You see what would happen if the Roman Catholic Church controlled the law of the land?
Published:
January 16, 2015 at 1:18am
Too many people have been commenting that Europe is tolerant and free because it is Christian. No. It is tolerant and free because it is secular. Europe as Christendom was anything but tolerant and free. It became tolerant and free when secularism knocked religion back into its box.
If the Vatican were in charge (again) we would have limits to freedom of expression that included a ban on mocking religion. We have that already in Malta already, because we never scrapped that particular law.
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-01-15/world-news/Pope-Francis-on-Charlie-Hebdo-There-are-limits-to-free-expression-6736128788
“Scoffers set a city in ferment, but the wise moderate anger.” Proverbs 29:8
When the Pope said that there are limits to free expression he was not speaking in terms of law or of freedom of speech. He was not condoning the retaliatory aggressiveness. He was only repeating an obvious human experience and a common civilized concept that abusive, provocative words and deeds are likely to provoke a reaction even from timid normal human beings, After all even Christ reacted when his Father’s temple was being desacrated. or his face was slapped blasphemously.
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The only reason why people think we should not offend radical Islam, but say nothing of offending other far right groups is because those radical Muslims have bombs. The fear is real, but we should be fearless.
Though you know, I am not too surprised that some Maltese people think that the people are Charlie Hebdo had it coming. We live in a country where we can say what we like about all politicians, but not about Mintoff. Say something bad about Mintoff and you risk getting hounded. And then everyone will tell you, “Well it’s wrong, but you shouldn’t have said that. You know what they are like”
That is called soft bigotry of low expectation. Our opinion of violent groups is so low that we take such a reaction as normal and one to be kept in mind. We shouldn’t.
I think people in Malta think Charlie Hebdo “had it coming” because they know that if they think otherwise about Hebdo they would have to abandon their views on Mintoff and you, Daphne. So they excuse the criminals in the Hebdo situation because they know they need that for themselves when someone insults their dear leaders.
Offend who you like. People will get offended. But anyone who resorts to violence loses.
“Ara li ma toffendilix lil Mintoff, hi ta, ghax Cali Ebdu iehor namillek.”
might is right.
“Ghidlu sorry ‘l-perit.”
You just reminded me of that very funny gag.
I believe that an educated person should not deliberately offend another person or group.
Mockery can take many forms/ some of which can be really offensive and hurtful and these should be avoided.
One should stand up for his beliefs, of course, but he/she is also expected to respect the beliefs of others, whether these are religious, ethnic, political or even sportive.
I remember a very wise old headmaster in England advising the students on the football field to “cheer but not jeer”.
Mockery in itself is a sort of discrimination (I am better and holier than you!) and when it is offensive and hurtful it often leads to greater division and rivalry and never achieves any good results.
[Daphne – All well and good, but what you are talking about here is good manners. Rights and freedoms are something else altogether. I am deeply offended and irritated by the sight of people handling their cutlery badly and waving it about or wrapping their arms round their plates when eating, but they have a right to do that. So I just avoid the sort of places where those kinds of people eat.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYRw-NTp_hk
It is instilling and insisting on good manners that society should be concentrating on. We cannot separate rights from duties.
It is the balance between these two that makes for a stable society. In the past we put the stress on the duties and gave little attention to the rights. The pendulum seems to have swung to the other extreme.
The incident involving you and the Mayor of Zurrieq js a case in point. You had every right to be in Rabat on that day, in that spot. His right of freedom of expression In that case did not include his right to mock, abuse and insult you.
Will you defend his right to freedom of expression? Consequently, an authority in the form of the police had to intervene.
[Daphne – No, no and no again. First off, you are confusing the status of religions and individuals under the law. Individuals are vulnerable in a way that religions are not, so the law protects them in a way that it does not protect religions. Beyond that, the status of private persons under the law is different to that of public persons. Private persons are protected at law from public mockery because our right to mock others publicly derives from the public roleof the person we are mocking. Freedom of expression does not exist for its own sake but for the primary purpose of ensuring that we are free to keep in check, even by criticism and mockery, those who take decisions which may affect our lives. There are other reasons, but that is the main one. Where there is no freedom of expression, the purpose is to protect those in power and shore up the system, and not to save – for example – actors and singers from jokes being made about them.
Secondly, Ignatius Farrugia was given a criminal conviction and a heavy fine not because he mocked me and insulted me, but because he harassed me repeatedly and in a manner that made it impossible for me to move about the street freely. He was not convicted under the defamation law, but under the harassment law. His false defence was that I write about him therefore he can harass me in the street, but the two are completely different. He is free to mock me on Facebook as long as he does not lie about me. He is not free to harass me in the street, just as I am not free to harass him in the street, even if I were from his background and thought such uncivilised behaviour entirely normal. He did think it normal – making me wonder what life is like on village streets – and was really stunned when told by the court that no, it is not OK to chase people around the street, incite a mob against them and force them to take shelter in a convent while two priests stand guard outside the door.]
Some people hold their religious feelings very dearly. They are prepared to, and thousands throughout the ages actually did, give up their lives for those beliefs.
Others have a right to disagree with those beliefs but that right does not include a right to insult the believers. The disagreement may be expressed in criticism, sarcasm, satire, banter and discussion but never in mockery or worse.
Public manifestations of faith (or lack of it), like processions, are acceptable as long as they do not carry placards insulting other religions or atheists or provoking others. That is why in Spain the march organized by the atheists, carrying such placards and with gestures mocking Christianity, was not permitted a repetition.
Society learned this slowly and after years of fruitless and bloody experiences. The Roman persecutions did not extinguish Christianity. Neither did the crusades put an end to Islam. The Reformation saw Catholics and Protestants executing each other but eventually they learned to live with each other.
Mistakes were made but society learned from those mistakes.
I do not know how anyone could “avoid the sort of place” where a Muslim terrorist actually “harms” anyone in the vicinity by blowing himself/herself up, or by emptying the magazine of a Kalashnikov rifle indiscrmiinately because he has been taught by Imams that it is his duty to “go for the neck” of unbelievers.
Table manners etc are an irrelevance.
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This is the kind of topic one would write a newspaper story about with the views of Judge Giovanni Bonello based on his experience at the European Court of Human Rights.
Edward….. you can say what you like about politicians, but not about Mintoff the traitor.
http://budapestsentinel.com/articles/billions-diverted-from-hungary-state-coffers-to-natural-gas-broker/
Off topic….
Malta’s energy deals with China a very similar to Hungary’s energy deals with Russia.
What about considering that one’s rights should not encroach on the legitimate rights of others – especially their rights to religious beliefs?
I happen to have heard the press conference myself on TV. The Pope introduced his answer by stating that religious belief and its free practice are two basic human rights.
It is within that context that the observation by Pope Francis should be understood..
How does criticizing or ridiculing beliefs encroach on the right to religious beliefs?
Criticising, or even ridiculing, religious beliefs does not affect anyone’s right to practise those beliefs. The two are separate.
We are of course permitted to criticise and ridicule other people’s opinions that are based on solid arguments and evidence, so why should beliefs that are claimed to come from divine revelation be exempt?
After all, most Catholics would criticise or ridicule Angelik Caruana and his followers, and write off his claimed apparitions as bunk, and we all have the right to do the same with other beliefs. In fact we do it all the time. I don’t see many people coming to the defence of the Moonies and the Scientologists when we make fun of them, for example.
Just because many people have believed something for a very long time does not make those beliefs more true or more worthy of special treatment.
Criticising and mocking are not the same thing. You have every right to criticise any opinion but you do not have any right to mock.
[Daphne – People most definitely have the right to mock. Private citizens are protected from mockery at law, but religions and religious leaders are not and there is no reason why they should have special status. If we can mock political leaders, political parties and political ideologies, we can mock religious leaders, religious groups and religions. Freedom of worship and freedom of association have equal status and protection under the European Convention of Human Rights.]
Being offensive about someone’s belief is not encroaching on that person’s right to believe. How could it be? How does it stop that person believing?
Remember it is a person’s choice to be offended or to disregard the matter.
Let us take ‘Life of Brian’ for instance: a film which was banned in many parts of the UK and (obviously) in Malta.
Now considered a classic which looks takes a mocking look at how religions are created and recreated, the film is now not considered offensive by most people. And yet it is the same film. So what exactly has changed?
In early Protestantism, all iconography was considered blasphemous and either destroyed or whitewashed. And yet Roman Catholics continued with this practice. Who was offending whom? And should the Catholics have continued making idolatrous figures and thereby ‘offend’ their neighbours to the north.
Offending someone or something (as opposed to instigating hatred) is a purely subjective matter where the ‘victim’ has the complete upper hand and can make or break the rules with impunity.
It is no basis for a logical argument, let alone the blasphemy law such as the one we still have on the statute books and which is still used in a haphazard manner.
My criticising your beliefs doesn’t remove your right to hold them. Ergo my right to freedom of expression might offend you or upset you but it does not prevent you from having religious beliefs.
Part of the problem with what the Pope has said, is that we have to ask if ALL religions qualify for this special protection. Roman Catholicism? Hinduism? Scientology? Satanism? Druids? Rastafarianism? If not, why not? And how do you tell one group you don’t think it should qualify without offending it?
If you loudly oppose drug reform are you offending Rastafarians by saying they shouldn’t have access to their sacrament? If you say L. Ron Hubbard was a terrible science fiction writer and his church is a scam are you offending Scientologists? Anti Polygamy or Circumcision? You may have just offended Mormons, Muslims and Jews…
In any event, how does the Pope – who heads a religion which officially regards Anglican Bishops to be not Bishops (no legitimate episcopal succession and *gasp* women) and Orthodox clergy as schismatics – qualify as someone who doesn’t ‘offend’ other religions anyway?
The Pope and the Catholic Church as a church did not accept those views and had every right to do so. But nowhere in the official documents and statements do you find any mockery.
Followers would still think he’s right.
