Blasphemy: Is There a "Right to Insult" ?

[C. Flower]

Aw jeez CF, there ya go again beratin the poor oul US. And as often the case in these matters you are wrong.

Although the US has the most liberal free speech regime of any country, it is not without its limitations. SCOTUS has enumerated a number of exceptions.

1: Clear and present danger, (shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater etc.). 2: Face to face “fighting words”. 3: Libel and Slander. 4: Obscenity. 5: Conlict with other legitimate social or governmental interests.

Myself, I like John Stuart Mill’s offense versus harm principle. Offensive speech should be permitted, harmful speech should not.

You could have taken it as a compliment, if you had wished

There is a far higher presumption in favour of Freedom of Speech in the US than there is in the UK or Ireland.

Unless as you say, you run into disfavour with the State.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Yes- if you can be described as 'UnAmerican' in any way your constitutional rights tend to disappear.

The US has been suspending its constitution bit by bit over the last twenty years. Including free speech and habeus corpus.

However- to get back to the subject of the thread I now think it is a positive civil duty to challenge so-called sacred cows. Blasphemy cannot exist unless gods exist. If gods can't be shown to exist then blasphemy doesn't exist.

But the sort of people who allege that one does, and invariably allege also that they speak for that god, should absolutely be challenged in every way.

[riposte]

. Blasphemy cannot exist unless gods exist. If gods can't be shown to exist then blasphemy doesn't exist..

Anybody who can prove God doesn't exist can turn themselves into a mackerel.

http://www.dublin.ie/forums/showthre...ght=God+exists


Nobody can prove God exists ........ and Nobody can prove that God does not exist.

.
But the sort of people who allege that one does, and invariably allege also that they speak for that god, should absolutely be challenged in every way.

I believe in God ....... but I don't believe in any religion....... and I don't claim to speak for God ........ or say anything about (it).

The problem is for hundreds of years peoples from all over the world believed in nonsensical religions because it was the received wisdom in the communities where they lived ....... but now atheism is the received wisdom and has become a doctrine in itself which cannot be questioned. Atheists are trapped in group think.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Well at least atheists haven't as yet suggested inquisitions or put forward any Torquemadas. On that basis alone they are more trustworthy than the deliberately self-demented.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Oh- and the only problem with the 'no-one can prove god exists or doesn't exist' is that there are alternative explanations for the existence of religion- all explainable by reference to archaeology, sociology and which sector of society came up with the notion of 'gods' and why.

And there is plenty of evidence available for the history of religion as an almighty con practised by the literate on the illiterate.

What's missing is the former illiterate sector of society's excuse for failing to look this stuff up books or in public libraries.

'god' is an anthropomorphism of a scribe on the make for a living out of the illiterate. Does that bit about 'man being made in the image of god' not provide something of a clue?

They say ignorance of the law is no excuse when it comes to courtrooms. The notion that all the evidence for 'god' being an invention of man appears not to trouble the wilfully ignorant very much.

So I couldn't care less about how much these self-deluded wish to cling to their delusions. The cure is available.

Refusal to contemplate that does not endear them to me in any way. In fact, it is long past time these people were told.

[5intheface]

Anybody who can prove God doesn't exist can turn themselves into a mackerel.

http://www.dublin.ie/forums/showthre...ght=God+exists


Nobody can prove God exists ........ and Nobody can prove that God does not exist.



I believe in God ....... but I don't believe in any religion....... and I don't claim to speak for God ........ or say anything about (it).

The problem is for hundreds of years peoples from all over the world believed in nonsensical religions because it was the received wisdom in the communities where they lived ....... but now atheism is the received wisdom and has become a doctrine in itself which cannot be questioned. Atheists are trapped in group think.

With respect riposte, the problem with that position is that you elevate the possibility of a God to a point that requires being disproved and promote those who refuse to accept the notion to being the flip-side of those who do.

I can't accept that.

