Here’s Geoff Lillis at last night’s Dublin Atheists in the Pub event, talking about his adventures discussing theology with street speakers. Geoff writes a blog at http://geoffsshorts.blogspot.com/. Dublin Atheists in the Pub is organized by Atheist Ireland, and takes place on the second Thursday of every month.
On May 1, Atheist Ireland attended a seminar on freedom of religion and belief organised by the Irish Network Against Racism, also known as ENAR Ireland. The aims of the seminar were to improve understanding of issues related to freedom of religion and belief and religious diversity in contemporary Ireland, to identify what is needed to improve the situation, and to network with members of like-minded groups.
On 19 April 2012 in London, Atheist Ireland chairperson Michael Nugent debated Sami Zaatari of the Muslim Debate Initiative. The topic was: Is religion less relevant to modern society?
Here are Sami and Michael’s opening contributions to the debate.
And here is the rest of the debate, including three rounds of rebuttals by each speaker, questions from the audience, and summaries from both speakers.
Along with other civil society groups, Atheist Ireland is concerned that the format and agenda for the Government’s proposed Constitutional Convention are too restrictive to bring about comprehensive change. As the Government seems likely to make a decision in the very near future, we have written the following letter to the Taoiseach and Tanaiste.
Atheist Ireland has made the following written submission to the the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee for the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). This is a follow-up to our meeting with this group in February when they were in Dublin monitoring Ireland’s record in protecting human rights.
Submission by Atheist Ireland to FCNM, March 2012
1. Introduction
2. Article 4 – Discrimination
3. Articles 7, 9, 4 – Blasphemy
4. Articles 15, 4 – Religious Oaths
5. Articles 12, 4 – Education
6. Constitutional Convention
7. Conclusion
350,000 Irish people did not identify with any religion in the latest census. That’s 7.5% of the population.
270,000 people ticked the No Religion box, up 45% from the last census. That’s 6% of the population, by far the second-largest single census category after Roman Catholic.
Another 80,000 people either did not answer the question on religion (73,000), or else wrote either atheist or agnostic in the box titled Other Religion (7,000).
That’s a total of 350,000 people who did not identify with any religion in the census. Some of those who did not answer the question might of course be religious, but did not want to answer the question.
But the true figure for nonreligious people is likely to be much higher, based both on the reality of living in Ireland, and a leading census question that assumed that everyone had a religion and merely asked them what that religion was.
Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland will be debating in London with Sami Zaatari of the Muslim Debate Initiative on Thursday 19 April at 6.30 pm. The topic is: “Is religion less relevant to modern society?” The venue is Friends House at 173-77 Euston Road. Admission is free.
Last Friday, Michael Nugent and Jane Donnelly attended a conference in Limerick titled Towards Mutual Ground: Religious Pluralism in Educational Practice in Irish Schools. It was organised by the Mater Dei Irish Centre for Religious Education, the PDST, and hosts Mary Immaculate College. Catherine O’Brien from the Humanist Association of Ireland was also there, and one of the workshop speakers was Fionnula Ward from Educate Together.
Overall, we found the conference to be very useful, with a lot of information covered, and many people interested in sharing opinions with us both during and between the formal sessions. Unfortunately, we also heard some of the caricatures of atheism and defamatory statements about atheists that we have sadly become used to from some Catholic theologians, including the literally dehumanising claim that atheists are not fully human.
Atheist Ireland has criticized the Irish Government’s responses today to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, saying that the Government is failing to protect the human right of freedom of conscience for Irish atheists, on the issues of religious discrimination in schools and retaining the blasphemy law.
The Irish Government was wrong to reject the request to eliminate religious discrimination in access to schools, it was wrong to claim that there is a growing nondenominational school sector in Ireland, and it was wrong to use the idea of the constitutional convention to delay addressing the need to remove the blasphemy law.
Atheist Ireland submission on draft State report to UN on Civil and Political Rights
On 3rd May, Atheist Ireland attended a consultation at the Department of Foreign Affairs on the Draft Irish State Report to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights. We have also made a written submission that Government departments will consider as the State prepares its final report, and we will later make a Submission directly to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Ireland is due up before the UN Human Rights Committee at the end of the year and, under Article 40 of the Covenant, has undertaken to submit State Reports every few years. At the meeting later this year, the Committee will examine how Ireland has made progress in implementing the concerns of the UN in 2008.
In their Concluding Observations in 2008, the UN Human Rights Committee raised concern about the human rights of secular parents in the Irish education system. They stated that denominational schools were private and had adopted a religious integrated curriculum which denied parents access to a secular education for their children. They also raised the issue of the requirement of judges to take a religious oath. The human rights that the UN referred to were the right to freedom of conscience, the right to be free from discrimination, the rights of the child and the right to equality before the law.
At the consultation on the 3rd of May, Atheist Ireland raised the issues of the Irish Education system and the failure of the State to protect Covenant rights. In particular we raised the issue of recent Report from the Ombudsman for Children. We pointed out that the Ombudsman’s Report shows clearly that the regulatory framework has failed to protect the human rights of parents and children under the Covenant. We also raised the issue of Blasphemy and the requirement to take Religious oaths under the Constitution.
Here is the full written submission that we have made to the Government on the draft State report:
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