What we should strive to limit, dear Francis, is ignorance, not freedom of expression.
Don’t you also moderate our comments?
[Daphne – Yes, for libel, because I am responsible at law. Also for gratuitous insults made anonymously to third parties. If somebody wants to insult somebody else, they can jolly well do it in their own name on their own website or elsewhere on somebody else’s who will have them. You make the classic Maltese error of thinking that the law guarantees freedom of access to all media. It does not. It guarantees freedom of expression. And with the internet, you are really free. You don’t need a printing press anymore.
I wouldn’t have anything like the equivalent of Charlie Hebdo cartoons on this website because I think they are primitive, not at all witty or funny, badly drawn and crude. But that is not the same as arguing that they should be banned from publishing them themselves.]
“Also for gratuitous insults made anonymously to third parties.”
Are you sure about that? Remember a few months ago when I called you out on one such insult to a third party?
[Daphne – I have no hard and fast rule, Mr Vella Gera. I am not averse to making the odd gratuitous insult myself. But to stick to the point of this discussion (which many people are choosing to miss), I thought THAT story of yours was awful, but I argued for your right to write it, Mark Camilleri’s right to publish it, and uploaded it in full on this website suggesting that the police arrest and charge me too, to prove that point.]
“Gratuitous insults”.
Who decides what is gratuitous or primitive?
Does the word responsibility mean anything to those who decide on such issues?
Is it an honourable badge of freedom of expression when one describes oneself as “a journal without responsibility”?
I hope that no fool comes along to say that what I write implies that an offended person has the right to use violence, still less murder, against a person who offends him.
Like the Pope, I believe that common human decency and a sense of responsibility, is a reasonable limit to freedom of speech.
‘Who decides what is gratuitous or primitive?’
Mr Saliba, I take it that you would not like any gang of self appointed busy bodies and especially not the State to take up that task.
I decide for myself, guided by the principles of common decency that I hold. Responsibility for the consequences of what may follow an action is one of these principles, and so an editor who proudly proclaims that he publishes “a journal without responsibility” is not one that I would trust with such decisions.
Still less would I defend his presumed right to say whatever he likes, irrespective of consequences. He is a “self appointed busy body” much more than an a democratically elected government.
Of course they are free to publish their cartoons, but they would certainly be inviting trouble.
I’m NOT justifying that, but that is how humanity is. Even in court, provocation is taken into consideration when delivering judgements.
I’ve just seen a Muslim (?), holding the statue of a Madonna in his hands, then throwing it to the ground and breaking it into a thousand pieces.
All in the name of freedom.
[Daphne – So, Mr Demartino, did you tell your daughter not to go out in a short skirt in case some man felt provoked to rape her?]
Yes, I would tell my daughter to respect herself and her dignity if she wants others to respect her.
[Daphne – Only somebody with a repressive mindset, whatever the religion or culture, considers a short skirt to be a sign of lack of self-respect, unless the woman in question does not have the figure for it or is over a certain age. All young women who can carry off a short skirt should wear one as often as possible outside the workplace, because when they are their mother’s age they won’t be able to without looking a fool. I wore very short skirts all the time at the appropriate age, and nobody can accuse me of not respecting myself.]
Yes, I did!
[Daphne – Well, then, I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but they probably left the clothes they wanted to wear at a friend’s house and then changed there into something a little less demure than you saw them wearing when leaving your house. It was an extremely common practice in my day and I would say that nothing has changed since. I used to store my friend’s brief bikinis, for instance.]
For argument’s sake I agree with you that she took her clothes etc etc…But I did my part. What happened later is beyond my control. Have you ever told your sons not to drive and drink? They could have obeyed you and they could have ignored your warning. But you still did your part.
[Daphne – Drinking and driving is against the law. Wearing a mini skirt is not. Drinking and driving can lead to your injury or death, or that of others, as a direct consequence of your choices, and not of the choices of others. If a woman wearing a mini skirt is assaulted, the choice to assault and cause her harm is her assailant’s, and not hers. The men who think women are not worthy of respect (and so can be assaulted) because they wear short skirts are those raised in a culture of messages like yours: that women who wear small skirts are indecent and not worthy of respect. My sons’ respect for women is not linked to whether they wear mini skirts or not. They were raised by a woman who rarely wore anything but.]
I’m afraid that you are trying to play with words, Daphne.
When I mentioned the drink and drive I was not trying to make any comparisons. I was simple trying to show, and you certainly know this, that we, parents, always warn our children about any dangers.
And I have no doubt that those who warn them about drinking and driving do so NOT because that is against the law, but because they know what the consequences can be.
[Daphne – Not really, no. The law is a crucial part of it. People old enough to drive are adults and obeying their parents doesn’t come into it. Ignoring your parents, however, does. Also, the generational gap between me and my children is pretty small, so my approach was different. The scene was pretty much the same when I was their age, and I had an insider’s view so to speak.]
Whether our advices are heeded or not is another matter.
Have a look at the skirts worn by prostitutes and you’ll realize what the message is. But, certainly, you’re clever more than enough and you can understand perfectly what I mean. And btw. I am not saying that girls wearing mini skirts are prostitutes. Far from it. But since I happen to be a male, I think I know more than you do how a male’s brain works.
[Daphne – The skirts worn by prostitutes look vulgar because they’re worn by prostitutes. You don’t know how a man’s brain works. You know how the brain of a man your generation works. That distinction existed already when I was 25. Men my age were not perverted about mini-skirts, but older men most certainly were as they were about most things to which they had been unaccustomed.]
I have to agree to disagree.
I beg to differ this time round. Fathers and mothers order their sons and daughters about because they love them and do not want them to come to any harm.
If the Pope gave Christians directives and the the Muslims had a leader who did the same, the world would be a quiter and safer place to live in.
Your attitude is exactly the reason why religions will always survive.
Because there will always be those who will want to be led, hardly ever willing to think for themselves.
And you’re wrong about your last assertion. Those who want to dominate and cause harm will always exist; had they no religion with some screwed-up “teaching” to back themselves with, they’d find something else.
I would put it differently – if ignorance did not exist, the world would be the perfect place to live in.
As a lapsed Catholic I am able to laugh my head off when I hear a good joke about Jesus Christ. If everyone did the same directives from leaders would not be necessary, and if Jesus Christ really exists I’m sure that I will be one of the first to make it to heaven, when I die.
Again you miss the point. The Pope can give as many directives to his flock as he likes, but he should not expect the whole world to agree with him.
The argument here is not whether the Pope should advise the Pope but that the Christian values espoused in his comment do not necessarily reflect contemporary secular European values
In fact they do not even reflect Jesus’s teaching 2000 years ago.
Assuming that fathers and mothers always love their children is a dangerous assumption. It would make us blind to all the various abuses that take place, a number of which can be attributed to the mother and/or father.
Assuming that a head of anything, just because he is the head, will always act in a good and just manner is just as dangerous. Power and corruption are never far apart unless there are mechanisms which keep unlimited power in check.
After all, even the Vatican has a history of imprisoning and burning, those who do not agree with it, at the stake. If we brush this off because a couple of hundred years have passed since then, let us not forget that the Vatican only admitted its mistake about Galileo 360 years after it had imprisoned him.
In spite of this, Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, in 1990 insisted that the trial was reasonable and just. He quoted an Austrian philosopher, Paul Feyerabend, saying, “At the time of Galileo, the church remained more loyal (or faithful) to reason than Galileo himself.
1,000 % in agreement with you mate.
The Pope is not the world’s parent and most of the world’s problematic people are adults who are responsible for themselves and their own actions.
You seem to have missed the point that it was misguided subservience to a religious authority that made those men pull out their guns.
Disagree, you’ve obviously never heard the vitriol that comes from the authorities of al Azhar.
The Pope’s analogy of insulting faith with insulting one’s mother is absurd and ignorant.
[Daphne – And typically Roman Catholic, I’m afraid. Special status of the mother/Madonna while father sits on the emotional backburner like Joseph in the crib and all that.]
That is because you do not know (or fail to admit) what special status religion has to some people.
[Daphne – I know exactly what special status religion has to some people. That is EXACTLY what this debate is all about. How can you possibly have missed that?]
For some people, religion is as important as mother, father, child or other relative. For certain people religion and faith is the sole reason for existence. For these people if you offend their religion, you are offending their very existence.
[Daphne – Anybody to whom religion is as important as their parents or child, or who classifies parents and child with ‘other relatives’, needs psychological care and their children could well be at risk. Hyper-religiosity is a mental disorder and usually associated with other mental disorders like extreme OCD.]
Of course Daphne, your writing clearly show your deep understanding of religion.
[Daphne – I wouldn’t say my understanding of Christianity in the European social context in history, or the spread of Islam in history and its influence on society is deep, but it is fairly sound.]
Not necessarily so. The most common offences in all languages and religions are to mothers. F’gh**x ommok in Maltese, son of a bitch in English (with Protestant tradition), figlio di puttana in Italian etc.
Absurd to those who do not understand the religion yes. I find butterfly collecting absurd, but I doubt that the collector feels the same way.
[Daphne – Still, Paul, I see no debates about whether causing offence to butterfly-collectors should be made a criminal act.]
On this we agree
You are wrong in many accounts. There is nothing like ‘radical Islam’, only radicalised Muslims. Islam is the same for all category of islamic fervour. Secondly, for many the reason not to offend is out of respect, and not because they fear. Thirdly, no, you cannot offend who you like and pretend that the other side remains still. Unwarranted offences are a violence in themselves, albeit not physical. Who offends is also a loser. For example, offend anyone with his mother, or family, and you are inviting two possible understandable reactions, one of them violent, because this is tantamount to provocation. The latter is also taken into consideration in any court of law. Of course, I am talking of personal offences, but your last sentence is very generic.
I have personal experience of this. During a football match somebody kept fouling me. At some moment I lost my temper and told him to stop playing “like an Irish cow”. He happened to be Irish and I ended up with a black eye in addition to my bruised shins.
