Atheists in Ireland are doing their best to violate a new blasphemy law that came into effect with the new year. The measure imposes a substantial fine for remarks offensive to members of a religion.
The new statute has had people of all beliefs and none scratching their heads.
Michael Nugent, head of the group Atheist Ireland, says the law is silly and dangerous.
"It's silly because it's essentially a medieval religious law, and it's dangerous because it incentivizes religious outrage," he says.
To test the law, Nugent has published on the group's Web site 25 "blasphemous quotations," and he has challenged the Irish government to prosecute him. The quotations include the words of Jesus, Muhammad and Pope Benedict, as well as writers such as Mark Twain and Salman Rushdie and films such as Monty Python's Life of Brian.
[UPDATE: The Baptist Joint Committee's Brent Walker responds to the controversy. Maybe my "19th Century" was too generous:
[B]lasphemy laws — state-sponsored religion on steroids — have always been the death knell to religious liberty and the precursor of persecution. This goes for 17th Century England, 18th Century Colonial America (in Vermont, for example, blasphemy was a capital offense), Ireland today (it should know better), and even the United Nations in its attempt to condemn "defamation of religions" by passing what amount to resolutions endorsing a world-wide blasphemy law.
Read the whole thing.]
