Ireland passes anti-blasphemy law

[Ahknaton]

Blasphemy law a return to middle ages - Dawkins

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0713/1224250543694.html

THE NEW blasphemy law will send Ireland back to the middle ages, and is wretched, backward and uncivilised, Prof Richard Dawkins has said.

The scientist and critic of religion has lent his support to a campaign to repeal the law, introduced by Atheist Ireland, a group set up last December, arising from an online discussion forum. The law, which makes the publication or utterance of blasphemous matter a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine, passed through the Oireachtas last week.

In a message read out at Atheist Ireland’s first agm on Saturday, Prof Dawkins said: “One of the world’s most beautiful and best-loved countries, Ireland has recently become one of the most respected as well: dynamic, go-ahead, modern, civilised – a green and pleasant silicon valley. This preposterous blasphemy law puts all that respect at risk.” He said it would be too kind to call the law a ridiculous anachronism.

“It is a wretched, backward, uncivilised regression to the middle ages. Who was the bright spark who thought to besmirch the revered name of Ireland by proposing anything so stupid?”

Messages of support for the campaign were also received from the creators of Father Ted Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, and the European Humanist Federation. The federation, which represents 42 organisations in 19 countries, said it was “appalled” at the new law and it was “a seriously retrograde step”.

At the agm, Atheist Ireland members voted to test the new law by publishing a blasphemous statement, deliberately designed to cause offence. The statement will be finalised in the coming days.

Atheist Ireland’s chairman Michael Nugent said the group wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of the law. Labour Senator and barrister Ivana Bacik told the meeting that an amendment provides for a review of the law within five years. “There’s a great potential to have this very much altered if not removed altogether,” she said. The new law invited people to make complaints to gardaí and would result in “a huge amount” of wasted Garda time, she said.

“So for lots of reasons I think it’s going to be highly problematic . . . and it’s bad lawmaking if nothing else.”

Ms Bacik said the establishment of Atheist Ireland was “long overdue”. More than 150 people attended the meeting in Dublin and the group ran out of membership application forms. “I think it’s also good to see an organisation that has the word atheist in the title because for a long time many of us were in the closet,” she said.

“It’s not fashionable or popular to declare oneself to be an atheist. There are many people in Ireland who would like to describe themselves as atheists and I’m one of them. I think I may be the only self-confessed or card-carrying atheist in the Oireachtas.”

She said there should be space for atheists, agnostics and believers in organised religions. “And that’s the nature, to me, of a pluralist and tolerant and democratic republic, a country in which there is space for all of us, and in which no body’s belief elevates them to any particular position.”

The meeting agreed to campaign for the removal of all references to gods from the Constitution and for a secular education system. Ms Bacik said the education system, particularly at primary level, was “built on sectarian lines. It is a fundamentally sectarian system in which in our equal status legislation, schools are entitled to give priority to children of a particular religion”.

The group also launched a website www.countmeout.ie which provides information on how to formally leave the Catholic Church.

Atheist Ireland believes that many lapsed Catholics, agnostics and atheists are counted in the church’s membership and claims that these figures are used by the church to justify its continued involvement in education.

Atheist Ireland will also encourage people to read the Bible. Mr Nugent said an objective reading of the Bible was one of the strongest arguments for rejecting the idea of gods as intervening creators or moral guides.

Dick Spicer of the Humanist Association of Ireland welcomed the formation of the new group and said it illustrated the changes that had taken place in Irish society. “It’s a sign of how far we’ve come in Ireland, so take hope for the future. This society does move and it does move forward, more so, I think, than we appreciate.”

[Ahknaton]

Another opinion piece:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jul/09/ireland-blasphemy-laws

News article:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/libel-and-blasphemy-bill-passed-by-the-dail-1813479.html

[Warka]

This is where PC turns around to bite its promoters. After all, it's only fair that once laws are created barring offending every other group, the religious are entitled to the same.

[Boleslaw]

She said there should be space for atheists, agnostics and believers in organised religions.
What a fricking retard.

[Ahknaton]

What a fricking retard.
I think it's supposed to be read as:

She said there should be space for {atheists}, {agnostics} and {believers in organised religions}.

not

She said there should be space for {atheists}, {agnostics} and {believers} in organised religions.

[Jake Featherston]

What does this law actually ban? How are they defining blasphemy?

