Organized Religion Discussion Thread

[Grim]

The problem with free speech is people mistake it for freedom to do whatever they want, regardless of whether or not they're ready to face the consequences.

I don't see much a difference between this argument, and when a rapist says they committed their crime because said victim was wearing provocative clothes.

"Because they had it coming." is a good weak justification.

The difference is people who wear provocative clothing and then end up getting raped don't wear provocative clothing knowing they're probably going to get raped. Molly Norris probably knew she was going to stir up controversy knowing that it's illegal for Muslims to depict Mohammed, but it's probably not for non-Muslims. That's why I'm averse to what she did. It was stirring up the hornet's nest under the guise of furthering the ideals of free speech.

One can argue that that's what many free thinkers have done in the past against an authority, particularly against the Catholic Church. What happened to them? They stood their ground. Some lived. Some died for their beliefs.

Like Nix has already said, if the artists truly believe in what they did, then they should stand by what they did. It's all anyone could ask for. History will be the judge.

But doing something which you know is against someone's most hallowed beliefs in the first place? That's flat out bad too.

Rude, yes. Illegal, no. And last I checked, we don't arrest or shoot people for being jackasses, do we?

Furthermore why should religious institutions get a free pass at criticism, more so when they user their doctrine justify their willingess to subvert people?

Shall we arrest every researcher responsible for the blasphemous data they accumulated in the Murphy Report in Ireland, which documented all of the country's most recent sex abuse cases as committed by the RCC? Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself has received multiple death threats for her criticism of Islam's poor treatment of women. Then there's that fatwa against Salman Rushdie because of his writing of Satanic Verses. The problem with "blashpemy" is that it is used as a catch-all shield for any valid criticism against the religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murphy_Report

I'm not defending the death threats, either. They're both wrong, and that's what's ugly in this case. But the difference is sharing sex abuses committed by the Catholic Church or exposing the poor treatment of women in Islam (or wherever) is that is what should be done. This is the kind of wrongdoing that should be brought to the fore.

But depicting Mohammed in image? That's immediately a gray area to begin with. Therefore "blasphemy" will be subjective to whoever's looking at the situation. As is the gravity of response that the people affected show. We think it grave, they think it just. And ultimately, that's where this situation starts to break down.