I see this Charlie Hebdo case as a threat to freedom of expression no matter where the threat comes from and no matter what the expression is about.
We too have our ‘Charlie Hebdo’ to protect and its not about religious beliefs.
We’re back to the days when one is afraid to express in public his views if its a matter that goes against the Prime Minister’s.
The recent video clip shown in Times of Malta’s website about the spring hunting issue showed clearly that a large section of voters are now afraid to express their opinion.
Those that are for keeping the spring hunting season were very eager to state their view. But the others hid their real feelings behind the “I don’t know yet” easy answer. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had every right to express his view. But he did that knowing well enough that it will instill ‘fear’ in having the pro-abolish voters express their opinion in public.
I’m afraid (hopefully I’m wrong) that this will have a snowball effect till referendum day and many will have seconds thoughts about making their choice.
The way I see it, Joseph Muscat’s move is only bringing back the era most famous during past Labour administrations ruled by the belief of “might is right”.
Unless one does not understand the role of the special status of religion in the collective psyche of a society, which is a level very much above politics, one is bound to fall into false impressions of repression.
Blasphemy laws are present in many a western country, including modern and affluent Germany, and as far as I know, there is not any drive or movement to remove them. Probably because the Germans are no-nonsense, civilised people who know that everything has limits, even freedom.
But you cannot argue for the removal of a law from a blog or by keyboard warrioring, and pretend to be done, just because you think that it is wrong. As said in the beginning, this affects the collective psyche in a special way, and is a matter of a referendum.
Initiate it, and we will vote. Probably you would be surprised with the result. But it would be a democratic choice. If people does not what to be offended by religion, then there is no right to offend. No one will die, no one will feel repressed neither.
I question that special status of religion. You take it as fact. That is the problem. Regarding having a referendum to settle the issue of blasphemy laws, rights (including freedom of/from religion) should not be decided by vote.
It is a fact. And if a simple hunting law is going to be determined by a referendum, there is no need to say that anything effecting what this country held sacred for centuries has to be determined by a referendum.
You can have freedom from religion as much as you like, with religion and state seperation, but as long as people hold it sacred, you do not have the right to offend them with blasphemy and profanities. Respect works both ways. You can remove Religion from the State, but not from society. Otherwise you will start claiming rights which you do not have.
There are blasphemy laws even in modern, affluent and democratic and civilized Germany.
Hilarious.
You question the status.
He doesn’t.
And that, always according to you, is the problem.
Where do you get your logic, the Koran?
Oh I see, xjim Purtani. So all I need to shut you up is to say that I hold the opposite view as sacred and your views as blasphemous.
“Where do you get your logic, the Koran?”
No. Unlike you, Jozef, I’m not a man of one book.
Fallacious argument I’m afraid. Certain rights are not susceptible to referendum and the will of the majority.
For example, you can have a referendum asking whether you would like black people segregated from white, and this could be grossly in favour.
However, it still remains morally wrong and in breach of the charter on human rights.
The same for freedom of speech, the majority may (and this is debatable) not like it, but it remains an unassailable right.
A referendum about segregation can be easily played down, fortunately, on constitutional grounds. On the other hand and contrary to what many believe, there is no right to publicly ‘blaspheme’ or mock religion.
Now there is mocking and mocking. I do not want to be fussy about it. But profanities are a no go area.
Agreed. And so what if an idea or a belief is in the vast ‘collective psyche’?
It could be pure nonsense. Am I to understand that a referendum should be held about Santa Claus just because he happens to seem ‘real’ to most children?
Comparing Santa Claus with a serious Faith (I am speaking in the name of Christianity), which survived two thousand years, and in whose name even the most powerful monarchs of Europe seems fit to still be consecrated King and Queens (and no it is not just tradition), does not merit any serious reply.
Angela Merkel, perhaps the most successful leader in this decade, which led Germany into a great period, still seems it fit to say she prays before every big decision, and says it publicly.
Face it, Christianity will always have a special status in Europe. And it is protected more than you think, even in places and countries where you think it is not.
Right let me blunt about this. You believe in a book that is inconsistent and preaches both racism and intolerance.
You believe in a religion that is so inconsistent that if it were a story book publishers would reject it based on plot holes.
The book and mythology surrounding your religion are blatantly copied from various other religions of the Middle East.
You expect to dictate how people should live their life based on this nonsense, be it the oppression of women or the oppression of homosexuals, the wanton teachings on contraception or the oppression of society’s sexuality.
And yet you are presumptuous enough to expect me to not take you to task on it because you find it sacred?
Rubbish, religion is not any different to any belief and as it has an effect on society at large, it must accept that it is subject to criticism, be it prose, be it theatre, be it caricature.
Oh the puerile racist and intolerance card again. The humanistic rant. Poor people of midian….X’ghamilom msieken! And those of Sodoma, how cruel ux!! As if you can understand God and his plans with your mind. That would be the day I will become an atheist.
With all your said ‘inconsistencies and potholes’, it is still one of the best-selling books of all time. In any case, nothing will change, and it does not depend on me or you.
Criticism is one thing, mockery is another.
Actually by removing religion from the law of the land will not effect religion itself. The law is there to serve the people. Religion is there to lead the people in their lives. The laws of the land must be adhered to for the benefit for the population of the land (until a collective effort to remove or amend). Religion is choice one does and can believe or not believe at will.
[Daphne – It is law, not religion, that is there to ‘lead the people in their lives’. The reason that most people don’t kill each other is not because Moses brought down a commandment from the Mount proscribing murder, but because it is in THEIR best interests not to kill and also because they are programmed culturally (and not religiously) to view murder with horror.]
Did the Pope change his mind?
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/01/i-see-the-pope-agrees-with-me-as-franco-debono-might-say/
[Daphne – You failed to notice that these are two different topics altogether. One is about the freedom to insult religion and this above is about what makes a terrorist, and how it’s not religion.]
I can never understand the need for someone to insult another person or hurt his feelings just for the sake of exercising this “right”.
A society without limits and rules becomes an anarchy.
[Daphne – Putting religion in its proper place has been the European drive for centuries, Gahan, after centuries of abuse by religion. Mockery and jokes about religion are European society’s way of saying ‘all of that is over and now they can’t touch us’.]
I really can’t get this. Day after day people whine about having their feelings hurt; how old are we – 5?
Grow up and be adults. Yes people will mock you for your beliefs, so either ignore it or argue back in your defence. ‘I’m offended’ is an excuse for children.
Also, you claim that you are insulted, but have you ever thought that maybe what you believe in insults others?
As you have the freedom to insult others, others have the freedom to insult you.
As long as you do not instigate violence or put society in danger, there is no issue.
Daphne, can you explain how you came to such a conclusion?
[Daphne – It’s not my conclusion, zz, but fact. But to know that, you will have had to have a proper education, which you apparently did not and now you are determined to repeat the process with your own children. Had you been trained to think rationally rather than religiously, you would have been equipped to see that the mistakes made with your own education should not be repeated in the education of your children. That’s the tragedy of the irrational. And had you had a proper education, you would be well versed in the facts of European social history over the last few centuries, which got us to the point where we are now.]
Of course Daphne, you are absolutely right while everybody else who doesn’t agree with you is wrong. That’s perfectly logical and rational after all. You are right and I am wrong.
[Daphne – zz, what you have said right there is the ultimate illustration of how the mind functions when formed in religion. Fact is a matter of faith; believers are right and all others are wrong. Because I don’t have a ‘faith’ mindset, that’s not how I see things. I assess whether an argument is right or wrong based on a thorough assembly of the available facts, allowing for facts which might be missing, and the assessment of those facts and information. And if I discover that my assessment has been wrong or faulty, I adjust my view immediately.]
Are you implying that people with deep religious feelings and beliefs are badly educated?
Surely, your education has shown you that many great men in every sphere of life had this deep and strong religious belief. Additionally, they also had, as their religion taught them, a great respect for others of different beliefs.
[Daphne – No, I did not say that religious people are badly educated, but something else entirely: that in Malta people are trained from early childhood not to question dogma. This literally ‘shapes’ the mind permanently, with the result that even intelligent people in adulthood are unable to process information properly and rationally, and are prone to logic-defying reasoning. They can be as educated as you please, but they still have trouble assessing information and being rational in discourse and logical in arguments. The reason is that they have been trained over a lifetime to accept the irrational and never to question it.]
Yet clearly “all of that” is not over, after all. If it were there would be no fanatics in our midst. Different holy book, the same behaviour, repeated over the centuries across all frontiers.
Europe as truly secular is a fantasy, at least not while humans still roam the earth. History tells us (before and after Constitutions were written) that religions are not so much eradicated from European countries but prone to change, or dominated and reduced in influence by stronger religious opponents.
Adjustment and tolerance in Europe needs to be addressed by those who think they are entirely free (just because the law tells them it is the case) and those who are conditioned by their religious beliefs, are born and bred nationals of European nations and are capable or erratic behaviour.
The Charlie Hebdo tragedy proves a ‘secular’ country waving the law in people’s faces doesn’t stop people getting killed. In Europe. In 2015.
In connection with the topic being discussed, Rete 4 is showing the film Chocolat on Tuesday at 9:15pm.
As Daphne points out, the main reason why Europeans don’t kill each other over trans substantiation, or making the sign of the cross with 2 rather than 3 fingers – is because Voltaire and the scholars of the Enlightenment mocked religion to the point where such debates became ridiculous.
The generation who grew up post-Enlightenment still saw religion as important, but it was no longer off limits.
This is the era that saw intra-Christian fighting over doctrinal issues largely fade away – the Crimean War and Ireland post-1900 being exceptions – but in both cases, exceptions heavily tinged with ethnic nationalism.
Mocking religion transformed Europe from the bloodbath of the Inquisition, Counter-reformation, Fronde etc into something much closer to the modern world. Don’t deny Islam the opportunity to experience the same evolution.
