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Ireland Criminalizes Blasphemy
An anonymous reader writes "Another European country clamps down on free speech. From the article: 'It does seem bizarre that, in 2009, a modern European nation would seek to shield religious belief from criticism — yet that is what is happening in Ireland right now. In repealing the 1961 Defamation Act, the Irish government sought to expunge the worst excesses of Ireland's draconian laws restricting free speech, but in the process it has ended up making offending religious belief a criminal offence. Aside from a 25,000 fine (reduced from the 100,000 originally sought by the government), the new Defamation Act gives the authorities the power to stage raids on publishers: the courts may now issue a warrant authorising the police to enter, using "reasonable force," premises where they have grounds for believing there are copies of "blasphemous statements."'"
It's like watching V for Vendetta in real life. 0.o
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
No see its ok. It's with a lowercase g so it's my god and not the real God.
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This is the biggest reason why I can't stand religion. If you are so frightened by others' opinions as to attack them if they disagree with you then you have no right to make any decisions. It's the same with censorship. If you don't like it, ignore it.
Can we outlaw thinking for ourselves while we're at it? (/s)
-SaNo
...and I mean that literally. When I read that a modern western country has enacted a law that allows for the prosecution of the "crime" of "blasphemy", I got a cold chill down my spine. What's next? Imprisonment and torture for various forms of heresy?
WTF?
Isn't it funny how the religionists keep whining about antagonistic and mean atheists are, and how that is their primary rebuttal to the arguments of public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and yet, given the free hand to manipulate the government, they go and pass laws like this. They'd do it in America too, have done it in the past, if not for that pesky First Amendment and the strident efforts of "militant" atheists and civil rights organizations.
Seriously, the Southpark guys are frikken heroes when it comes to freedom of speech and expression and trampling on stupidity. They depicted Muhammad without causing riots somehow. They exposed scientology to the world for all its ridiculousness and countless other things. Southpark needs to create an answer to all of this and the spokesperson for Ireland really needs to be the Lucky Charms guy ... and/or the Irish Spring guy going around and cutting into everyone's soap.
Religion is a choice that people make. It is rooted into culture and geography and nearly all other aspects of human existence, but it is not beyond question or criticism.
All hail the flying spaghetti monster.
This isn't really nerd news here, the online part of this story is ancillary to the main issue.
This isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters.
Hmmm... this might seem like "stuff that matters" to people who live in Ireland.
Do you ever get tired of blaming the US for every one of the world's ills? Americans can be dumb, but no more or less than Europeans in many ways. Look at British privacy laws, or the anti-muslim shit France is always trying to pull. Face it you guys are no angels either.
I'm a very religious person and this kind of stuff makes me sick. One of the foundations of my country is that it has no state-sponsored religion, or that it's not a (specific) religion-sponsored state. Governments have responsibility to protect their citizens from harm, but not at the expense of freedom. I may not agree with what you teach, what you share, what you distribute, but it is your God-given right (or as some may prefer, your natural right, or Spaghetti-given right) to believe, practice, share, and disagree. This kind of thing is a tragedy as it will hamper the rights of individuals and their ability to express themselves.
I have no problem with God...
It's his fan club that I hate.
I guess now it's up to the religious leaders to redefine what "blasphemy" means. We'll see what they come up with...
So when a religious person and an atheist meet and say something like "I find your views completely ridiculous" at the same time to each other then the religious person can sue the atheist but not vice versa?
Reminds me of this
The church might not be asking for it directly, but it is still being done because of religion. Same outcome either way except I would expect it coming directly from the church.
-SaNo
If I had 2p for every time my grandmother took the lord's name in vain, I'd have enough to pay off several offender's fines.
This is a woman who used to carry food to republican fighters hiding in fields and graveyards at night during the revolution.
Though she was a deeply devout woman, she would have had no qualms about any divine beings know just how screwed up they were. If she felt she should take the belt to God or Jesus, no blasphemy laws would have stopped her.
If they classify the abuse of minors by clergy and religious orders as a form of blasphemy, there might night be enough room in gaol.
Good Luck!
I realize that most people are going to be complaining about this without reading the article.
So my question is, how is this different than shielding from "hate speech" about... say, homosexuality? Go look at Canada's laws. It's pretty much against the law to say anything bad about homosexuality up there, from what I understand from some Canadian friends that I have.
I'm not saying this law is a good thing. I'm a pretty conservative Christian, in fact, and I don't particularly think this is a good law, and I think if anything it will drive more people away. Plus it kind of implies a religion-set-up-by-government, which - Ireland being "Catholic" and thus claiming to believe in Jesus Christ from the Bible - is NOT what Jesus talked about. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to have the law - and I don't see how anyone else can say "this law is wrong!" without some basis for what is right or wrong. However, I don't see that it's necessarily right either. Just explaining my conservative Christian viewpoint. I think most slashdotters are going to be thinking that conservative Christians are going to think this is a great thing.
