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Ireland's Blasphemy Law Goes Into Effect
stereoroid writes "As of January 1, it is a crime in Ireland to commit Blasphemy. The law was changed in July 2009 to fill a gap in the Irish Constitution, which states that it is a crime but does not define what it is, an omission highlighted in a Supreme Court decision in 1999. To mark the occasion, Atheist Ireland published a list of 25 blasphemous quotations on the blasphemy.ie website, from such controversial figures as Bjork, Frank Zappa, Richard Dawkins, Randy Newman, and Pope Benedict XVI. (The last-mentioned was quoting a 14th Century Byzantine Emperor, but that's no excuse.)"
another nail in the coffin of the corrupt and incompetent Fianna Fail government (yes the leading party in Ireland has word fail in its name) who voted this in
never will forget what they have done to this country
This is one of occasions where the French have it about right, they have separation of church and state. They do not even allow religion in schools in any form. I don't understand why people think it is ok to force their beliefs on me.
Well, except in theaters, and near funerals, and at political rallies (unless you're in a "free speech zone" some distance away)...
And some art, well, we just can't have people looking at (or even creating) that...
It'd be nice if congress fixed these things. But of course, we have to wait for them to finish their prayers before they can get started. Oh, and the blessing. By a preacher paid for with tax money.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Atheism isn't a religion though. It's like saying not owning a dog is a form of dog ownership. The big argument that religious people use against atheism is that it's a religion that worships science. You know full well how much religious folk like pointing at things and shouting 'See! See! I told you so! I told you so! I was right and you were wrong! I'm going to sing the I was right song!'. We don't need to give the kooks anything else to gum on.
As some (very clever) wag has said: If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hopefully all of them?
What I don't understand about the blasphemy laws in general is how do religious people get around committing blasphemy against other religions just by pretty much quoting from their holy books whenever they contradict other holy books. Every Muslim will tell you that Jesus is not really a son of God, hence the Bible is full of lies. Isn't that blasphemy against Christianity?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Please outline the beliefs of atheism. Please outline atheistic morality. Please define the atheistic purpose for life. If you can't do these, you're spouting bullshit and really out to shut up and let the adults talk.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I fucked Jesus and the bitch loved it.
Also, the "virgin" Mary loved to fuck horses. Jesus was born in the very manger that Mary used to lie on before the horse entered her.
Also, Vestal Masturbation.
I don't deny anything. I simply don't believe, because I've never seen anything that has even the slightest weight in favor of the various claims of theism. The only thing I object to is the imposition of religious behaviors upon me by the religious. For instance, if they don't want to drink beer on Sunday, then by George, I think that's just fabulous. However, if I wish to drink beer on Sunday, and they move to stop me - for instance by forcing stores not to sell beer to me - well, now we have a problem, and they have just become my enemy by stepping on my liberties. You'll note this opposition arises without any attempt by me to deny the religious their beliefs, or the truth of them, etc.
Religion, like any other highly personal set of choices, should remain between one's self and other consenting adults. As soon as you force it, or material consequences of it, upon someone else, you're pond scum. And that's being unkind to pond scum. Irish lawmakers have today joined this damp, respect-free group.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The most appropriate story for me to post in, if only for my sig.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Atheism states that there is no higher power in the world."
Atheism states no such thing. It is the rejection of a claim, not a claim of its own.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Atheism is a religion inasmuch as not playing tennis is a sport.
You're not describing what is logical. You're describing what happened. It has nothing to do with logic - it's just what worked. There could be dozens of other ways that species could thrive. In fact, you've pretty much described OUR species and ignored that other species have survived just as well with vastly different social structures.
You cannot derive an "ought" from an "is." You've committed a rather anthropocentric version of the naturalistic fallacy.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
It's not the content of your post, but the manner. "Spouting bullshit" and "shut up and let the adults talk" is meant to inflame the person your responding to. It's also completely extraneous. If you remove the last sentence from your post, your position is unchanged.
What? That's like saying if I truly didn't believe in Zeus, I wouldn't deny his existence and object to you demolishing my house to build him a temple.