[cerberus]

Given the absolutely disgraceful position of the Catholic Church in recent years and more recently given the utter collapse of public faith in that institution I find any laws of this nature to be well out of order.

[Basil Fawlty]

Dawkins and Bacik should be burnt at the stake.

Bacik is a prominent member of the PCatariat here and represents no one outside of the smoked salmon socialist circles of Dublin 4. She is a militant abortionist and hates all things authentically Irish. This is just an excuse for her to bash the church, another prominent item on her hate list.

[Basil Fawlty]

It's actually much ado about nothing. This law is only being introduced because there is a constitutional obligation to do so. Article 40. 6. 1, i states:

The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.There is no law. This would no be an issue but for a case that came up some years back when the lacuna was discovered.
Bacik and her idiot friends are being most disingenuous as they know perfectly well that the only way to avoid this is to amend the constitution. That won't happen as it requires a popular refererendum and whatever people might think about this article, they defintely do not like Bacik and her cohorts and would vote for retention if for no other reaoson than to spite them.

[Aryan Imperium]

Blasphemy law a return to middle ages - Dawkins

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0713/1224250543694.html

THE NEW blasphemy law will send Ireland back to the middle ages, and is wretched, backward and uncivilised, Prof Richard Dawkins has said.

The scientist and critic of religion has lent his support to a campaign to repeal the law, introduced by Atheist Ireland, a group set up last December, arising from an online discussion forum. The law, which makes the publication or utterance of blasphemous matter a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine, passed through the Oireachtas last week.

In a message read out at Atheist Ireland’s first agm on Saturday, Prof Dawkins said: “One of the world’s most beautiful and best-loved countries, Ireland has recently become one of the most respected as well: dynamic, go-ahead, modern, civilised – a green and pleasant silicon valley. This preposterous blasphemy law puts all that respect at risk.” He said it would be too kind to call the law a ridiculous anachronism.

“It is a wretched, backward, uncivilised regression to the middle ages. Who was the bright spark who thought to besmirch the revered name of Ireland by proposing anything so stupid?”

Messages of support for the campaign were also received from the creators of Father Ted Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, and the European Humanist Federation. The federation, which represents 42 organisations in 19 countries, said it was “appalled” at the new law and it was “a seriously retrograde step”.

At the agm, Atheist Ireland members voted to test the new law by publishing a blasphemous statement, deliberately designed to cause offence. The statement will be finalised in the coming days.

Atheist Ireland’s chairman Michael Nugent said the group wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of the law. Labour Senator and barrister Ivana Bacik told the meeting that an amendment provides for a review of the law within five years. “There’s a great potential to have this very much altered if not removed altogether,” she said. The new law invited people to make complaints to gardaí and would result in “a huge amount” of wasted Garda time, she said.

“So for lots of reasons I think it’s going to be highly problematic . . . and it’s bad lawmaking if nothing else.”

Ms Bacik said the establishment of Atheist Ireland was “long overdue”. More than 150 people attended the meeting in Dublin and the group ran out of membership application forms. “I think it’s also good to see an organisation that has the word atheist in the title because for a long time many of us were in the closet,” she said.

“It’s not fashionable or popular to declare oneself to be an atheist. There are many people in Ireland who would like to describe themselves as atheists and I’m one of them. I think I may be the only self-confessed or card-carrying atheist in the Oireachtas.”

She said there should be space for atheists, agnostics and believers in organised religions. “And that’s the nature, to me, of a pluralist and tolerant and democratic republic, a country in which there is space for all of us, and in which no body’s belief elevates them to any particular position.”

The meeting agreed to campaign for the removal of all references to gods from the Constitution and for a secular education system. Ms Bacik said the education system, particularly at primary level, was “built on sectarian lines. It is a fundamentally sectarian system in which in our equal status legislation, schools are entitled to give priority to children of a particular religion”.

The group also launched a website www.countmeout.ie which provides information on how to formally leave the Catholic Church.

Atheist Ireland believes that many lapsed Catholics, agnostics and atheists are counted in the church’s membership and claims that these figures are used by the church to justify its continued involvement in education.

Atheist Ireland will also encourage people to read the Bible. Mr Nugent said an objective reading of the Bible was one of the strongest arguments for rejecting the idea of gods as intervening creators or moral guides.

Dick Spicer of the Humanist Association of Ireland welcomed the formation of the new group and said it illustrated the changes that had taken place in Irish society. “It’s a sign of how far we’ve come in Ireland, so take hope for the future. This society does move and it does move forward, more so, I think, than we appreciate.”

