So it looks like an atheist group is challenging a new Irish law that gives the government the power to enforce a much older law against blasphemy.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/new-irish-blasphemy-law-broken/?p…
Seriously? We haven’t had enough trouble with religious nut jobs in recent years to realize that religion is the problem, not the solution?
This quote from Michael Nugent, co-founder of Atheist Ireland says it well: “medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas.” The article suggests that since Christian groups, which are obviously the majority in Ireland, made no request for this new enforcement, “the government may have been acting mainly to restrain any Irish publisher from following the lead of the conservative Danish paper in offending Muslim sensibilities.” In other words, Irish papers may be tempted to republish cartoons of Mohammed, so we have to make it illegal to say Jehovah at the dinner table.Fear is the driving factor. Ireland is afraid of Muslim riots.
You don’t combat fundamentalist religion with more religion. You fight it with education. You fight it with science and common sense. Fundamentalism only thrives in ignorance. Why do you think going to an Ivy League school in this country still gets you labeled a pointy-headed intellectual latte-sipping wuss? Knowledge has always been the enemy of organized religion. And organized religion has always been the easiest way for governments to control people.