If the people who believed in foolish things would keep their mouths shut and their hands out of public coffers, there'd be no reason for us to deny their silly fairy tales. They could ramble on in solitude like the people who are properly sent to a shrink when they claim to speak to invisible, imaginary beings.
Your argument would be fine if it's premise, "that atheism is itself a form of religion", were not false.
I, being one of many, have grown particularly weary of this old canard which, while it may be applied (weakly) to social movements such as "Humanism", does not in the least apply to atheism. Strictly speaking atheism is simply the lack of belief in any or all deities and has none of the attributes of a religion most especially a statement of faith. There is indeed a total lack of dogma, there is no structure or singular impetus from which non-belief is sourced. The mere fact that there exist amalgamations of persons that promote rationality in opposition to ignorance and superstition does not make atheism a religion. In fact such organisations are relatively poorly attended and for the most part formed out of frustration at the need to on one hand defend against personal denigration by members of societies wherein admission of a lack of religious conviction makes one immediately suspect of moral turpitude and on the other hand hold back the growing tide of religious incursion into education and political discourse. Were these needs to dissolve so would the organisations as they do not exist as a means unto themselves as do religious institutions.
That's not a belief. It's a response to a proposition. Theism is not a religion, and it has just as many "beliefs", just one that is "There is at least one god". Atheism and theism are positions on an issue, not religions in and of themselves.
Buddhism is atheistic, Raelians are atheistic, Christians are theistic, Hindus are theistic.
Learn something new.
the existence of man is to benefit the species of man
I challenge the implication that this conclusion logically follows from the singular premise that no god exists. In fact, in order for logic to come in to play, you have an implied premise. Something along the lines of "The existence of man has a purpose." (Actually, you would need still more implied premises to deductively arrive at your conclusion, but I won't belabor the point further).
I directly challenge this implied premise. I submit that "purpose" is not an attribute of material reality, but rather, an abstract concept which humans assign to aspects of material reality. To illuminate: dirt has no purpose. It is just there. But as soon as a human plants a seed in the dirt, the human has given it a purpose.
So, individual humans, being subsets of material reality, do not have any intrinsic purpose. Humans can assign purposes to themselves (and others), however, there is no single objectively-discernible intrinsic purpose. So you might ascribe to man this purpose of serving man, but other men (myself included) make no such ascription.
I therefore conclude that your "purpose of man" is merely a highly-subjective opinion, and should not be given any more special treatment than such opinions as "vanilla tastes better than chocolate" or "the purpose of the poor is to serve the rich."
If atheists in Ireland really want to stir up trouble, a group of them should formally recognize that atheism is itself a form of religion
Except, of course, that it's not. Atheism is ATHEISM, not ATHEISM. There's a huge difference.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
For the record, I am an evangelical Christian and this strikes me as something that can only end in tears. When will politicians (and, more importantly, voters) realize that trying to protect feelings only undermines free speech and, ultimately, democracy? We need our leaders to tell the cry-babies to grow up.
linquendum tondere
In my dictionary, atheism is defined as "Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God". This is quite distinct from the position of agnosticism, which states that we do not know if there is a God.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Do we really want to live in a world where it's not legal for me to say that Allah is a punk, that Jevohah is a murdering psychopath, or that Yaweh is a sadistic monster? Siva is a blue cocksucker and Brahma is two-faced?
Buddah's a lazy son-of-a-whore and Odin liked to give Zeus reach-arounds. There, I said it.
Call me optimistic on this first day of 2010, but I believe that radical Islam and the Christian Right and the orgy of crackpot New Age beliefs is not the sign of a resurgence in religious belief, but rather the dying spasm of an evolutionary adaptation that's no longer necessary.
In my two score and ten, I've seen the end-times deadlines coming more and more fast and furious. But now, with longer lifespans and online archives, we can see the corpses of apocalyptic predictions piling up. They're already starting to hedge on the 2012 mishegaas, covering their pre-columbian asses to avoid looking stupid on Jan 1, 2013. When religions have to be protected by laws and social conventions and political correctness and electronic apologists by the hundreds and armies of millionaire megachurches have to hire public relations firms, it starts to seem like they're whistling past the graveyard.
