting of each other's beliefs when people see the just how deeply the beliefs of others run and will stop people from dismissing other denominations quite so easily. Or maybe it will have the intended effect that people such as Sapient and Christian evangelists hope for and will result in a number of religious conversions being made. Or it may cause a backlash that YouTube users cannot foresee – conservative groups are not likely to be at all tolerant of such videos.

Whatever the result may be, social media is without a doubt raising the stakes.