Is this retarded legisltion only confined to xtianity or Roman Catholicism or are other religions beneficiaries from this draconian law?

[Basil Fawlty]

Is this retarded legisltion only confined to xtianity or Roman Catholicism or are other religions beneficiaries from this draconian law?Why do you call it retarded?

[Aryan Imperium]

Why do you call it retarded?

Anything that seeks to bring back the bad old days when dissenters were persecuted and punished for not conforming to the dictates of their corrupt and sadistic ecclesiastical masters can only be described as retarded.

[Basil Fawlty]

Anything that seeks to bring back the bad old days when dissenters were persecuted and punished for not conforming to the dictates of their corrupt and sadistic ecclesiastical masters can only be described as retarded.You surely realise that atheism ultimately destroys the foundations of the polity?

Anyway, this law has only been passed because there is a constituional problem that has to be resolved and passin git is deemed less problematic than holding a referendum which would surely fail. It's not as if its ever going to be really enforced.

[Aryan Imperium]

[QUOTE]You surely realise that atheism ultimately destroys the foundations of the polity?


Are you a xtian? Why do xtians always assume that resistance to the message of their churches should imply `atheism`? We got along just fine as a race without these eastern superstitions.

Anyway, this law has only been passed because there is a constituional problem that has to be resolved and passin git is deemed less problematic than holding a referendum which would surely fail. It's not as if its ever going to be really enforced.

I am still waiting for an answer to my question as to whether this law just applies to xtianity or Roman Catholicism or does it apply to literally any religion?

[Jake Featherston]

You surely realise that atheism ultimately destroys the foundations of the polity?

That's probably true. I'm not actually an Atheist, more of an agnostic, although I would actually like to be a Christian. I just can't force my brain to genuinely believe that stuff. Even if I were an Atheist, I would never promote Atheism, because belief in God, whether true or not, is good for Humanity. Militant Atheists like Dawkins are scum, but I can't really condemn the non-militant faithless, essentially being in their number myself.

[Errigal]

Dawkins and Bacik should be burnt at the stake.

Bacik is a prominent member of the PCatariat here and represents no one outside of the smoked salmon socialist circles of Dublin 4. She is a militant abortionist and hates all things authentically Irish. This is just an excuse for her to bash the church, another prominent item on her hate list.

What a face:

http://www.tcd.ie/Law/IvanaBacik/Bacik.jpg

http://www.tcd.ie/Law/IvanaBacik/

[Omniel]

You surely realise that atheism ultimately destroys the foundations of the polity?

Why is that?

[Basil Fawlty]

Are you a xtian? Why do xtians always assume that resistance to the message of their churches should imply `atheism`? We got along just fine as a race without these eastern superstitions.I was actually paraphrasing Plato's Laws, hardly a Christian.
I am still waiting for an answer to my question as to whether this law just applies to xtianity or Roman Catholicism or does it apply to literally any religion?I don't really know as I haven't seen the text of the bill, but I've heard that it is non-denominational.

[Errigal]

Anything that seeks to bring back the bad old days when dissenters were persecuted and punished for not conforming to the dictates of their corrupt and sadistic ecclesiastical masters can only be described as retarded.

If anything Dissenters were not punished enough, especially after the Restoration. They should have all been driven onto ships to America.

[delete]

If anything Dissenters were not punished enough, especially after the Restoration. They should have all been driven onto ships to America.

So Ireland would have been a better land to live in today if this was done? Would you for instance have less problems with alcohol, or is it because more irish people would have gone to heaven and not to hell, if this was the case?

[Errigal]

So Ireland would have been a better land to live in today if this was done? Would you for instance have less problems with alcohol, or is it because more irish people would have gone to heaven and not to hell, if this was the case?

No both islands would have been better off with a crackdown on Dissenters who were disloyal during Cromwell's time. A lot of land expropriation in Ireland happened under Cromwell and, unlike in England, the land was not given back with the Restoration. This caused long lasting trouble. In any case the Dissenters of the north of Ireland are far more respectable than the English and Welsh variety. Those are the ones I really dislike. They went on to be general purpose troublemakers and 5th columnists for whatever was in the air at the time. Bigoted, know-it-all money grubbers and charmless iconoclasts. Many of them fill the ranks of militant atheist groups now but they kept their Cromwellian spirit.

