This is an image of the Muslim prophet Mohammed: So's this: And also this: I bring this up because, as you might have guessed, free speech and Islam are again in the news. Last month, over a dozen Danish newspapers reprinted one of the twelve drawings of Mohammed that caused such a furor after they were first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. The artist of this particular cartoon, Kurt Westergaard, has been under police … [Read more...]
In Defense of Free Speech
January 16, 2008 By
In the last few days, both Ed Brayton and Glenn Greenwald have written about the story of Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative who's currently under investigation by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Levant's "crime" was republishing the Mohammed cartoons first printed in 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which spurred the filing of a complaint by a Canadian imam named Syed Soharwardy. Before saying anything more, let's get this out of the way: if Levant's political views are as … [Read more...]
Free Speech Under Siege
August 25, 2007 By 13 Comments
Since the Enlightenment, fundamentalist religious leaders the world over have railed against the idea of free speech, for understandable reasons. By permitting other people to point out the fallacies in their arguments and dispute their claim to be the infallible voice of God, the right of free speech is the single most effective countermeasure to prevent theocracy and tyranny from taking hold. Religious extremism can be found in many places, but it rarely becomes truly dominant unless it can … [Read more...]
A Legal Development
August 20, 2007 By 21 Comments
I've said on previous occasions that Daylight Atheism is a weblog devoted to commentary and analysis, not breaking news. However, I've heard of a case sufficiently noteworthy that I think it merits an exception. Last month, the indomitable P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula posted a review of Stuart Pivar's book Lifecode, which purports to explain the embryonic development of organisms through topological manipulation of an initially fluid form. Myers' review, though sympathetic to the principles … [Read more...]
Banning the Bible
May 21, 2007 By 15 Comments
A very entertaining story has come out of Hong Kong recently. After the Hong Kong goverment's "Obscene Articles Tribunal" censored a Chinese student magazine as "indecent" for publishing a sex column asking if readers had ever fantasized about incest or bestiality, over 800 residents protested by calling on the government to classify the Bible as indecent also. (Such material is not outright barred from publication, but must be sold in sealed bags with a legal warning and can only be sold to … [Read more...]
Free Speech Under Siege at the United Nations
February 11, 2007 By 9 Comments
The United Nations, which was founded after World War II with the noble goal of preventing further violence and conflict between nation-states, is losing its way. The U.N. has historically been a great supporter of human rights, including the most important of them all, the right of free speech. Consider Articles 18 and 19 of the Fundamental Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by unanimous resolution of the General Assembly in 1948: Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of … [Read more...]
Sylvia Browne: Enemy of Free Speech
February 5, 2007 By 10 Comments
I have written previously about the "psychics" so popular in our culture, whose pretense of being able to speak to the dead and otherwise gain knowledge through supernatural powers wins them wealth and accolades from a credulous public and a shallow, sensationalist media, despite the total lack of convincing evidence to date that any of them can do what they say they can do. One of the worst of the lot is Sylvia Browne. After agreeing on national television to take James Randi's million-dollar … [Read more...]
The Devil Cannot Abide Mockery
March 16, 2006 By 8 Comments
The recent fiasco over the cartoons of Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper shows that free speech is still very much under threat. Though this basic human right has long been guaranteed in the Western world, this controversy should remind us that there is still a large section of humanity among whom free speech is not just nonexistent, it is held in outright disdain. Sadly, the right to speak one's mind without fear of repercussion is still the exception, not the norm. And there are … [Read more...]
Follow Patheos
Atheist: