BLASPHEMY LAW THOUGHTS
http://freethinker.co.uk/2015/08/09/uae-enacts-stealth-blasphemy-law/
Current Catholic teaching is that there is a civil right to worship as you
please but there is no moral right to do so. So the law should let you worship
pagan gods as long as you are not creating civil unrest. But that does not mean
any morally minded person or God has to agree with it. No it is their duty to
try and get you to rethink. The Church however does agree with blasphemy law but
only against the Catholic Church. The idea that a law protecting a false God
from being insulted is unjust for it is not real and while the worshipper’s
feelings are a concern it has to be handled differently from the feelings of a
Catholic worshipper. A Protestant Church then in the Catholic eyes can only be
blasphemed if it is an attack on a doctrine shared with the Catholic Church.
The secular state needs to see religion not as a possible
revelation from God but something man says is a revelation. It is to be regarded
as no more sacred than somebody's devotion to a television programme.
God's role in revelation is irrelevant for you are still taking man's word for
it.
Until each nation treats religious opinions as merely human opinions, the door
to blasphemy laws coming in will always be open. Blasphemy is really about
refusing to let people realise it if a religion is man-made nonsense.
Once a state makes a blasphemy law, it becomes a theocracy even if the rest of
its principles are secular. Secular principles founded upon religious opposition
to freedom of belief and the right to criticise religion only overlap
secularism. They look secular but they are not. Think of the principle. Freedom
of inquiry is no freedom at all if there are limits. You cannot trust anything
unless you get freedom of thought.
The trouble with blasphemy laws is that if pompous and smug man is pretending to
channel God's word then the more blasphemy there is the better.