To someone who doesn't believe there is a shred of evidence for any deity, why should I be open to any more criticism for that viewpoint than if I was to deny the existence of an eleventh dimension or a chocolate soul?

The fact is, no one will ever condemn me for taking that stance and yet I will be for refusing to conceive of a supreme being with the most convoluted and nonsensical plan for a world which amounts to series of contradictory systems of revenge and punishment, all aimed at pleasing his/her ever-changing wishes.

Edit: And I do appreciate the big difference between what you are saying and what some fanatical and even simple devotees of various religions would say.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

A question, Riposte. How would youR personal relationship with whatever iteration of god you chose to believe exists be threatened by 'blasphemy'?

Does your god shrivel and die if it hears any criticism or ridicule? If that is the case then we can conclude it isn't a 'god'.

[Holly]

... Does your god shrivel and die if it hears any criticism or ridicule? ...

Can a god die ... I mean on a cross or something?

[Shaadi]

Anybody who can prove God doesn't exist can turn themselves into a mackerel.

http://www.dublin.ie/forums/showthre...ght=God+exists


Nobody can prove God exists ........ and Nobody can prove that God does not exist.

I believe in God ....... but I don't believe in any religion....... and I don't claim to speak for God ........ or say anything about (it).

The problem is for hundreds of years peoples from all over the world believed in nonsensical religions because it was the received wisdom in the communities where they lived ....... but now atheism is the received wisdom and has become a doctrine in itself which cannot be questioned. Atheists are trapped in group think.

As you say, it can neither be proven nor disproven whether a god exists or not. The question still remains as to how everything came into existence. The believer thinks that a deity created existence, and it follows that the deity pre-existed existence itself. This always existing concept could equally be applied to existence itself in an atheist context.

The difference is that the atheist rejects the illogical idea of what a god in a human invented context of what a bringer into existence of everthing would be. The gods of human invention are humanoid or animalistic, or at least they are somehow overly concerned with our existence in this insignificant part of our corner of existence.

The atheist is merely rejecting the plethora of human invented religions, and rejecting the concept of a god as a replacement for the honest answer to how existence came into being. The honest answer is that we simply don't know, we can understand the big bang but what existed before that has yet to be resolved.

It's understandable why believers feel persecuted, they don't get a free pass anymore, their ideas are challenged just like political ideas are, if they don't stack up they're shredded by logic. Atheism is not received wisdom that can't be challenged, it is instead the challenger of recieved wisdom. The purity of logic that atheism is based on is difficult to challenge, deism is the nearest that theists can come to it.

The atheist rejection of man made gods, religions and those who would push them is based on the rejection of the ordering of society based on an invented certainty where no such certainty exists.

[jpc]

Yes- if you can be described as 'UnAmerican' in any way your constitutional rights tend to disappear.

The US has been suspending its constitution bit by bit over the last twenty years. Including free speech and habeus corpus.

However- to get back to the subject of the thread I now think it is a positive civil duty to challenge so-called sacred cows. Blasphemy cannot exist unless gods exist. If gods can't be shown to exist then blasphemy doesn't exist.

But the sort of people who allege that one does, and invariably allege also that they speak for that god, should absolutely be challenged in every way.

The guys (rarely women) who screech blasphemy want no truck with any think that might threaten their power over the dopes that look up to them for "guidance"
They guys are in the business of power, not hope or progress.
Look at the news footage.
Disenfranchised young men with very little to look forward to.
Older well fed men screaming its someone elses fault and their god has been insulted.

[5intheface]

The atheist is merely rejecting the plethora of human invented religions, and rejecting the concept of a god as a replacement for the honest answer to how existence came into being. The honest answer is that we simply don't know, we can understand the big bang but what existed before that has yet to be resolved.

Some atheists maybe. Personally I don't even have to look at how the universe came into being to reject the idea of a God and as a natural progression, religion.

In the absence of any rational information regarding God save the hundreds of competing creeds handed from human to human, I can surmise that God himself can only be a human invention. To think otherwise is perfectly okay but remains a sheer punt in the dark, no different imho to coming up with a supreme being of your own.