Religion is a seller’s dream. Which other product/idea can one sell for which payment cannot be checked, sampled, compared or returned or even verified to exist? There is no more elusive payment than heaven. No one has complained so far. Did everyone get his virgins or his place on the right? One deals with the agent, the worldly leader, but can never complain with the boss.
The payment being asked for, by some religions for a place in heaven, is not small; financial contributions, suicide by bomb, death by cop/soldier, unpaid work, abduction of hostages, killing even of children etc, etc.
Religions should be open to criticism, not least of all because the very nature of religion is perfect for a scammer to exploit followers, protection breeds unchecked corruption.
Public criticism, pressure and scrutiny as well as laws of the land based on human rights help weed out manipulators.
Religion should not only be accountable to its deity but also to society.
It is all a question of tolerance.
Fanaticism in any form is the exact opposite of tolerance.
And all this talk about limit of expression is the result of intolerance or fear of fundamentalist militants.
And these fanatics will not stop because we fear their extremism, or that we self impose limits on expressing ourselves.
I always found that fanaticism and tolerance converge and become one.
A typical example is The Netherlands’ idea that everyone should be free and then the Dutch inability to understand that some prefer to live by their religious beliefs/values and be bound by such beliefs.
The Dutch liberal ideas become intolerant in themselves of anything that is not perceived to be equally liberal.
Being secular does not equate to “live and let live”.
That is a total misunderstanding of Dutch policies.
The Dutch in fact were famous for ‘pillarization’ – creating parallel societies where everyone could live according to their own rules. This meant, primarily that institutions for Catholics, Protestants and Secularists were funded on an equal basis, so that everyone who wanted to could rely on a Catholic/Secular/Protestant School, etc. Its why there is still no unified Dutch national Broadcaster – but an amalgamation of Protestant, Catholic and ‘Liberal’ Organisations which divvy up funding and co-operate.
To make this work, the Dutch adopted a policy of abolishing rules which would make it impossible for any of the pillars to function (Hence yes to Gay marriage – which doesn’t hurt anyone, but is important for the Liberal/secular pillar) At the same time, there are still communities in the Bijbelsgordel where everyone wears black and nobody watches TV on Sunday.
Secular-ish.
So according to liberal standards, the gratuitous insulting of a religion is OK and ‘liberal’.
[Daphne – It’s got nothing to do with ‘liberal standards’. It has to do with the fact that Europe is a secular society where, because of its bloody (I mean that literally not as an expletive) history with religion, secularism is a guarantee and safeguard on individual freedom and religious abuse. And that is quite apart from the European Convention on Human Rights which enshrines the right to freedom of worship and the right to freedom of expression. Your mistake is to put religion into a separate category of offence.]
Mind, I’m not saying ‘criticism’ here or, the poking of harmless fun, but hitting at the most sacred for such a religion (even if the facts by the critic are correct), is wrong, in my opinion.
And here, I’m not putting religion and politicians/public persons within the same formula. On the contrary, I think that there is not enough satire and poking fun of politicians/public persons, especially in Malta.
Why is “hitting at the most sacred” wrong while “poking harmless fun at religion” right? Who is to decide which topic is legitimate and which sacred?
I have every right, for example, to subscribe to the opinion that Jesus Christ never existed and that Christianity was born from ideals of a group of people rather than a single person (there are academic opinions backing this). Isn’t Christ the “most sacred” of Christianity?
The world is round and millions of years old. This does not preclude many Christians from believing and arguing strongly in favour of the 6000 year old earth theory. That opinion hits me hard because it contradicts what I hold most sacred – science. Shall we ban these people from expressing their opinion.
In keeping with the Koran, Muslims believe that salt and sea water do not mix. What do we do here given river deltas and estuaries?
And, most importantly, which religion is the one and true faith (if such thing does actually exist)? On what criteria besides blind and (Pavlovian) conditioned belief does a religion establish itself as the one and true faith? On revelation? If I go around in the street saying that an angel descended from heaven and proclaimed me as the true Messiah, I’d be locked up. Jesus wasn’t. And neither was Mohammed. What is the difference? On what basis do we believe them and not those running around in the streets making similar proclamations?
Let’s start by accepting the fact that there are nut jobs everywhere and there will always be nut jobs. Extremists will clinch at any straw to make their voices heard. In the 1970s it was all against capitalism. The Red Brigade wreaked havoc in Italy. So did Baader Meinhof.
We have the Ku Klux Klan, the Christian fundamentalists in the USA (these chaps are a very serious problem even though we never hear of them in the news), and the Islamic fundamentalists.
Religion and God are very convenient tools that appeal to human emotion, mortality, and uncertainty about the future. Why do you think all religions appeal to our mortality, fears, and the unknown?
The issue whether we should allow the sane people to voice their opinion over the noise of the insane for the sake of not offending the latter is a no brainer. Hell yeah! Otherwise Enlightenment could have just been about electricity. It’s not about being liberal (go ahead and define that too please). It’s about thinking critically and rationally engaging with a particular subject.
Being offensive is not freedom of expression. It’s an abuse of freedom of expression.
Who is offensive in his language or in his manners show lack of integrity, lack of argument and is a coward.
And the reason why is easy: one needn’t resort to offensive manners to win an argument. One hides behinds offensive speak to bully and cower other people. Like the school bully, one resorts to offence to intimidate others, to display physical prowess.
Whatever is expressed publicly should be open to ridicule. And who decides what is offensive? What if, hypothetically, I found all that you write offensive? Would you stop writing?
If you explained how and where I offended you I will apologise for my writing. I will also try to explain why I have written what I have and once again I will apologise for the offence rendered.
Would you apologise if you render offence to others?
But why do you feel the need to ridicule anything or anybody? Public or not? Is it some kind of megalomania which impels one to ridicule others?
Any depiction of the prophet is strictly prohibited according to the Quran. A cartoon which also ridicules and not only shows an image of Mohammed is possibly the worst insult and/or provocation to any practising Muslim worldwide and this is a fact whether we like it or not.
If one wants to call the persistent and unrestrained publication of these cartoons, which in my opinion are very poorly executed and downright crass, freedom of expression let them do so, to each his own.
Hypothetically, and technically, your answer to zz is nothing but spin. Everyone and his dog can say “ah, but people can hide behind the excuse of getting ‘offended'”, when in truth, we can all recognize a real offence as opposed to a pretended one. Gratuitous offence is uncalled for under any circumstance, more so when such an offence is made to create attention (and possibly financial gain).
[Daphne – ‘Gratuitous offence’: I find that particular conjunction of adjective and noun fascinating. Gratuitous offence as distinct from what, exactly? Non-gratuitous offence?]
Liberal, nobody is contesting your right to write.
What is wrong is to write with an intent to hurt or defame others unnecessarily.
One can make the same point without resorting to intentionally offending.
[Daphne – Yes, Paul, but the law shouldn’t come into it. For the last few years, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, who has a seat in the cabinet of government, has been suing me for calling him a clown. I get dragged to court on a regular basis for one hearing after another, which he keeps dragging out to cause me maximum harassment, because I called him a clown. Is this the democratic environment you wish to live in? Because I see some very serious problems with this kind of situation, and they’re not due to the fact that I am inconvenienced – though whether the court rules in his favour or mine, I will still have been put through a level of harassment that far eclipses any minor annoyance that he might have felt at being called a clown.]
The problem is that those who have less self control want to reframe the right to express oneself with the right to offend others intentionally. In my book, these persons are cowards. Is it not the reason that there is a law that protects others from libel?
You see, to express one’s views, without resorting to all manner of irrelevant issues designed to hurt others, is most tempting. Sadly, many take this road using freedom of expression as their shield.
Liberal, Islam is offended at everything. Or better, it finds us offensive.
Daphne, what did you gain by calling him a clown??
[Daphne – You are so MALTESE, Paul: things must be done only for gain. What do you gain from your ‘pro-life’ campaigns? Money? Power over others? A good feeling? Self-respect? The belief that you’re saving lives? I hope you’re not going it because you feel you’re gaining anything. That wouldn’t be altruistic, would it. Your question is absurd. You and I are from different planets. I know that, which is why I don’t even bother to engage with you on the subject of the status of women any longer. You would be content in an Amish village. I most certainly would not. Just accept it. We both have our quirks, the difference between us being that my quirks do not involve seeking control over others, but rather the opposite.]
You are far more gifted and surely able to express your views about the man in a better way? On the other hand, the fact that you are being sued for this alone, if that is the case, sounds like a lot of clowning about to me, but why go here at all ? You are far more gifted than this.
[Daphne – Do you see what you’re doing there? This is exactly why I and so many other women find you utterly insufferable. ‘You are more gifted than this’ says the patronising man to the child-woman aged 50 whose children are about to hit 30. You are in no position to recognise whether I am gifted or not. And the ability to do what I do is not a ‘gift’. It is the result of how a particular genetic package has reacted to circumstance of time, place and nurture. This might be hard for a religious person to accept, but it is a fact.]
“Would you apologise if you render offence to others?”
Depends on the offence. Some people simply need to grow up.
“Liberal, Islam is offended at everything. Or better, it finds us offensive”.
Islam is not a person. It cannot take offence at anything.
You clearly don’t know what the very concept of freedom of expression entails.
Yes, it gives people the right to say stuff that’s offensive, otherwise it doesn’t mean anything.
It is not about winning arguments.
Whether those intentionally being offensive have a right to be taken seriously or listened to is another issue altogether.
Perverse are those who feel offended by the mockery of their imaginary gods, holy men and beliefs – let them suffer their mental masochism.
Actually it is the mockery of one’s beliefs and not the mockery of imaginary entities. What is imaginary to you might be real to others.
Does freedom of belief stops at your door? You are free to believe whatever you want so why can’t others believe what they want without arousing your mockery?