[Basil Fawlty]

Why is that?For Plato, who I was paraphrasing, atheism destroys the foundations of the state because it undermines the basis of morality; it contradicts the existence of order - we can see this in the way that metaphysical naturalism ultimately asserts the world as the result of chance, and of course met. naturalism entails atheism.
Without a divine foundation, what are you left with? Pure human will, a flimsy basis for a state. The will of the people is mediated through God as expressed in phrases like "One nation under God . . " or in the case of a monarchy "Elizabeth, queen, by the Grace of God" etc.

Laws Bk 10 begins with a summary speech of the results of 9 and concludes with this:
. . .we have already said in general terms what shall be the punishment of sacrilege, whether fraudulent or violent, and now we have to determine what is to be the punishment of those who speak or act insolently toward the Gods. But first we must give them an admonition which may be in the following terms:-No one who in obedience to the laws believed that there were Gods, ever intentionally did any unholy act, or uttered any unlawful word; but he who did must have supposed one of three things-either that they did not exist,-which is the first possibility, or secondly, that, if they did, they took no care of man, or thirdly, that they were easily appeased and turned aside from their purpose, by sacrifices and prayers.
Further to this, I would say that a regime which explictly denies the gods can only appeal to sheer human will as its foundation. Such regimes have always acted criminally because there is no reason why anyone should obey the will of another simply because it is their will. Such regimes - which are very rare and confied to the modern period - have had to resort to terror, but even the Jacobins reverted to a divine foundation for the state in the cult of the Supreme Being which they introduced.

[harjit]

That's probably true. I'm not actually an Atheist, more of an agnostic, although I would actually like to be a Christian. I just can't force my brain to genuinely believe that stuff. Even if I were an Atheist, I would never promote Atheism, because belief in God, whether true or not, is good for Humanity. Militant Atheists like Dawkins are scum, but I can't really condemn the non-militant faithless, essentially being in their number myself.
Most declared atheists are pretty unpleasant and pedantic and arrogant about it. I'm not a believer either, but am open to the possibility the Big Guy does exist.

[Kodos]

I was actually paraphrasing Plato's Laws, hardly a Christian.
I don't really know as I haven't seen the text of the bill, but I've heard that it is non-denominational.

So it protects not only the whore of Rome but Islam?

[Jake Featherston]

I don't think anyone has answered my original question: What does this law actually ban? What is considered blasphemy?

[Basil Fawlty]

So it protects not only the whore of Rome but Islam?I don't actually know, heretic.

[Basil Fawlty]

I don't think anyone has answered my original question: What does this law actually ban? What is considered blasphemy?We'll have to wait to see the text.

[Empress Cheesatine]

Hey does this mean we can look forward to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and gays being fined out the ear?!

[Aryan Imperium]

[QUOTE]I was actually paraphrasing Plato's Laws, hardly a Christian.

Yes but you meant it in the context of a xtian society did you not?


I don't really know as I haven't seen the text of the bill, but I've heard that it is non-denominational.


That is not exactly what I asked you. Will this proposed legislation make blasphemy against non-xtian religions a criminal offence?

[Aryan Imperium]

If anything Dissenters were not punished enough, especially after the Restoration. They should have all been driven onto ships to America.

Why do you say that?

[Basil Fawlty]

Yes but you meant it in the context of a xtian society did you not?No, I meant in the context of any society whatsoever.
That is not exactly what I asked you. Will this proposed legislation make blasphemy against non-xtian religions a criminal offence?Blasphemy is not about bad mouthing religions but about God. Until I have seen the text of the legislation I cannot asnwer your question, which is an interesting one. As soon as I do, I shall let the forum know.

[Maponus]

Anything that seeks to bring back the bad old days when dissenters were persecuted and punished for not conforming to the dictates of their corrupt and sadistic ecclesiastical masters can only be described as retarded.

I thought you wanted Hitler back. :p

[Vindex]

I would take a Dawkin's over the pope.

That's probably true. I'm not actually an Atheist, more of an agnostic, although I would actually like to be a Christian. I just can't force my brain to genuinely believe that stuff. Even if I were an Atheist, I would never promote Atheism, because belief in God, whether true or not, is good for Humanity. Militant Atheists like Dawkins are scum, but I can't really condemn the non-militant faithless, essentially being in their number myself.