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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.)"
This is blasphemy !
The latest one I've heard is the Vatican suggesting that life on other planets in the universe may be possible. That's directly opposite what their holy book has said for a couple of thousand years
[citation needed]
Mod parent up.
It's only practice if you are attempting to ignore what you already said. I'm confident there are no fairies in this world so I will say there are no fairies. If I didn't know there wasn't any fairies but didn't believe there were, I would say I don't believe fairies exist. However, the distinction you drew was with someone saying "i don't believe" compared to someone saying "I know there isn't". The later is a belief whether you like it or not.
When you say like a god, do you mean like a supernatural powerful god or a god as in the top of their field or respected association as some compare people with extraordinary yet still human abilities in a certain task or tasks. It's not really all that important except we should note that the rulers of Rome and Egypt at one time claimed to be gods with no superhuman abilities outside an overwhelmingly powerful influence on others around them. In that instance, I can easily see how communism could become a religion just the same as I could other social areas including portions of science and the followers of it.
As we currently understand or want to understand the universe, yes, it does appear to behave as if there is no intervening personal god. However, this appearance can be specifically to the discovery of what we know. What I'm getting at here is the we look for an explanation beyond what would only be needed for an intervening god. A lot of that explanation is not provable yet can be disprovable so we tend to attempt to accept it as close enough for government work until it is disproved. But even with the Big Bang, we reach a point to the beginning of time when something was just there and somehow energy was created, and bam, solar systems and planets and life was created where humans tened to be the leaders of the reals we can imagine.
Now I point this out not because I want to compare it with a religion, but because you will find atheist all over the place laying claim the the big bang theory is fact, that evolution as in macro-evolution and the current taxonomy tree models are fact when the real fact is, they are more or less best guesses giving the information we know and our abilities to process it. That is a hallmark of a religion- demanding that someone unprovable is fact instead of just possible or probable. It could be correct, it could be incorrect, but it's to a point with some that you can't even dispute a single piece of it because they need to preserve their belief system the way it is. Two seemingly favorite strong holds in these people are "evolution and abiogenesis" and the age of the earth. I'm not disputing either of them but in order for science to be science, discussing alternatives and constantly evaluating the evidence needs to be included otherwise it's just another plausible religious story/dogma when nothing can be changed. You will find the same in the real of Global warming too.