Blasphemy

Yesterday, I went to bed optimistic. Why? Because it seems atheism just isn’t a big deal anymore. Perhaps it’s because I go to a liberal, intellectual college, but nowadays, it seems being an atheist means nothing else. As a linguistic unit, it picks out the speaker and brands him as an atheist. Gone are the Naturalized Dicent Indexes and stereotypes (rebelling against parents, no morals, etc) and in its place is that word.

Everybody is an atheist towards most gods. We just took it a step further. To some, it is the disbelief in their god that tips them over. You can see them protesting at laws that don’t openly endorse Christianity.  To many, disbelief in that last God turns a good person into an immoral heathen. You see this in people who don’t care what religion you find, as long as you find faith. It seems now we can say ‘I’m an atheist’ without the large backlash that used to exist. And really, that’s what we want. We don’t want Christianity made illegal, or the AntiChrist for president. We just want to be able to say ‘I’m an atheist’ and not have people act like we ran over the family pet, and came back to gloat. And I think we are getting there

Still fully half of Americans would not vote for an atheist, parents don’t want their children marrying us, but…things seemed to be improving. So imagine my surprise when I saw this:

http://www.palibandaily.com/2009/07/09/ireland-makes-blasphemy-illegal/

So, blasphemy. I don’t understand the outrage, in general. It is a victimless crime, and uproar over it seems to be akin to not being able to have friends who are friends with somebody you don’t like, or who doesn’t like your favorite ice cream flavor.

This takes things to a whole new level. It is one thing to have a law that says ‘go, me!’ about a specific religion. It is another entirely to penalize dissent. My book collection alone would net me at least 50 such citations. Can you imagine the uproar at a law that banned the speech of religious individuals? Even when hate speech intended to incite violence against homosexuals was restricted, some churches went nuts.

Blasphemy is not hate speech. It is an expression of personal opinion like any other. And when we start limiting what people can and cannot say, or read, we start limiting what they can and cannot believe. And I believe that’s wrong. How long before expressing THAT opinion is illegal too?