Anyways. I'm still interested in knowing why this is any more frightening, annoying, upsetting, infuriating, unfair, or censoring than saying I can't tell people that being gay is ... hmmm, let's say, condemned by God, or ... bad for humanity ... or morally bad ... or bad for society... or any number of other "bad" things that would be "hate" speech in some countries.
I'm not asking if it IS condemned, bad, or hateful. I'm asking how this is different, just because it's a different belief. Yes, belief. Homosexuality being good or bad for society is a belief, too...
Fuck the corrupt politicians and religious leaders of Ireland who passed this travesty of freedom. In fact, I hope they just fuck themselves rather than underage boys. Again. Oh, and a special fuck you to the religious leaders whose faith is so weak they can not stand any criticism of their beliefs.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
That's one small step for man, one giant step for mankind ...... backward
Who marked this interesting? Are you serious?
That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. Ireland is a Catholic nation whose politicians are all pretty much on the same page concerning religion. There is so much religious diversity in America that defining "blasphemy" from a political standpoint would be impossible without endorsing a single religion. It's not like Christianity is one religion. I'm Lutheran and my church has no problem with abortion or contraceptives. The Catholics find both blasphemous while the Baptists just find abortion to be.
I hope you're not an American because everyone in this country should be aware of our freedoms of speech and religion. Even if congress were to ever pass an anti-blasphemy law all the smaller sects would take it to court and win. The Mormons and Scientologists have more power than you think, also. I couldn't see any Congressman, Republican or Democrat, supporting such a blatantly anti-American law. How do you disguise an anti-blasphemy law as anti-terrorist anyway? "Praise Allah" and "Praise God" mean the same thing and they reference the SAME GOD.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
"The modern world basically decided to get rid of all these stupid laws and regulations..."
We still have Blasphemy laws, they just changed the subject of the blasphemy from Religion to a hodgepodge of special interest groups.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/17/hate-crimes-law-expansion_n_237389.html
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You must have mistaken me for European. I'm American and I'm honestly sick and tired of the government destroying every single shred of freedom in the name of "safety". Sure, parts of Europe are even more messed up than the US, but the US doesn't have to emulate Europe and neither does Europe have to emulate the US. The US should give its citizens its freedom back, rather than keep destroying it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Islam is blasphemous to Christianity, Christianity and Islam are blasphemous to Jews, Catholicism is blasphemous to protestants, and protestantism is blasphemous to Catholics. Does that mean the Irish can (finally!) kick the entire lot off the island?
And why should Christians be allowed to insult atheists with impunity?
Or does this law only apply to protect big, arrogant sky-god religions? Oh, why do I even ask, it's Ireland we're talking about.
Blasphemy is not "hate speech"
Blasphemy targets the deity in which religious people believe, NOT the people themselves.
Now, I am quite convinced that if any supernatural being existed, it would be quite capable of handling "blasphemy" gracefully, which may be untrue for cultural/religous/lifestyle groups - which the "hate speech" laws in certain countries attempt to protect.
Nonetheless, I am also opposed to those anti "hate speech" laws since it both creates a breach in freedom of speech - but - even more dangerous - segregates those groups unto special status - and - de-facto - creates a rift between group of individuals.
To push my point further, when a country promotes a law prohibiting "hate speech" towards - say - homosexuals, they are specifically stating that homosexual have *different* rights than heterosexuals ! and *I* believe this is wrong.
--Ivan
Is that you, Cheney? Laws against free speech are what is needed to hide what you want to do.
Now the Irish government gets to decide what constitutes blasphemy for all faiths that practice there. This can be quite tricky. No longer will religions have control over their own faiths. Likewise, should it be determined in the law by the faiths themselves, the bar can be set so low that the mere practice of another faith or having no faith at all, will constitute blasphemy and lead to conviction, as in Saudi Arabia, where it is blasphemous to practice or discuss faiths other than Saudi Islam. This is a no-win situation and is a classic example of the wisdom of the American First Amendment. I'm going to assume that the European human rights commission will get to hear about this.
They may not make laws against blasphemy...but politically correct speech and other things that "hurt my feelings", they take the cake on that.
Therefore, I'd say it's not religious zealots OR liberal idiots that are responsible alone, but rather people in general who fall to the extremes.
Theres nothing wrong with that though. Now, if you actually -do- any of those things, yes it is wrong. But talking about it? No one gets hurt so therefore it should not be prohibited.
South Africa, last year. Incitement to hatred against immigrants: result, countless attacks and weeks of unrest as the locals attacked immigrants and forced them to flee for their lives.
Rwanda, several years ago. Incitement to hatred against one "race": result, 1 million dead, many hacked to bits as they sought shelter. In a few weeks they killed then half a year of all the concentration camps of WW2.
Germany, Crystal Night. incitement to hatred against jews. Result: several dead, buildings burned and the prelude to the holocaust.
There are lots of other examples, and you DARE to say that incitement to hatred should not be a crime.
