God must be an awfully insecure sort. God, Christ, Allah, YHWH or whatever you call1 the Supreme Being, seems, for something that is all-powerful and all-knowing, to being using the slander laws (or, as they are in this case, the blasphemy laws) an awful lot lately.

I think the right of freedom of speech includes, of necessity2 and of right3, the right to insult any being, supernatural or otherwise. I think that being able to say ‘Supernatural Being X is a bad cricketer’ is as much a right, and the prohibition in law as unreasonable, as being able to say ‘Ian Botham is a bad cricketer’.

I would add, with reference to the cartoons in the Jyllends-Posten and recent events at the Oxford Union that the right does not imply a duty. With freedom of speech comes responsibility to use it judiciously; of that, more later.

In the UK, a group [identify] have filed a suit against the people behind Jerry Springer: the Opera on the basis that it is blasphemous and, therefore, illegal. As I have said before, the necessary price of good art is bad art. If certain Christians believe that Jerry Springer: the Opera is bad art, they could choose to say that it outweighs the benefit of good art. Of course, I might say that a Nativity play is bad art4.

In short, the Supreme Being (assuming Supremity and Being) is not really (if it is compassionate and allows for honest errors) that bothered about blasphemy and wouldn’t want its believers to behave like, er, chumps.

It comes down to a simple choice between being and seeming ‘good’, where, in this instance, good is ‘behaving in accordance with divine law’. I would say (certainly in Christianity, with which I am most familiar, and from what I understand, in Judaism and Islam as well) that someone who does not believe in God but acts as they consider to be right is closer to ‘good’ than someone who obeys every law but without belief in its value or, worse, for the appearance of piety. However, some of the more extreme elements of the religious communities cannot even bear the thought that there are people out there who disagree with them, disbelieve their texts and will claim morality for themselves. The incredulity they espouse when people deny things that they, the religious, take as Gospel (pun probably not intended) makes little difference. Trying to convert people by shame or force or offering an easier path rather than reason and rationality and, ultimately, accepting that some people do not make a leap of faith, belongs to the Westboro Baptist Church line of thinking.

As a final note, blasphemy comes from the Greek words blapteim, to injure, and pheme, reputation. While I can understand how a mere mortal might have recourse to slander or libel laws if their reputation were to be injured, I fail to see how an immanent God whose existence is manifest in creation would need to have such recourse.

xD.

1 - The Flying Spaghetti Monster seems to be the only deity with one name. The Christian variety is one-in-three, Allah has ninety-nine known names and the name of the Tetragrammaton is not used.
2 - Of necessity, because almost anything could be taken as an insult, and freedom of speech would be impossible
3 - Of right, because the arguments for free speech as liberal as well as utilitarian, and there is, I believe, a right to express yourself that includes being negative about facts, opinions and people.
4 - For the record, I don’t think that.

Posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Categories: Religion.
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