BAN BLASPHEMY LAWS

Religion involves belief in supernatural powers and participating in behaviour that is considered sacred such as praying or going to a place of worship. The beliefs are considered sacred. Sacred means set apart. That entails refusing to debate the beliefs like they were any other kind of beliefs. Also insulting the beliefs is forbidden.

Blasphemy comes from two Greek words. The words are blaptein and pheme (page 129,The Choice of Hercules, A C Grayling, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2007). Blaptien means to damage. Pheme means reputation. So if you are a Christian then anything that criticises God or the Bible he wrote is blasphemy. Telling God to fuck off is not really blasphemy. If you are a Muslim you will regard Christians as being blasphemers even if they do not realise it for they make Jesus out to be God while the Koran is stern in its teaching that there is only one God Allah and that Jesus Christ is not to be worshipped as God.

Some define blasphemy as unintentionally insulting God's truth by saying it is wrong or doubtful.

Some define blasphemy as intentionally insulting it.

Some accept both definitions.

Those who want blasphemy laws to protect religious doctrine from criticism - even constructive criticism - are just bigots.

Mostly those who want blasphemy laws are trying to stop intentional and wanton insults directed at religious belief. This is a hazardous position to hold because you can accuse anybody who has proof or evidence that your religion is wrong and thus who you want to silence of intentionally insulting religion and get the accusation to stick. You can get the person fined or landed in jail.

What is blasphemy law supposed to protect?

Some say it is religious belief or faith.

Some say it is the religious community.

Some say it protects God and his truth.

Some say it is one or more of these.

It protects religious belief from being insulted or refuted. Blasphemy law cannot directly protect a religious community. It cannot be blasphemous for example to show that a priest has committed child sexual abuse even thiough proving this tarnsishes a whole group and may lead to voilence against it. The religious community should have the same protections as other parts of the wider community have anyway. Blasphemy law can only protect it indirectly by protecting its beliefs. But blasphemy law is not about protecting the religious community. Many for their own ends try to make out it that it is.

Blasphemy is a victimless crime. To prosecute or punish blasphemers is simply caving into the desire many religions have to persecute critics. Those who talk about blasphemy attacking the deepest beliefs of others are confusing insult God with insulting people. Insulting people's belief is not the same as blasphemy.

Honour yourself by having the courage to blaspheme!

Ideas such as that God has the right to bully us by laying down laws to control us are harmful affirmations and they can only be burnt out by blasphemously laughing at them. Turn them into a source of amusement, make them good for something!

Laugh at adverts and beliefs that tell you that you are not good enough unless you sign up to something or buy something. That takes away any power they can get over you.

Mediums have been prosecuted by the state for blasphemously claiming to be able to talk to the dead. People have been put to death in Muslim countries for expressing their critical thoughts about Islam and thereby blasphemously questioning the truthfulness of Islam. The Roman Catholic Church butchered millions for the blasphemies of witchcraft and heresy.

What is sacred to one religion is blasphemy to another. Examples follow.

Islam blasphemes Christianity by saying Jesus was a prophet and not God.

Christianity blasphemes Allah, the God of Islam, by saying that Jesus was God. It says that he was an ordinary man and was also God. That is a contradiction for it follows that as God Jesus had all power and thus his vulnerability was fake. The Church says it cannot understand how the nature of God and the nature of man could make one person as in Jesus. What we really have here is a Church pretending that a man is God. And though it says the worship of the Eucharist would be idolatry if the bread and wine do not turn into Jesus, it worships them as God. It is admitting that it is potential idolatry if not actual. Islam is very stern in teaching that no such risk can be taken without offering an insult to God.

Christianity blasphemes the Muslim Prophet Muhammad by denying that he was a prophet of God and so that he was at best deluded and by calling him a sinner.

The Roman Catholic idea that the Mass is the same sacrifice as the Cross of Jesus and that the bread and wine are turned into Jesus himself to be eaten and drunk and rotted is extremely offensive to Christians. If bread becoming Jesus isn't blasphemous then shit becoming Jesus can't be blasphemous either. The Church praises the humility of Jesus in becoming like bread so he must be more humble if he becomes like shit. The Church blurs the difference between humility and humiliation for its purposes.

