Category Archives: Blasphemy
25 Blasphemous Quotations
Published by Atheist Ireland on 1 January 2010
1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.
2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.
3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.
4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy — he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.
5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”
6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”
7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.
8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”
9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”
10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”
11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”
12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.
13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”
14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”
15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”
16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”
17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.
18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”
19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”
20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”
21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”
22. PZ Myers, on his desecration of a Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”
23. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”
24. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.
25. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.
Finally, as a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.
Also posted in Politics, Religion 259 Comments
Atheist Ireland Publishes 25 Blasphemous Quotes
From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine.
In response, we have published a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern.
You can read the quotes on the website here:
http://blasphemy.ie/2010/01/01/atheist-ireland-publishes-25-blasphemous-quotes/
Have your say on our forum:
Happy New Year.
Also posted in Politics, Religion 19 Comments
Blasphemy laws in the 21st century
Blasphemy is a strange concept, according to my dictionary it refers to “the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously of God or sacred things.” By that definition, every religious believer constantly engages in blasphemy — of all the other gods she doesn’t believe in. You would think that this simple observation would put an end to any silly talk of legislating blasphemy, but you would be spectacularly wrong. A recent checklist of blasphemy laws worldwide makes it clear that they are found not only in the obvious places — Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other similarly unenlightened nations — but in most European countries, Canada and several states in the US.
To add irony to tragedy, of course, Saudi Arabia — that beacon of tolerance — has recently mounted a campaign at the United Nations to pass an anti-blasphemy resolution, sponsored (surprise surprise!) by the 56 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference. Because nothing speaks more loudly in favor of religious tolerance than the Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, to pick on most obviously the motor behind this effort, an inter-faith conference on religious blasphemy simply could not be held, because Jews, Christians, and even representatives of non-Saudi versions of Islam would not be allowed into the country if they openly professed their respective creeds.
Proponents of anti-blasphemy laws within international bodies like the UN or the European community seem oblivious to the obvious legal (not to mention moral) contradictions that such laws immediately raise. As far as the United Nations is concerned, for instance, blasphemy laws are in stark opposition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which constitutes an essential part of the UN’s raison d’être. In Europe, as recently as May 2009 the Venice Commission, which is the EU’s advisory body on constitutional issues, clearly stated that blasphemy comes under freedom of expression, which is protected in the EU charter.
Fortunately, most western countries simply do not use their blasphemy laws, though attempts to eliminate them altogether have failed in recent years in Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands, for instance. The UK is a glaring and positive exception: in March of last year the House of Lords finally abolished anti-blasphemy statutes with a 148-87 vote. It is instructive, however, to read how conservative member of the house Detta O’Cathain attempted to defend the indefensible:
“The essential question is: Should we abolish Christian beliefs and replace them with secular beliefs? As long as there has been a country called England, it has been a Christian country, publicly acknowledging the one true God.” Ah yes, the one true god. Except of course for all those other religious people who are legal British citizens and happen to believe in other gods. And of course that is precisely not the essential question: O’Cathain is making the same (possibly willful) mistake that is common among Christian fundamentalists in the United States, the confusion between freedom of speech (including of course for non-theists) and the persecution of one’s own faith. Could it be that this persecution paranoia comes from the actual legacy of intolerance and violence that has characterized Christian churches throughout their history?
But the UK’s positive step is about to be countered by an unusual move in a nearby part of Europe: Ireland is considering putting a new blasphemy law on its books! The proposed statute says in part “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000” and defines blasphemy as speech that is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.” I’m not sure what the difference is between “grossly abusive” and simply abusive, or where ithe threshold is that defines a “substantial” number of offended, but the concept of “insult” is so tenuous that I seriously wonder how such a law — God forbid it should be passed — would allow the preservation of any free speech at all in Ireland. Suppose I start a religion that has only one commandment: there are no gods other than the Big Green Blob in the sky.” (You will appreciate that this isn’t that far fetched, considering that a similar clause represents the first commandment of all three Abrahamic religions.) Even at the onset, with a membership of one, my new religion will both have to be protected against blasphemy and simultaneously manage to be blasphemous to all other religions in one fell swoop. Talk about logical contradictions! The example might seem outrageous, but it is simply a very obvious version of what is already out there: as my atheists friends often tell their religious counterparts, I disbelieve just one more god than you do, so everyone is by definition blasphemous.