Anyway, I don't go in for that silly god-stuff. I'm a devout taoist. Tell me my beliefs are a joke and I'll laugh along.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Buddhism is atheistic"
Technically, Buddhism is non-theistic. God or gods may or may not exist, but the question is ultimately irrelevant because attachment is the cause of samsara.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Throughout my university days, I had this idyllic picture of a Maldives beach hanging on my wall. I used to feel bad that the islands would likely get flooded by rising waters due to global warming. Now I only feel sorry for the non-human inhabitants.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
> but rather the dying spasm of an evolutionary adaptation that's no longer necessary.
Evolution is less about removing "no longer necessary", and more about removing "kills you", and keeping "if it works well enough", or "gives an advantage".
As for "dying spasm" and evolution, I'll ask this:
Does Atheism really give the atheist group more/greater evolutionary advantages and fewer disadvantages than groups belonging to the major religious beliefs?
Atheists have fewer ways to take advantage of the very powerful placebo effect[1] ( they also don't have the convenience of "invisible omnipresent person"- unless they somehow really believe in the FSM ;) ).
And they aren't that much less likely to get killed by some religious nutcase.
So it seems to me that the religious bunch might be around for quite a while yet. Why do you think they would be more likely to die out than the atheists?
[1] Which appears to be getting stronger in some cases! http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all
Anything that is legally blasphemous and arouses public or state ire will be.
Blasphemy was the charge that got Jesus crucified.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I think the best way to get this overturned is to have people who aren't atheists to bring suit over every possible "blasphemy", because they realize that this law infringes on everyone's freedom of speech and religion. This law basically makes it criminal to have two religions that have opposing beliefs.
For example, any religion that believes that Jesus Christ was the son of God and speaks about it will be "blasphemous" to any religion that does not believe the same thing.
Or, if your religion doesn't believe Mohammed was a prophet of God, it can't say that any more. Likewise, one that does believe it can't say it.
Or, if your religion doesn't believe that 75 million years ago, Xenu brought billions of his people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs, you can't say that, either.
It also would appear to outlaw any printing of the Bible, Koran, or any other religious publication.
The question is, how "grossly abusive" does the "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion" have to be? Are restaurants that serve pork/beef/whatever guilty? How about stores that are open on Saturday/Sunday/etc.? What about people who work on Saturday/Sunday/etc.?
If a set can be the empty set, then anything is a religion. But that'd be silly. But atheism is the empty set. It is a lack of beliefs in god(s). That is not a belief, but a lack of belief. And to call atheism a religion is silly.
It's not wrong to specifically not include something in a definition - the definition of the primes specifically says 1 is not a prime.
It's actually not a lack of belief. A belief is essentially a strong conviction about something you cannot prove. Obviously there is no proof there is no god, but you certainly believe there is no God. Make your sentance active instead of active while maintaining the same meaning and your argument fails.
The Agnostic has a lack of belief, an Athiest believes in a negative. Frankly, Athiesm is far more of a religion than Agnosticism is. At least they are brave enough to admit that they just plain don't know, and tend to not really care either.
In reality, Athiests commit the inverse of the exact same logical fallacy that believers in a god must commit. You cannot hold either position without commiting the negative proof fallacy. The version that believers in a god commit is that if a premis cannot be proven false, it must be true. The version Athiests commit is that if a premise cannot be proven true then it must be false.
Both lines of reasoning are fallacious. They are also both grounded in a firm belief that a premis must be true or false with no proof to back up either side. Both sides will use the exact same evidence to prove their point, but neither side has any actual proof. The Athiests are in a particular bind on this one, because it is impossible to prove a negative. The only ones who could ever even potentially prove their case are those who believe in a god. Some might even say that takes a bit of extra faith on the part of the Athiest, given that fact. It also tends to breed a lot of zealotry in Atheists, I believe. Most Athiests I know of seem to be pretty evangelical about it anyway.
