ATHEISTS CHALLENGE BLASPHEMY LAW

IRISH ATHEISTS FIGHT BLASPHEMY LAW BY
PUBLISHING “FAMOUS BLASPHEMOUS” QUOTES

LONDON (CNN) - Atheists in Ireland are risking possible prosecution with an audacious online challenge to the country's new blasphemy law. Under the law, which went into effect last week, a person can be found guilty of blasphemy if “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.” The penalty is a fine of up to 25,000 euros, or more than $35,000. An Irish atheist group has published a series of quotations on religion in an attempt to challenge a blasphemy law that went into effect last Friday. In a bid to demonstrate that the law is outdated and largely unenforceable, a group named Atheist Ireland published on its Web site 25 potentially blasphemous quotations from figures such as Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Pope Benedict XVI and Mark Twain. “Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them, and we unreservedly support the right of any Irish citizen to make comparable statements about matters held sacred by any religion without fear of being criminalized, and without having to prove to a court that a reasonable person would find any particular value in the statement,” the group said on the site.

According to the new law, those found guilty of breaking the blasphemy law may try to defend themselves by proving that a reasonable person would find literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic value in what they said or published. Michael Nugent, the group's chair, said that it would challenge the law through the courts if it were charged with blasphemy. Nugent said: “This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage.” The Atheist Ireland group in its Campaign for Free Expression urged the Irish government to repeal the law. It also asked lawmakers for a referendum on removing all references to God from the Irish constitution.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

When theism is forced to give way to pantheism, atheism, skepticism and agnosticism, then irreligion, unscrupulousness and duplicity bring about chaos on earth. Sin and its consequences surge around us, tumultuously clamoring to have their way against our wishes, and we find ourselves in the midst of a whirlpool. Then God comes to save us from their clutches and re-establish peace and order. He may remain here and at the same time remain everywhere, both inside and outside the universe. … The omnipotent author of Nature is a supreme will unto Himself and is above Nature and her laws and rules, because everything has come from His will and power.

Śrīla Bhakti Saranga Mahārāja :
Lecture: “God-realization” - June 1959
Sri Sajjana-tosani Patrikā, Vol. IV, Nº 11
Rays of the Harmonist – Nº 13 Karttika, 2003.