[Daphne – Because others are free to mock, zz, just as they are free to believe. And might I add that those whose beliefs are threatened by mockery are not secure in their beliefs.]
Mockery oppresses others, believe does not.
You cannot compare believe and mockery because the two are opposing actions. One is inward and the other is outward. It’s like saying that one is free to give a punch as much as one is free to receive a punch.
[Daphne – Mockery does not oppress others. It’s mockery, not coercion. Your comparisons don’t make sense. You are the perfect example of somebody brought up in an irrational belief system who seeks to apply that form of irrational thought even outside his belief system and wonders why it fails. And please, please stop writing ‘believe’ where you mean ‘belief’. You’re not even picking up on the fact that I have been correcting it each time and still you keep doing it.]
I fail to see how it is possible to believe in a God or Allah or whatever, who is so great, powerful, all knowing etc. and then think that he/she would be insulted by a cartoon.
The same goes for a prophet. Why do people need a god and then insist on giving him/her the qualities and weaknesses and sense of vengeance just like a human?
Would a Christian not think that, if this were the case, there should be some form of retribution from a God, his Son, his Son’s Mother, etc. considering the innovative and colourful mentioning of their names in Malta?
Why would an Islamic extremist think that his Allah would need a mere mortal to go to stop others from depicting his prophet’s image?
May I then mock Michael Camilleri’s chip, the size of a mosque, on his shoulder?
Of course beliefs are imaginary, Camilleri – that’s why you’re challenged and must avoid masochism in gratuitous offence.
Because they are a primitive inward looking people from a collectivist culture, antithetical to individuality, who think that they automatically deserve to be respected and feared for there to be peace and good will.
Thank you Daphne for correcting my mistakes. Of course I’m a product of the wrong education so I don’t know my grammar like you who had the best education in Malta.
[Daphne – Nobody taught me the distinction between belief and believe, zz. I taught myself by reading. And that level of touchiness and heavy sarcasm is so very Maltese and linked to insecurity and people who start out in debates and arguments from a position of absolute certainty of the Great Truths with which they have been brainwashed by the culture in which they grew up, which they have never questioned or had challenged, and with which they then find themselves ill-equipped in a debate outside the duttrina class, the family kitchen or their immediate circle of like-minded associated. If people who challenge your long-held notions get your back up, you need to look at why that’s happening.]
Hear, hear.
When the Pope says that there are limits to freedom of expression he is speaking from a spiritual point of view in that offending people is intrinsically wrong.
Having said that, it was also wrong to drum up an Inquisition to drown it. All abuse is wrong.
Offending people and being critical is not the same thing; a distinction should also be made between private citizens and public figures.
Public figures are not necessarily limited to politicians and anyone deemed a public figure has opened him or herself up to criticism.
Therefore the Pope is right when he says that there are limits to freedom of expression, where we may not fully agree is where those markers are to be placed.
As the late Christopher Hitchens said, once you draw a line it will keep moving. No, the Pope is not right at all. People should put their foot down when it comes to threats and the direct incitement of violence, nothing else.
The Pope is a spiritual leader. Spiritually he is very correct. It is wrong to hurt others in word or in deed. He limited that to religions because that is the context of the moment.
You, on the other hand, have every right to follow or otherwise. It would be wrong to restrict that freedom particularly because imposing on others usually results in Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Anyone with children knows that.
If he is a spiritual leader then he should stick to discussing ecumenical matters and not make political statements like this one.
However you also know that the Pope isn’t just a spiritual leader but also a political one and the head of a state as well.
The situation in Malta is worse than most people want to admit.
The reality is that religion is fed in babies’ bottle not allowing children to think and challenge what they are taught.
it is the beginning of extremism. In my opinion, what makes young people become extremist and also terrorists (when taken to the extreme) is the fact that they are fed a religion and not taught to question it.
Formal education is not a place where religion should be taught. Formal education should be the place where we should expose our children to what is happening in the world, discuss it, think about it and challenge it.
Formal education should be the place where we drive our children to become responsible citizens who can contribute to the challenges of life, to the challenges the country is facing in any way.
Formal education should be the place that teases the curiosity of children, pushing them to look at what is happening around them, the place where our children learn values of tolerance, where we recognise the values of knowledge and culture out of the curriculum and where free thinking is rewarded and not punished.
I would be very curious to know, today, how many teachers have spoken about freedom of expression in their class after what happened in France last week.
One wants to educate one’s children in what one believes is right. One wants to pass on values to one’s children as to what one believes is right.
So what is wrong if one believes that religious values and beliefs are right and therefore wants to pass them on the his/her children?
[Daphne – Because the far, far more important VALUES you should be passing on to your children are the ability to think analytically, which is directly challenged by the unquestioning acceptance of faith lessons, and that right and wrong and being a good and decent person have NOTHING to do with religion. Many Maltese people are so very bad and amoral precisely because right and wrong was taught to them in the context of religion. Once they ditched their religion, they had no qualms about doing wrong. The main thing was getting away with it. You have no idea how badly the discipline of not questioning in childhood affects (damages) a person’s thinking skills on a permanent basis. That is why you get so many people in this country who are clearly intelligent but who have huge ‘blanks’ in their ability to think rationally.]
Why is it that makes your “formal education” better or more important then religious education? Of course you are free to educate your children how you want and as a matter of fact, you are free to ask school authorities not to impart religious values to your children. But why do you want to influence how other educate their children?
[Daphne – Yes, you are free to teach your children religion and that is enshrined as a human right. But sensible parents prioritise other things and know that good people are not necessarily made in religion while very many bad people are. Do you want your children to be good and rational, or do you want them to be religious? No doubt, you want them to be all three, but too much emphasis on the third very often affects the first two negatively.]
The far, far more important VALUES I want to pass to my children is how to live a life in respect of themselves and others. It is obvious that you value analytic thinking more then everything else. That is you prerogative and I respect it.
[Daphne – Analytical thought is the basis for everything else, zz, including respecting yourself and respecting those who deserve respect (you don’t have to respect everyone, and a sensible person does not).]
Religion is not be a rule book of right and wrong. Religion is a way of living life. Religion is not a fixed set of lessons but a manner of living.
If one has no qualms to do wrong when one ditches religion, then one had no idea of the religion they pertained to in the first place.
[Daphne – ‘Religion is not a fixed set of lessons’. If the religion is one of the three of The Book, then yes, it is a fixed set of lessons with no scope for personal interpretation.]
You view religion as a quality and as a characteristic. I view religion as a tool which aides one to be good.
[Daphne – Quality and characteristic? Where did you get that and what does it even mean. I view religion exactly as what it is: a religion. If you need religion to keep you on the straight and narrow – well, each to his own. I need an instruction manual to operate the dishwasher, so I can understand.]
I will not argue the “rational/religion” argument because here is not the place.
One of the most intelligent Maltese persons, who died a few years ago, was also a clergyman. Other prominent intellectuals are also practising believers.
[Daphne – Many intelligent people are unable to process information rationally because they have been handicapped deliberately from childhood in this respect, David. Intelligence and irrational thinking are not mutually exclusive. You will find that the brightest priests with the best analytical skills are those most plagued by doubts. But then this applies to all truly intelligent people whatever their position in life. Perception and insight are a plague if not accompanied by total selfishness and indifference.]
I beg to differ with you, Daphne. Are you telling me to impart secular and liberal thoughts to my children as against or rather give more importance to them than the sound values of my Catholic Faith?
[Daphne – ‘Secular and liberal’ is not a perversion, Mrs/Mr Vella, though you make it sound like one. And you don’t impart thoughts to your children. They will always have their own, unless you do a really good job of destroying their spirit and turning them into extensions of yourself. Yes, of course you should give more importance to secular, liberal values than you do to religious teaching. Many people grow up to ditch religion, so if you don’t teach your children sound values in the secular context, the likelihood is that they will grow up, ditch what you taught them about Catholic values when they ditch Catholicism, and wind up some of those many, many amoral people who think, yippee, everything that is legal is now permissible and even a great deal of what is illegal as long as they don’t get caught. What is your priority here – that they’re Catholic or that they’re not amoral jerks and a-holes?]
Find me one negative aspect of what Jesus said; His teachings are far above all secular and liberal thinking, which unfortunately has turned us away from God. You can see the result of this, without God and His teachings being the foundation of our life, chaos reigns supreme, as is happening now.
[Daphne – Chaos does not reign supreme. Reading social history will console you that never in its history has European society been better ordered than it is today. Why, only 27 years ago half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain. Your fundamental error is that Christianity is a requirement for decency. It is not. When Christ taught decency, he wasn’t yet a religion. He was a human being and a popular leader. His views were by definition not religious views but those of a decent person. Anybody can have those views and it doesn’t necessarily make them a Christian.]
What a load of rubbish. Your own, severely anti-Catholic, prejudice clouds your reasoning to the point where you don’t even make sense any more.
[Daphne – I am not anti-Catholic. I think it is perfectly obvious from what I write that I respect freedom of worship and that I am indifferent to religion, taking notice only when it seeks to control the lives of those who do not willingly subscribe to it – for example, by seeking to influence, shape or interfere with the law of the land. I think you will find that anti-Catholic people tend to be either those raised in a society that was, for historical reasons, anti-Catholic (does not apply in my case) or those who were given a very stringent and oppressive Catholic upbringing (does not apply either). Roman Catholicism doesn’t bother me in adulthood because nobody bothered me with it while I was growing up.]
You talk about VALUES as if these were some abstract entity plucked out of the secular air, when the reality is that you can’t put a finger on one single genuine value that does not have its roots in the teachings of Christ.
[Daphne – There goes another person who gets himself tangled up in what came first, chicken and egg, cause and effect. If good values came out of Christianity, Obsidian, there would be no good people outside what was once Christendom. Christianity didn’t invent goodness and decency. It championed them. And for the greater part of the 2,000 years of its history, it did anything but. And I’m afraid you don’t know your Christianity. The basic tenet of Christianity is ‘do as thou would be done by’ (which nobody does anyway). I imagine you are one of those who confuse the 10 commandments which Moses brought down from the Mount with the principles of Christianity. They are anything but. They are in the Old Testament and are common to Judaism and to Islam too.]
