Police in Ireland are investigating a complaint of blasphemy regarding comments made by Stephen Fry on a television programme shown on Ireland’s state broadcaster, RTÉ.
Gardaí (police) in Dublin have contacted the man who reported the allegation following a broadcast in February 2015, and a full investigation is due to be carried out, the Irish Independent reported.
Under Ireland’s Defamation Act 2009 a person who publishes or utters blasphemous material “shall be guilty of an offence”. A conviction can lead to a fine of up to €25,000.
I realise that Fry can be incredibly annoying. However, in a modern society the very presence of blasphemy laws is a disgrace. It allows the mean-minded, capricious, stupid and evil in our society to wage a petty campaign against those who dare to challenge their delusions. Fry’s comment were perfectly reasonable – and, having read and absorbed the Old Testament, I came to much the same conclusion. God as depicted behaves like a two year old having a temper tantrum because he can’t get what he wants. Why would I worship such a creature? I have a sense of morality; something entirely absent in Yahweh.
Blasphemy laws are the kind of thing left to backwards, medieval shit-holes such as Pakistan where blasphemers who dare to voice dissent are killed. I thought Ireland was a civilised place. Maybe I was wrong…
While being interviewed on The Meaning of Life TV programme, Fry was asked what he would say to God if he had a chance.
“How dare you create a world in which there is such misery,” Fry replied. “It’s not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”
And when Fry has said it, I’ll say it.
Fry said if he met the Greek gods he would accept them quicker because, “they didn’t present themselves as being all seeing, all wise, all beneficent”.
Indeed. Or the Goddess of the old pagan religions…
“I told the garda that I did not want to include this as I had not personally been offended by Fry’s comments – I added that I simply believed that the comments made by Fry on RTÉ were criminal blasphemy and that I was doing my civic duty by reporting a crime.”
No; you’re an obnoxious, petty, capricious, stupid, mean-minded cunt.
Oh yes, I think your final statement sums it up nicely. When I was at school, people like that were called sneaks, and if found out, got a well deserved beating from their peers.
There is something singularly unpleasant about people with that mindset.
Well, yes and the police response should have been to immediately charge this individual with wasting police time.
Except that the dumb Irish state actually has a law against blasphemy so a charge of wasting police time wouldn’t stick. The simple, farcical, amazing reality is that a supposedly western, liberal democracy has such an illiberal law.
As you correctly note, it is no surprise that a shithole like Pakistan should have such a barbaric, evil, Medieval law as its laws are based on the barbaric, evil, Medieval ideology of Islam, but one would rather hope that an EU country would have higher standards in the 21st century.
Indeed. However, there seems to be some dispute as to whether the Irish law actually covers blasphemy rather than defamation… And how do you defame an invisible entity that no one actually knows exists?
I guess you wait for God, Allah, Yahweh, Brahma, etc. to file a complaint.
A bit like Godot…
That is one godawful play, the worst theatrical experience of my life, though Madame Butterfly runs it close.
I have a slight suspicion that the “dobber in” did so to draw attention to the absurdity of the laws.
Isn’t the Old Testament blasphemous as well then? As you said, it depicts God as a dim witted moron with the temperament of a spoiled and bad tempered toddler.
So police are conducting a “full investigation”? Pardon me for my ignorance, but doesn’t the word investigation imply that there is something that is not known, something hidden, behind the alleged crime? Do the police believe Fry had co-conspirators that sat around drafting the allegedly blasphemous language that he uttered in public later? The alleged crime is a statement he made in public, so any investigation would consist of merely writing down the time and place of the statement, no?
2015 – Garda are a bit slow off the mark.
But since when can the Irish prosecute British citizens living in the UK?
They could prosecute RTE, but Fry? In absentia I suppose but then what?
There is some speculation that the complaint was a deliberate attempt to bring this blasphemy law into the light in order to expose it to ridicule. In the UK the National Secular Society tried to force a blasphemy trial by having members reading out a poem that had been the subject of an earlier case. The authorities were wise to them and deliberately looked the other way. It took a lawsuit against the BBC by Christian imbecile Stephen Green to get the UK blasphemy law abolished.