But of course the real argument against blasphemy laws is not a matter of logical contradictions or legal consistency, it’s a matter of simple decency. This was stated most clearly by the US Supreme Court in Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952): “It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches or motion pictures.” That’s because an open society can only thrive by being, well, open. I understand that this doesn’t go down well in theocratic countries like Saudi Arabia, but it really ought to be a no-brainer in western democracies. And this principle ought to apply to non-religious speech as well: Canada and several European countries, for instance, have “hate speech” laws that make it illegal (e.g. in Germany) to deny historical facts like the Holocaust. Denying the Holocaust is stupid, bigoted and ignorant, but we should not be getting into the business of legislating against people’s stupidity, bigotry or ignorance (it would be a truly Sysyphean task anyway). Instead, we should combat them with education and critical thinking.
What needs protection is not hate speech, of course, but hate action: burning down churches, killing abortion doctors, or attacking the embassies of countries whose citizens publish satirical cartoons ought to be strongly condemned by all and swiftly prosecuted on legal grounds. There is only one reasonable exception to an uncompromising protection of speech: when someone directly incites hate crimes. But on that count, it is religions across the world that have a really bad record. Should we not cleanse our own house from actual violence and hatred, before rallying against the imaginary ones that our paranoia attributes to other people?
by Massimo Pigliucci
This guest post comes by invitation from Massimo Pigliucci who has also reproduced the entry on his blog at Rationally Speaking. He is also the author of several books on the topics of Science, Evolution, rationality, skepticism and creationism.
Also posted in Politics 13 Comments
Justice Minister to Amend New Blasphemy Law
The Minister for Justice is proposing to amend his new blasphemy law by providing, as a defence, that a person accused of blasphemy can “prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value” in the blasphemous matter.
He is not proposing to reduce the fine of €100,000, the onus of proof is on the defendant to prove this new line of defence, and the police may still seize and destroy blasphemous statements. The Minister’s proposed blasphemy law now reads like this:
1. A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.
2. For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.
3. It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.
The revised amendment has been published on the Oireachtas website. The All-Party Committee on Justice will discuss it tomorrow, Wednesday May 20. We in the campaign against the blasphemy law would welcome your opinions on this development as we consider our response to it.
Posted in Blasphemy 12 Comments
New campaign website at blasphemy.ie
Do you want to stop the Irish government from reviving the medieval crime of blasphemy? Do you want to promote a rational, ethical and secular society in Ireland?
Atheist Ireland has put a campaign website online at http://blasphemy.ie/ as part of our campaign against this proposed new law.
It includes analysis and news items about blasphemy and free speech, and examples of material that could be illegal in Ireland if the new blasphemy law is passed.
Please let people know about http://blasphemy.ie/, and we can intensify this important campaign over the coming weeks.
Posted in Blasphemy 17 Comments
Atheist Ireland opposes new blasphemy crime
The Irish Government’s new proposed blasphemy crime combines the oppressive religious thinking of 1950s Catholic Ireland and modern Islamic fundamentalism. This proposal should be opposed for three reasons.
One, it does not protect religious belief. Instead, it encourages outrage and it criminalises free speech. Two, it treats religious beliefs as more valuable than secular beliefs and scientific thinking. Three, we should be removing 1930s religious references from the Irish Constitution, not legislating to enforce them.
The bill’s first test of blasphemy is that religious adherents express outrage. Instead of encouraging outrage, we should be educating people to respond in a more healthy manner than outrage when somebody expresses a belief that they find insulting. More worryingly, this law would encourage the type of orchestrated outrage that Islamic fundamentalists directed against Danish cartoonists.
Many atheists find it insulting that the Christian Bible suggests that women must not teach and must learn in silence, or that effeminate people are unrighteous, or that people should worship a God who threatens to make you eat your own children. But we do not believe that the Bible should be banned, and neither should discussion of the Bible in terms that cause Christians to be outraged.
Blasphemy is not the only anomaly of running a 21st century state with a 1937 Constitution. You cannot become President or be appointed as a Judge unless you take a religious oath under God asking god to direct and sustain you in your work. We should be amending our Constitution to remove these theistic references, not creating new crimes to enforce provisions that were written in the 1930s.
If you live in Ireland, please lobby your local TD, the Justice Minister, and the members of the Oireachtas Justice Committee that is considering this proposal. Contact details here: http://tr.im/k4Mq
by Michael Nugent
Also posted in Politics 18 Comments
Irish blasphemy law being used as a lever by Islamic countries
Via the UK National Secular Society
The Freedom of Expression pressure group Article 19 has expressed concern that the Irish blasphemy legislation is being used by Islamic countries to demand an international “defamation of religion” law.
The submissions on defamation of religions brought by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) before the UN Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards (Ad Hoc Committee) adopted the exact wording of the provisions of Irish legislation on blasphemous libel contained in that country’s Defamation Act, passed in July 2009. This clearly shows that the Irish legislation is being used to legitimise the proposals of Pakistan and the OIC to establish defamation of religion as a principle of international law.
Read more…