Yes, no one can be certain of anything but to me, that is a pretty pretty weak theory upon which to base entire cultures and then compound that by demanding people respect your views without criticism and naturally enough, ridicule.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I would lend credence to the 'we just don't know' camp with their implication that there might be something like a god if I thought for one minute they weren't hiding their be-sandalled wonder behind sophistry.

The point is we DO know. We know very well where the xtian concept of 'god' came from and we even know the names of a number of scribes who ghost-wrote the book supposedly containing the word of 'god' and we even know the origins of that scheme and where it came from.

The notion that we have to allow for a 'god' because we don't know everything about the start of the universe is a false one.

When evidence is given in a court case it mounts and points to the veracity of one witness or another and comparison of evidence leads to an assessment of the truth.

Only in the arena of 'gods' does evidence become ignored because there is no actual film of the crime being committed. A fairy, apparently, could have done it. Can you imagine that standing up as a defence in court when you have the accused at the scene of the crime, you have the motive, you have forensic evidence and then the lawyer says' because there is no actual film you have to allow that a fairy might have done it and ran away and hid'.

Utter balls.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

In conclusion I would say that there is not only a 'right' to insult the nutcases of the world in their grab for non-existent authority over the rest of mankind but a positive civil duty at this point.

And I could care less whether that god is called 'Allah' or 'Yahweh' or simply 'god'. They are, unusually, and in a nod to the nonsense put about by the xtian version, three cheeks of the same mad arse.

[Shaadi]

@Captain Con and @5intheface, I don't give any credence to the idea of a deity, even one as abstract as the one that the Deist philosophy claims to believe in. As in, I've never had a shred of religious belief not even as a child. I look up and see the sky, and beyond that is a vast fascinating endless universe. The concept of a God creating it is gibberish to me, but other people have that concept in their heads and in order to understand their thought processes I'm happy to engage in discussion with them about what they actually believe.

When it gets down to the nitty gritty of the implausibility of their beliefs they resort to sophistry, Deism being the ultimate cop out but I've heard worse, such as notions that time and space exist in an aboriginal like dreamtime dimension. Utterly mad stuff and all of it disingeuous, what it boils down to is they like the idea of a god and no amount of logic is going to persuade them otherwise.

Their strange thought processes and the mental gymnastics they perform to justify them amuse me. We can all be a little eccentric and should tolerate a little eccentricity in others up to a point. Like an arsehole in work, the religious should be tolerated to a certain point, when they cross the line and interfere in our personal space they should be slapped down and with enough force to keep them down.

Blasphemy laws are just plain medeival.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

As is the need for belief in a god. In fact belief in a god is older than medieval- it goes back to the dawn of the ability to form the questions 'what is it all about?' and 'why are we here'?

There is much more rock solid evidence available for the answers being somewhere in the region of 'as an offshoot of the biology and zoology of this particular planet' and the answer to the second being 'see answer to first question'.

I understand that some people's ego can't stand the evidence and are frightened by the possibility that there is no reason. But we shouldn't have to pander to them, award them large sums of money, political power or in the final analysis have to respect their inability to deal with reality.

'Blasphemy' is a public policy tool for these people who are uncomfortable with and are frightened by the implications of reality.

Some of them are so frightened by reality ('end-of-days' goons in Israel and the US) that they are a danger to humanity because of their earnest wish to see the final destruction of mankind- that is the nutty fringe but they are exactly the sort of people who wish to install their fear and self-hatred of mankind in public policy.

'Blasphemy', like 'god', does not exist beyond the minds of the fearful and those who wish to operate that fear in humanity for their own advantage. 'God' is the ultimate bogeyman in the dark corners of the mind and a hangover from a period when we could not answer prime questions.

The fact that we can now answer prime questions, no matter how much some may dislike the answers, is a good enough reason to stop with the bullshytte.