What you glibly pass off as some sort of post-Christian enlightenment is nothing more than a dusting-off of the unlimited abuse and corruption of Christianity that had accumulated over the ages and an overdue reversion to the true source of all that makes for a decent human being.
[Daphne – Your arguments are illogical. I did not say that religious people can’t be good or decent. I said that it is not necessary to be religious to be good and decent, and that parents should teach their children how to be good and decent outside the remit of religion. That way they know that their children will not grow up to discard goodness and decency if and when they discard their religion, as so often happens and as is so very visible all around us in Malta. Why are so many Maltese people amoral? Because they were taught morality only in the context of a religion which they grew up to discard. Outside religion, there are no morals for people brought up that way. When people are brought up to extract their morality only from religion, they will think only in terms of ‘sins’. So absolutely dreadful public behaviour like, for example, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s and Franco Debono’s is in their view not bad or immoral because they can’t fit it into any particular ‘sin’ they were taught. People raised with a sense of right and wrong in a secular context will, however, immediately understand it to be profoundly bad.]
The only accomplishment of anti-religionists and secularists was a reaction to the decay of Christianity and a rebellion against all the foulness that was perpetrated in its name.
The trouble is that, having achieved something of what they set out to accomplish (mostly, it must be said, for their own personal ends and not nearly as much out of the sense of humanity that they would have us believe) they then decided that it was they themselves who had created these values in the first place.
They set themselves up as self-appointed arbiters and dispensers of all that is right. The result is that we now live in an age where the God of Christianity has been replaced by an idolatry of the perverse. Truly, plus ca change.
[Daphne – Again you are confusing issues. The absence of a religious education does not of necessity leave a moral vacuum. It is not a question of there being nothing to teach about morality if it is not taught through religion. Those who idolise the perverse do so because they were 1. raised in a moral vacuum in which they were taught nothing about goodness and decency, or 2. raised to see goodness and decency as being inextricable from religion, so ditching the lot when they grew up to ditch religion. I have a very acute sense of right and wrong, and a very active conscience, and I can assure you that none of that was acquired through religious instruction. I am shocked at and disturbed by things about which my no-morality-outside-religion acquaintances are perfectly blase, like the absolutely manifest plotting, scheming, conniving and all’s-fair-in-love-and-war approach to cheating capriciously and for fun.]
Groan.
Daphne, intelligence is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom does indeed come with experience but despite this, to many intelligent persons, wisdom is out of their reach because of their pride.
[Daphne – Never mistake caution for wisdom, and know that some people actively choose to be what others consider unwise precisely because their intelligence leaves them consistently hyper-aware of the fact of their own mortality. In other words – you get no second go on the roundabout so forget what others want you to do and what other people think of you. Caution (for which read, fear) mistaken for wisdom is one of the main reasons Maltese society has a higher than average number of people addicted to legal drugs like diazepam, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills and one of the highest rates in Europe of addiction to illegal drugs like heroin.]
And the irony of all these “we must not offend people’s belief”?
The fact that Jesus was crucified for doing exactly that: blaspheming and offending the priesthood.
@ Chris
I’ll be having a glass of wine shortly, Chris, and I’ll be enjoying a personal toast to you, Daphne, Baxxter and a couple of others here.
The “irony” of it all: precisely.
Great debate on the topic by Intelligence Squared US:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/545-freedom-of-expression-must-include-the-license-to-offend
The latest Intelligence Squared US podcast was an 11 minute retrospective, with highlights from the original debate, but the full debate is worth the time.
Yes. One of the crusades of the Catholic Church was against science itself. It systematically persecuted scientists inadvertently kicking off the changes that led to the Enlightenment and the secularisation of society.
Kevin, get over it mate. In case you have not noticed, we are in the year 2015.
Paul, in the year 2015 the Church and most of its followers are still coming to grips with Darwin. Some Christian fundamentalists demand that evolutionary theory is not taught at school.
What are they afraid of? Science mere provides an explanation without appealing to the supernatural. While this may not satisfy believers, this does not give the right to persecuting and silencing scientists.
The Church is far from enlightened on these issues. And two issues make its position more precarious. First, Christian fundamentalists (Opus Dei et Al) and the Pope’s claim about curbing the freedom of expression. (Like you I subscribe to a responsible freedom of expression).
We all have a right to our faith and to expressing that value system. We also are bound to tolerance and to non violence.
You will specify. Please.
No, many scientists were believers. Many were not only Catholics but also churchmen, including many Jesuits.
One of the greatest scientists was Blaise Pascal know as a mathematical genius and a profound theologian.
[Daphne – Blaise Pascal lived in the 17th century, David. His alternative to professed Catholicism was being tortured and killed or imprisoned for a very long time, like others before him.]
That many scientists were priests is purely due to something else entirely. In pre 1850s England, parsons and vicars held incredibly lucrative posts.
They were very well off comparatively speaking and had to give very little in return. Contrary to popular belief, church attendance was miserable back then, and many didn’t even write their own sermons, they just bought a whole book of them.
You did however need to have a degree to get in, so a lot of bright people who were secure financially ended up with a lot of free time on their hands.
Just to name a few: Thomas Bayes, Octavius Pickard, George Bayldon, Jack Russell, William Greenwell, Gilbert White, John Mackenzie and many countless others.
[Daphne – Yes, and more specifically, to be a scientist you first had to have an education, and almost nobody did before the mid-20th century, clerics being an exception.]
Your assertion about Blaise Pascal’s alternative is not the truth.
You should be more honest with the truth, because some people here take what you says as a reality.
Blaise Pascal had a voluntary conversion. He was raised a Catholic, but he did not care much. In fact, before the conversion, he lived an earthly life. He lived in France, where there was no inquisition.
Read a bit about it.
Other great scientists who were devout Christian (as opposed to forced) believers: Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler (Swiss), Thomas Boyle.
I’m left wondering whether you wished to mention any other.
That was exactly what I thought when I saw that article. The Pope is surely not wearing a “je suis Charlie” T-shirt.
The blasphemy law in Malta should go, along with the “official religion” article in the constitution. They are both anachronisms and have no place in a modern secular society.
Here`s hoping that none of the above will come true.
Really? Why should we not get rid of the’official religion’ and blasphemy laws?
Because a Constitution without a religion stops being a constitution?
Because you think that Catholics need to be more represented in the constitution then any other group of people?
Because if there is no blasphemy law the Gods will not be protected (incidentally a law which is more often then not disregarded until its suits somebody’s desperate schemes).
And if we are to keep the blasphemy law, should we therefore arrest a man with a tattoo of Buddha or Mohammed, both of which are considered blasphemous in different countries?
I would never have expected the Pope to wear a ‘je suis Charlie’ T-shirt and I respect that, but his statements weren’t fitting either.
Pope John Paul’s experience of the war and Cold War Europe held him in better stead to issue more appropriate and poignant statements in these situations.
As much as I agree with revolutionizing the Vatican, Pope Francis needed to heed past advisers.
I think there will always be some form of bounderies and thresholds, though bombing and killing in retaliation are never the solution.
There are civil and criminal remedies for transgression of law boundaries. If freedom of expression means that one can lie, incite racial hatred etc then we should not have had Norman Lowell jailed to give one example.
“If freedom of expression means that one can lie, incite racial hatred etc…”
I don’t think anybody is saying that.
Greatly said, and what many are failing to understand, contradicting themselves in the process. You can see comments from same person, arguing fervently for the freedom to offend, than in another comment lambast a station for giving some space to Nigel Farage.
Simply said, arguing for limitless freedom of expression, will also means that one can freely say ‘Blacks out’ or ‘Muslims out’ with fear of prosecution.
In a civilized society there will always be legal sanctions with some offences. One should not take the law in his hands. Any other form of retaliation has to be also proportionate.
Who is saying that freedom of expression means lying or inciting racial hatred rather than agreeing to disagree and freedom to criticize the beliefs of others, whether they are scientific, economic, religious etc? Everyone has a right to defend his/her opinion and there are the law courts to settle disputes for those who feel wronged.
That is why those who are found guilty of inciting racial hatred, in the democratic world, are jailed or fined not shot by any Tom, Dick or Harry. The Charlie Hebdo affair is being discussed because the judge, jury and executioners were self appointed, and conveniently chose to interpret whether a person who is dead is insulted or not AND decide on the punishment themselves.
If a group of Muslims had taken Charlie Hebdo to court, as they have already done (and lost), no one would have complained in this manner.
In fact I for one think that he shouldn’t have been jailed. That was a travesty and it only served to make him more influential but then I am not a ‘Dokter’ with an LLD so what would I know?
Religion is sometimes like trying to pack away a large quilt into a small hermetically sealed bag, instead of getting a larger more modern bag where it will sit comfortably and have the air vented out post insertion.
Some bags just don’t fit any more and the zips are torn from overuse, the handles broken and the opening uncloseable, but we tend to want to stick with the old bag, because that’s the one we have, the one we used last year, the one we used when we got the place, the one the quilt came in etc.
It would make all the difference, actually to get that new bag, in as far as the quilt is important to its owner and to other quilt owners – to afford them a similar adjustment to modernity, but it wouldn’t effect world affairs because the larger population would move on irrespective of the choice made. But at some level yes, our comfort would be at stake – if we even use quilts at all.
The Pope should have taken a look at it from more of a distance. The commandments have been taken too literally. Ignorance is more offensive than tempered legal freedoms, as are all the commandment-correct statements currently being made in God’s name.
What is taken in vain is very relative. The Pope is referring to a particular size of quilt cover.
In the Roman Catholic context (very similar to Indian religions by the way), even God offended when necessary: otherwise Mary would never have been pregnant with someone else’s baby.