Only the Agnostics take a logical stance when it comes to god, and simply state "I dunno" and go on with their lives.
For the record, I believe in a god, the Christian God to be exact. "But wait!" you say, "you just argued that your belief system is based on a logical fallacy!" Well of course it is, that's what makes it a belief. I'm also careful not to commit the fallicist's fallacy - that is, just because an argument is fallacious does not mean the conclusion itself is false.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
You seem to be substantially understating the potential offensiveness of theological disagreement and the difficulty of discerning the intent of speech.
For instance, it is a commonplace in all but the really fluffy and liberal pockets of Catholicism to assert the theological position that there is no salvation outside the Church. You don't think that that could "cause outrage among a substantial number of adherents" of one or more Protestant sects? Or that asserting that somebody is subject to eternal damnation isn't, arguably, "grossly abusive"? Protestantism, again with the exception of the kumbaya crowd, commonly holds theological doctrines on salvation that would be precisely as troublesome for the Catholics. And let's not even get into the potential unitarian/trinitarian issues...
In any of those cases(which are hardly cherry picked, the number of analogs one could produce is limited largely by one's knowledge of comparative religion), the law would come down to a nasty bit of hairsplitting about exactly what the intent of the statement was.
Your assertion that "This categorically does not cover legitimate discussion" ends up meaning, in practice, pretty much exactly what I said above. The boundaries of "legitimate" discussion are always drawn by public sentiment and political factors, and blasphemy laws(including this one) are a tool used to stomp on those who fall outside the pale.
There is a substantive difference between "no belief in god" and "belief in no god". The prior is an absence of belief and makes no claim as to the existence of a god. The latter is an affirmative statement of the non-existence of a god. The prior is agnosticism, the latter atheism.
For some reason you are tying belief with god. This belies an inaccurate understanding of the term "belief". Look it up. Few definitions of "belief" refer to deity.
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Given that God has no measurable presence in reality, this is actually everyone's position whether they realize it or not.
When Alice tells Bob, "I really like that table", Bob can know exactly which table Alice is referring to, because that table is a well-defined real entity. When Alice tells Bob "I really like God", it is impossible for Bob to know what Alice means, because "God" refers to a poorly defined, potentially imaginary entity.
This applies even if both Alice and Bob follow the same religion; ask ten Roman Catholics to describe God in enough detail, and you will get ten mutually exclusive entities.
It's all just proof to me that religion is a form of insanity, or mental impairment, inability for objective free thought, or rational analysis, or failure and inability to reach logical conclusions.
How far of a leap is it really, from believing, without proof, of a magic being in the sky, to believing that the dismembered body parts of albinos in Africa possess magic powers? Or that suicide bombing will land you in paradise? Or that getting on your knees and begging a supposed omnipotent being for help, would yield results? The same being, mind you, who impotently, or indifferently observed the extermination of 12,000,000,000 humans in the concentration camps of Europe.
Well, as one of millions of athiests out there, I am grossly offended by religious pronunciations in public, and consider the same to be blasphemy to reason. There, fixed that.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Imagine the following scenario: you are sitting outside on a log in the snow. There is a nice January sun shining down on you, the temperature is a crisp -8 and you are minding your own business. Suddenly someone comes along and shouts out loud 'YOU DO NOT EXIST'. What would your reaction be?
The most likely reaction would be one of scorn and ridicule, right? Being secure in the fact of your existence you would not feel the need for others around you to confirm your existence. You KNOW you exist so what do you care what others say?
Now imagine you are..... GOD. Big Capital Letter GOD, creator of the universe (or at least separator of light and darkness if you want to follow the most recent translations) and everything that moves and lives and breathes. Your denizens are like microbes on a human's skin, so many of your creation walks and crawls and creeps and slithers around that blue planet. What would you care if one of those creatures, one of those microbes, proclaims you non-existence? Would you clamor for confirmation of it to those other creatures, those other microbes? Of course not. You are GOD! You don't need confirmation of anything! You are the past, the present and the future, everything moves only by your grace, you are omnipotent and omniscient.
