Supporting the effort against the Irish blasphemy law

Europe News  posted this listing of twenty-five potentially blasphemous statements by well-know persons. The posting was in support of the Irish atheists organization that originally posted them. Their site doesn't seem to be available, so Europe News mirrored them. In support of the movement against such stupidity as anti-blasphemy laws, I am posting these statements here.

List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland
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 the 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.

Tiger Woods and the idea of marriage

What does Tiger Woods have to do with religion and politics? Not much directly, but in the light of his recent "transgressions", as he put it, I think we can reflect on the self-righteousness of the anti-gay marriage fanatics. This just puts another nail in the coffin of marriage's exaulted postion as the religious fanatics see it.

Why do I say this? Because this incident continues to highlight the mental gymnastics the religious fanatics have to go through to justify their bigotry and hatred against homosexuals. The claim that heterosexual marriage is crucial to the survival of the family is silly. Clearly the biggest threat to families is the behavior and attitudes of those who committed to the relationship in the first place. If one or both parties doesn't feel that extra-marital activities is a breach of the marriage contract, then regardless of whether the parties are heterosexual or homosexual, the marriage will fail. Marriage is dependent upon a personal commitment between two partners to remain faithful to each other and to care for each other. When either party violates that trust, the marriage is threatened. It doesn't matter what sex the parties are, just the violation of trust.

When I see so many public figures breaking their marriage vows while expecting forgiveness, I have to laugh at the relgious fanatics who are restricting such a "sacred" institution as marriage to only "one man and one woman". Marriage is a contract, plain and simple. Whatever special significance the partners want to ascribe to it is up to them. The bottom line is that marriage conveys certain civil rights to the parties not available to unmarried couples. It is a violation of our constitution to deny equal rights to anyone. When the religious fanatics insist that marriage is sacred, I would tell them that's between them and their supreme being, but I am pretty sure that any disagreement between married partners in today's world will be settled by a court of law and not an imaginary fairy in the sky.

I'm guessing Tiger is more concerned about losing millions in a divorce settlement along with lost endorsements than he is in what the sky fairy thinks of his moral behavior.

Are you kidding me!!!?????

The Washington Post ran a story today on the provision struck from the House health bill that would require insurance companies to reimburse the expense for having someone pray for them. They interviewed a Christion Scientist (an oxymoron if there ever was one) who charges $20 - $40 to pray for someone who is ill or injured. The provision in the health plan was removed from the House bill but will likely be slipped into the Senate version.

Explain to me how a bunch of morons can demand that the health bill restrict reimbursement for abortions, but include a requirement to reimburse for prayer? Have I fallen into an alternate universe? Has the entire world gone insane? This continues the erosion of intelligence in America along with the recent flap over use of evidence-based medicine recommending changes in the frequency of mammograms. Looks like we will fall into the medieval world of spells, incantations, and hunches to treat illnesses rather than sound, scientific evidence. People would rather waste their tax dollars on hoaxes and snake oil rather than admit that just because you want something to be so, doesn't make it so. Sometimes, there is no easy answer to a problem. Shit does happen. People die. It's inevitable. Praying to imaginary spirits won't save you from that.

I only hope that should I ever end up in the hospital for something serious, I won't be faced with having to select from a choice of prayer, bleeding, or exorcism since insurance won't cover a real doctor because they discriminate against religion. If that ever happens, just take me out back and shoot me.

This is a good reason to stop faith-based government services

The Washington Post reported today that the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has threatened to pull out of running social service programs for the District if the DC Council goes ahead with a same-sex marriage law. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111116943.html

Apparently the District is giving the Catholic Church funds to support service programs it offers. So, now we have the Catholic Church dictating what the citizens of the District should believe and how they should live. This is what happens when the Government allows religion to become part of the Government, as in delivering services that should be provided by the secular government.

Can we be any more stupid than allowing a religious organization to dictate how our government should be run? This may sound innocent on the surface. All they are doing is providing social services funded by the District. However, they get to decide to whom to provide the services and whom gets to work for them. If you don't fit their model for beliefs and profession of faith, you don't get services or work. Is that how our tax dollars should be spent?

What next, soup kitchens only for those who profess a belief in their deity? Jobs only for Catholics?

So, if they oppose GLBT rights, shouldn't they dismiss the priests who have been living "alternative lifestyles". Surely they don't believe there are no gay priests? It's OK to be hypocritical if it's for Jesus? If you "don't ask, don't tell", then is it OK? Seriously, who are they fooling?

That's just the Catholic Church. Don't forget the many Protestant denominations, Islamic sects, Jewish sects, and thousands of other relgions. How does the Government decide which one's tenets should be accepted so as not to offend them in our civil laws and government? It can't be done. That's why we have separation of Church and State!

New Health Care Plan to restrict abortion. Religion sticking its nose in private matters..

The latest from Congress has the Health Care bill moving through the House with an amendment to prevent the use of funds to cover abortion services -- even when the woman is not using Government subsidies to pay for her insurance! If people believe abortion is against their religious views, that's fine. Don't have abortions. However, when you decide what my beliefs are for me, you've crossed the line.

Teach your own children about birth control, and they might not need abortions. This is going too far in controlling what people can do with their own bodies. A fertilized egg is not a person. It won't be a person for a long time. If you try to throw in the ridiculous belief that a "soul" is placed in the zygote by some fairy in the sky, you are really going beyond your beliefs and trampling my personal life and beliefs.

Now, for the spineless idiots elected as our leaders, how can you walk away from a core principle most were elected to support -- the respect for individual freedoms? The Health Care bill is bad enough, but now you have to gum it up with religious nonsense? It's amazing how people can take such a simple idea as universal health care and turn it into a universal goat rope! There are so many conditions, exceptions, and exclusions in the proposed plan that they make it even worse than what it is replacing. There is so much baggage attached that the cost of the program is going to skyrocket just to oversee all of the rules!

I believe that in today's world universal health care is an obligation any civilized society owes its citizens. We have moved beyond the premise that health care is an option. Just as we provide for the common defense, public education, and protection of free speech, we now much realize that universal health care is a necessary part of our society. Without adequate health care for all, we will have to deal with the many problems that result, draining our abilities to pursue the improvement of our lives and defend our freedoms.

At this point, it looks like the opponents of universal health care and health insurance reform are going to win. A bill with such a serious flaw as the abortion restrictions is not worth passing.

First Thoughts

Just to get this blog started, I think I'll put down some initial thoughts. I plan to elaborate on these and many other things as time goes by. I just need to get the writing started.

Here goes ...

Lets start with some politics. I'm always amused at how politics seems to always drag religion into the mix of human emotions, needs, and problems. It's like throwing gasoline on the fire. Once religion is introduced, rational thought is out the window. Ever try to solve a problem by hoping it goes away or solves itself? That's a lot like applying religious beliefs and assumptions to dealing with real life issues of helping to manage a civilization. It just doesn't work.

And yes, I said "managing a civilization", because that is what politics is all about. Even the tiniest local jurisdiction that has a governing organization plays a part in the overall development of national and international life. Politics is important in making the machinery of societies function. It oils the gears and helps to make progress (whatever that may be). Religion has been used by astute rulers and politicians to nudge the population in certain directions, taking advantage of the tendency of believers to be credulous, accepting without question the dictates of authority.

So, what do I think about politics today? More in upcoming posts.