That is EXACTLY the same as saying that offering a contract on someones life should not be a crime because it is only words.
Read a book. Any book. Just once and grow up mate.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Words do not have the power to kill or otherwise (really) hurt someone. Therfore they should be unregulated unless dealing with a contract or an offer to trade.
I so wish you were right. The problem is that we don't want to acknowledge the elephant in the room... propaganda works, on enough people to make a difference. Ask a Rwandan or Bosnian, or study Himmler (who famously claimed that it was the loudspeaker that conquered Germany). Sometimes, during genocide, it's hard for people to separate the words from the machete; one is an extension of the other.
I don't mean that in any mystical sense, I'm thinking of the stanford prison experiment etc. The line between speech and a decision to act disappears. Your conviction (and my wishes) about the independence of speech from action is an abstraction, since it requires humans who are uniformly well-schooled to be proud individualists, skeptics, and responsible citizens.
Perhaps we can find a functional way to make political speech a social contract that is bound to regulation like other transactions... after all, genocide relies on fraudulent and deceptive claims. The problem always resides with who gets to determine the truth.
Damn those pesky terrorists
According to the new law, each religious person can be fined as each and every religion is blasphemous to every other, so atheists will simply shut up and watch as all religions sue themselves out of existence :p
1: Pass a law preventing making fun of religion
2: Start a new, silly religion (like I believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing being who needs your MONEY!)
3: Profit!
That's different from all other religions how?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
> God damn you catholics/jews/hindus/protestants/daoists/etc are full of crap.
I note the omission of the one religion that would actually kill you for criticizing it. Come on nancy boy, man up and back the lofty words up. I'll even go first.
FUCK ALLAH AND HIS PEDOPHILE PROPHET SQUARELY IN THE EYEHOLES.
The day saying that is a crime is the day I grab my sporting goods and 'recall' every faithless Congresscritter who voted on the bill.
There, now I'm on pretty much everybody's list. Now come on ya pansies and join me. Too many of 'yall talk a good 1st Amendment defense but can't be bothered to actually defend it if it might have any actual risk involved.
Democrat delenda est
If you give the Bible-thumping idiots an inch, they will take the field.
You could have eliminated "Bible-thumping" from that statement and had a much more effective position. Here on Slashdot I have seen scientists want to decertify other scientists who speak against global warming. Worse still some who speak against global warming may even receive death threats
Frankly, a 25,000E fine seems fairly mild by comparison.
Perhaps, if we blamed overreaction and intolerance (common human traits) rather than the beliefs of people we don't agree with, we might make some progress dealing with these kinds of things.
Sadly, looking at a lot of the posts here on slashdot, it looks like we have a long way to go.
And a tiny majority of people are nuclear physicists, while the vast majority of people are thick as pig shit ... your point is what exactly ?
Just because something is believed in by a majority doesn't make it true ...
Those who warship the FSM refer to themselves as Pastafarians fer crepes sake.
FTFY =)
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Yes, but soon after "I don't know" will come, for a scientist, investigation, logic, reasoning, occam's razor, and probability theory, which are used, in combination with the mostly self-consistent (and very large) body of current scientific knowledge (or "educated, principled belief, if you prefer) to assess the likelihood of various extraordinary claims even prior to any experimental evidence being obtained.
Scientists are busy people, and they need to know what has already been pretty well covered and understood, and what is overwhelmingly probably false, or is not a well-formed concept, so they can get on with pushing the legitimate boundaries of scientific knowledge.
Many religious claims (those to do with specific acts of Gods) don't even stand up to basic logical tests of internal self-consistency nor conformance with the known laws of physics, so can be discounted rather quickly as self-serving twaddle on the part of religious organizers.
There may be a few actually interesting questions about the nature of consciousness or "purpose" of life or origin of life, destiny of life etc., but science is, in general, advancing on even these challenging fronts, so the "gap" into which divine intervention may fall is ever narrowing.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I think that Athiesim is just as shaky as religion's claims. How is that personal honesty? Either side's claims rely on faith.
I'll keep an open mind until I see proof provided by one side or the other.
No, not really. This is a tiresome strawman argument against Atheism. Are you keeping an open mind about the possible existence of Unicorns? Leprechauns? The end of the world in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar?
As an Atheist, I am simply living my life without belief in the Divine. I don't know with certainty because it is impossible to prove the nonexistence of something unobservable. In the absence of any tangible evidence of the Divine, however, I can confidently assume that at best, it is almost certain there is no Divine, and at worst, it is irrelevant to my daily life.
What does keeping an open mind about the potential existence of God mean to you? Are you hoping to hedge your bets somehow? Are you hoping that when you get to the pearly gates, if they exist, that you can tell St. Pete that you weren't an Atheist, so you should still be OK? Or are you just uncomfortable with the idea that rejection of belief in the supernatural puts you in the minority and on the wrong side of a whole lot of potentially scary people with a shared delusion?
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