Joseph was offended.
Society at the time was offended.
Jesus dealt with it.
Disagreements go hand in hand with change.
Going weak at the knees at the moment when change could happen is not good.
Change should first take the areas of agreement and work with those for rapprochement. The areas of disagreement should be tackled later.
Perhaps with this provocation, the Pope has already made an early move to the “later” phase, so as not to lose the momentum on the areas of agreement manifested so extraordinarily on Sunday 11th January, 2015, where fundamental truths rose above differences of religion.
Meanwhile, the government has failed once again to table the detailed agreements with Shanghai Electric in Parliament. It just tabled the Memorandum of Understanding which was published in the media earlier.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-01-16/local-news/Enemalta-document-tabled-in-parliament-on-Wednesday-is-copy-of-agreement-given-to-media-last-month-6736128831
‘It is tolerant and free because it is secular’.
Cuba is secular, as is North Korea. Nazi Germany was secular and so was Stalinist Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries, their vassal states – all secular.
[Daphne – Really, how very trying. That’s not secularism. That’s totalitarianism. Secularism does not mean the wiping out of religion and a ban on its existence. Totalitarianism is an ideology just like religion is an ideology. Totalitarian states operate in much the same way that religious states do: imposition of an absolutist ideology through fear and extreme control.]
I agree that the Pope’s comments were simplistic (for mass consumption) and submissive to intolerance, in this case of the terrorists. I do not agree with him at all.
However, equating secularism with tolerance and freedom is just plain incorrect. Actually, although — as you know — Catholicism and varying denominations of Christianity have been used and abused as vehicles of power, distorting and corrupting the faith, that does not mean that Christianity stymies freedom of speech.
In fact I would say that it promotes quite the opposite, one reason most dictatorships make it their first goal to set about destroying the Church or making sure it gets state approval, such as happens in China to this day. China has the state-approved Church and the underground catacomb-style Church recognised by Rome.
[Daphne – It’s late and I’m tired, so do forgive me if I sound like I’m losing patience here. There is only one reason why totalitarian states eliminate religion: whatever the religion, it is a rival ideology and, as such, a source of rival political power. Religions are banned for the same reason that all political parties but the one in power are banned. It has nothing to do with Christianity in particular. It just so happened that Christianity was the religion of the people locked in by Communist Europe, the Soviet Union and Cuba.]
One aspect of Catholicism is ‘free will’, a fundamental belief that people can choose what to do and are responsible for their own actions. That this was ignored by many a Church leader is another matter entirely.
Ask the Gozitans
The Pope tells us to expect a punch if we speak our minds, we reply by saying “bring it on! “
I disagree with you, Daphne. To express one’s opinion clearly does not necessarily require one to intentionally offend or defame another.
[Daphne – Paul, for heaven’s sake stop confusing manners with rights. You should know better than that. Not offending somebody is a matter of good manners. Rights simply do not enter the equation. Killing somebody is another matter, because they have the right to life. They have no right not to be offended. However, you may think it best not to cause offence, and so choose not to do so.]
It just takes more self control and a better communicator to express all they want in a manner that does not purposely, intentionally and directly offend another.
This all that the Pope has said. You automatically see this as a threat only because your style of writing can often be intentionally offensive. Freedom to express does not mean freedom to insult, defame or cause calumny.
[Daphne – There you are wrong. Individuals can sue for damages if they are defamed or lied about in a way that causes them quantifiable harm. That is because they have suffered quantifiable, real damages (the court may decide otherwise). But the damage has to be to them PERSONALLY. The fact that somebody jokes about your religion does not give you a right to sue for damages. It can’t.]
Killing others is never acceptable. The difference between us on this issue is that I believe that a person had the right to life regardless of its age, its physical condition, its place of residence, stage of development and whether U.S. was conceived accidentally or whatever.
There us no greater contradiction to my mind than when one claims to be in favour of freedom of expression and choice and so on, yet they are so ready to snuff out the right to life of the unborn and conversely, the right of the latter to an opinion about their destiny.
[Daphne – No, Paul. You are wrong again. I believe that all persons have the right to life and I would believe that even if it were neither the law nor a fundamental and inalienable human right. The difference between us is that you think personhood begins at the moment of conception and I do not because, as a rational person, I know that a person is a requirement of personhood and there is no person there 24 hours after intercourse. The law, even in Malta, is with me on this: to be registered as a person, you first have to be born. The unborn are not considered persons, are not registered and are not counted in a census. However, I – unlike the law – consider personhood to begin when there is a recognisable person, which point occurs quite a while before birth. And as it happens, abortion laws practically everywhere recognise this too, which is why late term abortion is banned.]
So Daphne, when would you say that ‘personhood’ starts? And if you state a specific week in pregnancy, how did you arrive at that conclusion? Would you be comfortable aborting a foetus a week or a day or an hour before the stated week? If you say that a foetus is a person once it’s recognizable as a human, would you say that people born without limbs etc are not people?
[Daphne – Limbs have nothing to do with personhood. I think I have made it amply clear that this is not a black and white issue to me and it is one of the few on which I refuse to make categorical statements and have very little patience with those who do. The one thing on which I am absolutely clear in my mind is that those who equate taking the morning-after pill with aborting a foetus at six months should have their heads examined or meditate deeply on their morality. But of course, that stance follows obviously from the fallacious belief that personhood begins at conception, therefore taking the morning-after pill is akin to aborting a near-viable foetus and also – it follows – to murdering somebody.]
If I were to place the correct ingredients together in a pot wouldn’t I be rash to say that it isn’t a soup, just because I did not leave all the vegetables and meats to come together over a slow heat? Isn’t it just uncooked soup?
[Daphne – Please don’t use this sort of metaphor with me. I find it insulting and offensive and it is beneath you. Neither of us requires a metaphor, still less a primitive and false one, to make or understand an argument.]
I view the fertilized egg as an ‘uncooked’ version of a person. It has all the ‘data’ to become a fully-fledged adult human being with its own personality and physical characteristics.
[Daphne – An incipient human being is not the same thing as a human being, in fact, biology or at law, Natalie. The clue is in the word ‘incipient’. To carry on with that metaphor of yours: no, vegetables floating in water are not soup. They are the ingredients for soup. They are potentially soup. But they are raw vegetables in water.]
I apologise for becoming cheesy here (I’m sure you’ll sympathise having gone through the same thing yourself), but that little foetus moving on the ultrasound screen nine weeks into pregnancy, can surely be called a person. She could move her arms and limbs in all directions and I didn’t have any control over it.
[Daphne – We didn’t go in for that sort of thing in my time. I had my children when having children was still considered normal rather than a special feat. Nobody was in their late 30s, nobody had battled with IVF and nobody had a Caesarean section. Nobody behaved as though you’d done something exceptional. The hospital nursery was packed to capacity to the point where the nurses couldn’t cope, and when you vacated your hospital bed after 24 hours, there were another five women waiting to get in. Certainly nobody lay around on an obstetrician’s couch cooing at the ultrasound scan – there were probably another three children waiting for their supper. I notice a dramatic cultural difference now.]
At sixteen weeks, I could feel my oldest moving (my youngest at seventeen). I remember feeling a bit freaked out during my first pregnancy feeling something moving in my tummy independently of me. Yet some countries set a legal abortion age at 20 weeks.
I certainly could never say that those two little moving foetuses were not my daughters but just an extension of me that later developed into my daughters.
I fear that sometimes abortion is seen as the liberal thing to champion, but there’s nothing to champion about murder as I see abortion to be. (Oh, I’m going to get so flaked for using the word ‘murder’.)
[Daphne – Neither you nor I is in a position to decide for others, I’m afraid. You might have felt a little different about all that if you were a 15-year-old still in school or a single mother living on next to no money in a tenement after the man had done a bunk. People who speak from privilege should never hector others who aren’t as fortunate.]
I agree with you, I shouldn’t have used metaphors. They’re for the unknowledgeable.
I had both children in my twenties and I didn’t require IVF. I also don’t think I did anything exceptional by having children but I love them both dearly and I hope they’ll grow to be responsible adults. Incidentally why do you think Caesareans are for the faint-hearted? One saved my child’s life, the other saved mine.
[Daphne – I don’t think they’re for the faint-hearted. My point was about the need for them, which wasn’t the case 30 years ago. Now every other baby seems to be born by C-section. But are they really necessary, or is something afoot?]
With regards to the pregnant fifteen year old, I pity her. However a wrong doesn’t make another wrong (or rather a difficult situation) right. What she needs is plenty of support to either bring up the child herself or give the child up for adoption; both difficult decisions.
[Daphne – Wrong and right are highly subjective in a case like this, and forcing the child to have the baby might well constitute a greater wrong than aborting it. As for making her have the baby only to give it up…I trust you understand that this means setting her up for lifelong trauma while sending a child into the unknown. Nobody can judge. ]
Different countries in Europe have various ages until which abortion can be performed, starting at 10 weeks until 24 weeks. Note that a child born at 24 weeks is potentially viable. The variety in ages makes me wonder about what makes a person a person.
Why does Slovenia allow a limit of only 10 weeks while Finland allows 24 weeks? Aren’t Slovenia’s 11 week foetuses not persons in Finland? My point is, who decides these things and how certain are they about their decisions?
One last thing. There’s a debate going on regarding the morning-after pill. It’s uncertain whether it causes abortion or rather creates an unfavourable environment for fertilisation to take place. Probably it works both ways, however one can never know what’s really going on. After all, fertilisation may take place up to three days after intercourse.
[Daphne – Well, it’s irrelevant, isn’t it, if it’s the person you want to safeguard rather than protecting ‘life from conception’. There quite clearly isn’t a person there the day after sex.]
You’re right, it’s a grey area. But I prefer to err on the side of caution than unknowingly abort potential persons.
