Comments on: Irish Blasphemy Law Passes

By: Boris

Boris — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:23:26 +0000

To the Irish Parliament my congratulations on earning the first “Beavis and Butthead” Award of 2010 along with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

By: Erick

Erick — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:31:55 +0000

Goddess help us all! This is silly. This law only gives the psychotic uber-religious folk more power (for their bombs). It seems to only feed into the sanctimony of religions, doesn’t it?

By: Brenden

Brenden — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:38:25 +0000

Email their tourism offices at:

customerservice@dast.gov.ie
corporate.dublin@tourismireland.com

and express your concern =) Money talks.

By: Ali

Ali — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:10:18 +0000

I’m Irish, and I agree with “Al”.
I’m outraged at the whole idea… I actually can’t believe it got passed. It stuns me. I wrote to Ahern in complaint before it got passed, and got some sh*tty answer from his secretary or whatever, referring me to some speech he made that answered none of my questions. But there you go, that’s what I get for presuming that Ireland had moved in to the 21st century.
This angers me so much, I’m sorely tempted to do as much blasphemous things as i can, just to test this new law.
And in some strange way, I think I might just be proud to have been arrested for blasphemy. I wish I could laugh at the whole concept like some of my friends, but all I can do is weep.
This is truly tragic.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:38:16 +0000

Very sad day indeed. Ireland you have lost it completely. First it was the greed and sheer arrogance in the Celtic Tiger years and now the complete and utter backward bog thinking stupidity with this law. Ahearn needs to be flogged and then banished to some wild savage rock in the Atlantic. I used to be proud being Irish, but am embarrased and disgusted with that Island and what it represents today. Ireland you need a strong majority to fight and topple this crooked and evil government with their shoddy ideas and greedy fat fudgy fingering of democracy. Get out!

By: De-Baptisms and Apostasy – We Goats

De-Baptisms and Apostasy – We Goats — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:58:29 +0000

[...] more common now, in the wake of the Ryan Report on clerical abuse and after the absurdly backward anti-blasphemy law was [...]

By: Father T. Crilly

Father T. Crilly — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:48:47 +0000

Hi lads, what’s all this about now?? Let ye go on ahead now about yeer business and don’t be poking your noses into where they’re not wanted… this ‘modern’ thinking might be ok on the mainland or in new york new york but we like things just the way they are right here… atheism how are ya… do you think god will be happy with you all for being atheists… i can tell you now that he won’t, so you’d all be advised to go out now and get yourselves a bible (the roman catholic ones are the best… much nicer typography than them copyright-breaching heathen protestant ones) You’ll find it’s a great read, lots of stories for all the family and best of all – your souls, not to mention the souls of all your faithfully departed, will be received into the glorious light of heaven when you are called by the lord.

That’s all lads, tip top

Ted

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:30:55 +0000

[17th-century Lutheran pastor] Meyfarth was a funny guy, Emma thought, so terribly serious and conscientious. He had taken at least an hour to talk about the fact that his personal liking for them did not in any way mean that he was endorsing their [Mormon] teachings, or even that he respected their teachings. “Only,” he had insisted, “that I have come to see that if truth is to have a chance to prevail against error, then the civil authorities may not be given the right to suppress any one body of ideas. No, I do not respect your beliefs. If I respected them, I would join your church. I do respect your right to have and teach those beliefs.”

So anxious, he had been, as though he had expected them to order him to go away and never come back. “I do not respect your faith,” he had continued. “I believe that it is contrary to biblical truth. Utterly contrary, utterly wrong. As Herr Blackwell would say, `wrong-headed.’ But I respect that you honestly hold that faith. And, however reluctantly, I have come to accept that if the law forbids one variety of error, that of the papists, from forbidding us to teach the truth, then the same law must also prohibit us from forbidding the teaching of other errors, such as those of the Calvinists and Anabaptists. And that we, to gain the right of free teaching, must allow it as well. But . . .”

“But you think that we are going to hell.” Willard had completed what Meyfarth clearly did not want to say.

“Well, yes. And I also make no claim that everyone else within Lutheranism shares my views. For which reason, if `We mean it’ does not prevail, I may someday lose my head. But until that day . . . I am here.”

–Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce, 1634: The Ram Rebellion

By: Josh Reynolds

Josh Reynolds — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:30:18 +0000

Is it just me or does “Blasphemy Bill” sound like a kckass cartoon character?

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:15:25 +0000

WOW.. SCARY. Apparently these anti-freedom politicians have never read John Stuart Mill’s writings on Fallibility and Free Speech

“On Liberty (Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer: 1863), pp. 36-43.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility…”

To quote my favorite author,
“ ‘But you must respect another man’s religious belief!’ For Heaven’s sake, why? Stupid is stupid—faith doesn’t make it smart.”
~Robert A. Heinlein