Why, then, do these religious nutcases claim that it is a criminal act to claim the aformentioned?
The only possible explanation is that they are not sure at all that this deity they proclaim to believe in actually exists. They will do anything to keep up appearances, anything to keep their mind-construct from failing. Anyone who shakes the tree has to be stopped before they fall out. Anyone who points out that the book they read is actually an allegorical work of fiction has to be punished.
By trying to stop anyone from claiming god does not exist they prove that god does, in fact, not exist.
--frank[at]unternet.org
I think a case can be made for "religion kills you".
Not "god kills you" or "faith kills you" or "prayer kills you", but there's something about when believers get together and start collecting money and a-hootin' and a-hollerin' that usually indicates the killing's about to commence.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No beliefs are not about things which we cannot prove. I believe the earth is reasonably spherical is a belief about something which is proven. You're confusing faith with belief. Faith is what you have about things which you cannot prove, beliefs are things we hold true no matter what their proof status.
Agnostics are making a positive statement about the limits of knowledge. They are explicitly saying that knowledge has some limits, and that god(s) are things that lie beyond those limits. Although rare, it's perfectly possible to have an agnostic theist, although I'd suspect most atheists are also agnostics because agnosticism is much more a statement about the limits of knowledge.
As you know there are two basic statements of atheism - one is a lack of belief in god(s) and the other a statement that says that god(s) do not exist. Of course, the second contains the first, but the first does not contain the second.
There are so many things that we all have a lack of belief in. I'm sure you don't believe in gnarbles (not knowing even what gnarbles are) and you are therefore a agnarblist. I could invent a very long list of nonesense names of "things" and you'd lack a belief in all of them. You don't even consider that you have an unfounded belief in a negative when you say "I don't believe in gnarbles", and you'd be right. Just as I am right when I don't have a belief in your particular god or any other particular god anyone will invent or has invented.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
The Agnostic has a lack of belief, an Athiest believes in a negative.
Frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. You discuss the "logic" of the claims of theism, atheism, and agnosticism, but it seems that you don't actually know the logical consequences of what's going on. You're in line with some of the connotations that people think these words have, but if you want to have a rigorous argument about the logic of belief systems, read up about what you're talking about first.
Part of the difficulty is because of the ambiguity used in the word "atheism," which can mean non-belief, or it can mean a positive belief that there is no god. Those are two different claims (sometimes referred to as "weak atheism" and "strong atheism"). And you obviously don't know what agnosticism is.
Here's a simple example of arguments that state a view on whether it will rain next Thursday.
THEISM: "I believe that it will rain next Thursday."
STRONG ATHEISM: "I believe that it will not rain next Thursday."
AGNOSTICISM: "I believe that we cannot know whether it will rain next Thursday." (Due to lack of data, or some other problem with epistemology.)
WEAK ATHEISM: "I don't know whether it will rain next Thursday."
Theism is a positive statement of belief, strong atheism is a negative statement of belief, and agnosticism is a statement that we cannot logically believe either positively or negatively. Agnosticism is thus also making a specific claim about the state of knowledge and what can or cannot be deduced from it.
Agnosticism is not simply stating "I dunno" and going on with our lives. It is an epistemological claim about the evidence for a god. Stating "I dunno" is a fourth position that is not theism, strong atheism, or agnosticism. Most people who actually argue about the logic of these positions call the "I dunno" crowd "weak atheists" because they don't really believe, but they aren't making a negative assertion either. They simply don't believe either way.
In sum, there are more possible logical positions than you acknowledge. These are the most common ones.
"So it seems to me that the religious bunch might be around for quite a while yet. Why do you think they would be more likely to die out than the atheists?"
One thing should be very clear: It's not about people dying out, but about memes dying out.
With that in mind, the argument is then that religious memes face a constantly more difficult environment as science takes over more and more of the meme pool. Seeing religions adopt more aggressive strategies, such as discussed in this thread, could be considered a sign of desperation, and an indication that the end times for the religious memes are nearing.