Christians find the Catholic adoration of Mary very insulting to the role of Jesus Christ as saviour and God.

When accused of using Satan's power to cast out demons, Jesus retorted by saying this was a heinous blasphemy.  In Matthew 12, he makes blasphemy the worst possible act or crime. It can only be that bad if it is suggesting that a teaching needs ridiculing or ridicules itself. It's about reminding you that some teachings deserve only reverence even if they are wrong! Not a line of the Bible says anything against condemning people or praising a God who condemns them when these people commit the crime of having the wrong beliefs. You must judge person by their deeds first and foremost. Beliefs are to be corrected and getting personal and judging must be kept out of it. Condemning holders of beliefs for their beliefs amounts to creating thought crimes.

If blasphemy is bad, then there are worse forms of it than others. In the Catholic world, you will get more hate and demands for the law to penalise you for insulting the Virgin Mary than you will God. In the Muslim world, saying Allah is evil is treated as preferable to saying Muhammad was just a misguided man who imagined he was a prophet. But reason says that the biggest blasphemy is accusing God of neglecting those innocents who suffer and of being the type of tyrant who urges us to be hypocrites who condone and even praise his evil as good. This form of blasphemy is often ignored. Yet if that should be ignored then all blasphemies should be ignored. Even Stephen Fry got away with it in Ireland in 2015 where blasphemy is illegal, when he called God evil on Irish Television. Blasphemy laws are really often just tools for political manipulation. They are often unjust in practice and not just in principle.

What if somebody says in public that God is a bastard for standing by and not helping sick babies? Having anybody prosecuted for blasphemy against God would amount to banning somebody having such a strong sympathy for suffering people that they get enraged against God! That would be sick. But belief in God and the wrongness of blasphemy says he should indeed be prosecuted and treated as a filthy criminal. It is the principle. Belief in God should be discarded for principles are latent evil when they are wrong but they are still evil and paving the way for people to suffer.

That the question, "Should people be punished for saying certain things against religion?" comes up is disturbing. It shows lack of respect for freedom of speech. What would you think of a person who sees a little dog on the street who says, "Should that dog be burned to death?"

Even asking if blasphemy should be banned suggests that you are open to persecuting those who say things against religious doctrine that you object to. It is a violation of secularism.

Deism is the notion that apart from giving us reason, God gives us no means to work out if he probably or actually exists. It denies that he appoints prophets to speak for him. It denies that Jesus really is the revelation of God. Deism always accused Christianity of blasphemy for saying God said what he didn't say. It always accused Christianity of blasphemously saying God commanded wars and battles and executions in the Bible. There is no doubt that the Bible and the Koran and the Book of Mormon (which speaks of the Holy Spirit commanding a murder in order that a group of people could steal brass plates with scriptures on them) are indeed blasphemous. The Bible God threatened Israel with retribution if it failed to keep all his commands which included the law that certain sinners such as heretics and false prophets and fortune tellers and homosexuals must be tortured to death by stoning. Jesus demanded devotion to its version of God and claimed to be his only Son. He claimed that those who sin risk eternal torture in Hell forever. Christians say that the torture there is self-inflicted but not a word of the Bible so much as hints at that. It is God's torture chamber for the Bible clearly teaches that God is okay with torture as long as you act on his orders.

Blasphemy is related to sacrilege.  Sacrilege is like blasphemy that is done rather than spoken.  It leads to the disgraceful situation where say Christians get "hurt" and "outraged" over an attack on their Church as if that matters more than the poor old lady's house being vandalised.  An attack on a Church is vilified as an attack on the religious community while an old person living in the locality getting beaten up gets less rage and less attention.

Blasphemy needs to be abolished. Blasphemy needs to be normalised because that is the only thing that gets rid of blasphemy laws once and for all.  There is a difference between CONSTRUCTIVE blasphemy and blasphemy for the hell of it.  The way to tell the difference is to ask, "Will the believer be led to see the horror of their position by what I say?" and come up with yes.