[Daphne – That’s your choice and you have no right to impose it on others because it is linked to your personal beliefs and not to fact. Potential persons are not persons.]
Prudence and wisdom are surely better guides in this matter.
True freedom does not lie in being able to hurt others without considering the ramifications. True freedom is found in self control and the strength to say not to causing uneccessarily pain and anguish to others.
[Daphne – Says the man who has made it his life’s work to campaign as loudly as possible against abortion and even to have the anti-abortion law embedded into the Constitution. You know what, Paul? There are some of us who would never have an abortion ourselves because we think it wrong, but who would never dream of forcing somebody into a situation that would be deleterious to them because it’s none of our business and it’s not we who will have to pay the price either way.]
Yes, there are limits to free speech. When the Pope spoke in Sri Lanka he was praised, even on this blog, but he is criticised now. His freedom of speech stops when he criticises the abuses of free speech.
But then I might be wrong. Human beings abuse everything under the sun, but there is no such thing as abuses of the freedom of speech.
I would like someone to contradict my contention that that any freedom, including that of freedom of speech should be exercised with responsibility.
Let not those who disagree twist my words to mean that if this freedom is not used in a responsible way the perpetrators deserve to be killed.
Freedom without limits means anarchy.
Bollocks, Mr Saliba and you know it. Freedom granted to cultured people leads to great things. The USA in its earliest years was one such example.
All fundamental rights and freedoms are restricted by the rights and freedoms of others not to suffer “harm” or “offence”. That is why there are obvious restrictions to the freedom of the press and expressing opinions imposed by state laws against publishing child pornography, inciting to hatred, libellous statements etc.
“Freedom granted to cultured people leads to great things”.
What nonsense.
Are you suggesting that freedom is to be reserved for cultured people? Your example of the USA would explain the great things that were achieved through slavery. But wait a minute….was that freedom? Of course, I forgot: African-Americans were not cultured and therefore were not entitled to freedom.
Mr Wormwood, I am not impressed.
Daphne – it’s the Pope reflecting the views of the Roman Catholic Church he heads – that one should not insult anyone.
Likewise the Church’s position regarding gay marriage, that marriage is a sacrament reserved for a man and a woman.
I fully understand his position, and don’t expect anything different.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/mobile/view/20150116/local/international-hotel-investments-planning-to-buy-out-island-hotels-group.552109
Where is this money coming from?
Why was the 2% secured the way it was, when it was?
This has to be a reversed buy out. I think the Libyans are calling in their debts. When do those bonds mature?
Isn’t there a word in the dictionary called ‘monopoly’? And where is the MSFA?
Just to be provocative, Nazism was also a secular doctrine; it did not defer to any religion and therefore any god.
But would you consider it to be any form of governance one would consider living under?
Secularism and secularist can be as intolerant as any bigoted religious person. A person’s outlook of life does not depend only of his religious beliefs, but also other factors; education level, family background, life experiences.
[Daphne – The distinction here is not between the religious and the secular but between the ideological and the non-ideological. Ideology becomes seriously problematic when it is totalitarian in nature. Nazism was not a religion but it was an ideology, and an ideology, at the time, espoused with religious fervour. It is IDEOLOGY that is problematic. The problems of religion are the problems of ideology. When you have a dominant group of people operating in a belief system and seeking to have others live by their belief system, it doesn’t matter whether the belief system is religious like Roman Catholicism or Islam, or political like Nazism.]
Regarding the comment by the Pope, I too was shocked, not just with what he said but also with his gesture of ‘punching’ his aide.
A physical reaction to a comment is surely not what was expected by a world leader, especially after the hideous events of last week.
I think this Pope would do better should he communicate in his native Spanish.
[Daphne – I don’t see how. Expressing the same view in another language is not going to change it.]
Daphne, as I have said before, when you write in a manner that does not become personal, I find myself intrigued and even interested in your opinions.
It is when you include personal remarks that are irrelevant that you begin to lose people like myself and, I suppose, many others.
[Daphne – Yes, Paul, that’s why it’s freedom of expression. I write the way I wish, and you read if you wish. Nobody is binding you to read what I write. You don’t like it, far more others do. As you know, because we have had this discussion several times, I absolutely disapprove of the way you right about women as though we are childbearing vessels, or the way you presume to dictate what women should and shouldn’t do when you are not a woman yourself. I find your views EXTREMELY offensive. I would not, however, argue for the end of your right to express those views. I just don’t engage with them to avoid getting cross at you and feeling upset at how chauvinistic many Maltese men are, you being a case in point on these matters. You are free to write offensive things about women and our childbearing role. I am free not to read them, and that way we can tolerate each other better.]
You seem to confuse freedom of expression as being a permit to hurt and insult others. It is not to many people of good will. I understand it, as I already mentioned previously in this space, as being an art.
One that allows an individual to state their views but do so in a manner that does not intentionally aim to harm another purposely. I am certain, that you are able to achieve this yourself with a little more self-control.
[Daphne – Paul, I speak here as somebody who is possibly the most routinely insulted individual in Malta. If anybody has grounds to call for a ban on insults, it is me. But do you see me doing that? No. Because I understand that there are more important issues at stake, and that stopping people insulting others is just the thin end of the wedge. Part of being a well-grounded adult is being able to deal with insults. Those men you see in Maltese public life, getting hysterical because somebody like me in insulting them? They do it because they’re NOT NORMAL. They need psychological care.]
I disagree. There will always be someone ready to insult persons in public, it comes with the territory.
It has more to do with being ready to accept this than being adult.
If you feel you rank amongst the most routinely insulted, may it be because you yourself routinely involve the personal and invariably also the irrelevant into your writings?
Behaviour certainly breeds behaviour. You would be bonkers to support a position which would undermine your default style of writing.
[Daphne – No, Paul, it’s not because I insult others. It’s because I challenge their beliefs and cause offence to their ideology – in this case, political and not religious. People never care whether insults are levied at others. They only care, or notice, when they feel they have been insulted themselves. Why are you upset at me, for instance? It’s not because I called Toni Abela a clown. It’s because I called you out repeatedly on that business you tried of having the anti-abortion law enshrined in the Constitution.
People feel personally insulted when I mock the Labour Party, for instance, because support for the Labour Party is in the main irrational and so constitutes a belief system rather than a political choice. These are the same sort of people who think mockery of religion constitutes a personal insult to them.
Another reason is that people who think irrationally are threatened by those who think rationally and seek comfort with others of their kind, to reassure themselves that they are the ‘normal’ ones on the principle that if there are very many of them they can’t be wrong so, obviously, it’s the rational freak who is. And when people who are feeling threatened by the Different One gang up together – say, on Facebook – you know what the inevitable result is going to be.]
Daphne, provide evidence of even one thing I have said or written wherein I have spoken about women in the manner you describe! You will discover that there has never been a time that I have ever spoken about women that way.
You unilaterally make assumptions advocating to others thoughts, opinions, motives and so on, all of which are fabrications. You have the right to express your views, but not to lie and label anyone in the manner you do without providing any evidence to substantiate your claim.
[Daphne – I don’t need to, Paul. You can simply look up all our old arguments: what you said, and what I said to you in response. And I will repeat one of the things I said to you years ago: it is not a coincidence that the loudest anti-abortion campaigners are men when men should stay out of it because they don’t have babies, and dried-up spinster-type women who were never going to have a baby anyway and who have issues. We women tend to stay out of it because we’re the ones who have babies. And that’s why those of us who disapprove of abortion would say, at most, “I wouldn’t do it, but everybody’s situation is different.” Precisely because we’re women, we are really uncomfortable with the idea of forcing a woman (a woman like us) to have a baby against her will, or to see the pregnancy through only to give the baby away. Only a person of questionable judgement or morality would consider forcing a woman through a nine-month pregnancy and birth, only to give the baby away (to say nothing of the effect on the child) preferable to, say, taking the morning-after pill.]
Religion should enjoy no special privilege in society. For this reason it should not be immune to parody, satire and criticism, ranging from the mildest to the more virulent form.
We can be locked in infinite debates as to what has caused religion to enjoy this special privilege (and the infinite powers and interests at hand in seeking to retain its status quo) however this is now immaterial. We must move on.
Just as horrifying – if not worse – was the Pope suggesting that violence is the appropriate response to words you don’t like. That is straight out of any tinpot dictator’s playbook.
Now is it a coincidence that most of the freeword is Christian at least in origin and most of the non-free world espouse an atheistic or Islamic ideology.
As one of my teachers had stated, if everyone followed the Christian teachings, there would be no problems in the world.
What the Pope stated is utterly correct and common sense as his statement is based not only on Christian teachings but also as it is irrational and immoral to justify insulting and abusing other persons. The basis of all law and morality must be respect and the dignity of every human being. This is what the concept of human rights ultimately means.
In fact all or nearly all countries have some limits on freedom of expression. Freedom is not a carte blanche to do one wishes but means that one must do what is right.
The problem is taking a big risk.
You never know how certain people will react when insulted.
Freedom of speech or not one must also understand how many people will counter react by using violence in the name of freedom to cause death and destruction.
[Daphne – You should never cede or bow to terrorism, threats or blackmail. If people use the threat of terrorism to get you to do what they want, you shouldn’t oblige. That’s why we have the rule of law.]
This is what would happen, but instead of being allowed to chose there would be a ban on imports and sale and goodness knows what else for those ‘caught’ using them.
“Pope Francis has issued his strongest defence yet of church teaching opposing artificial contraception.”
If nothing else, that is just what marriages need in this day and age.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-01-16/world-news/Pope-Francis-strongly-defends-church-teaching-against-contraception-6736128843
Bergoglio isn’t exactly renowned for his disquisition. What the press didn’t report interestingly enough, was his ultimatum to equivocation during his address to the buddhist community in Sri Lanka. And did the buddhists applaud.
If freedom of expression happens to ignore freedom of conscience adopting insult as its sole cypher, we’ll never get anywhere. I say especially when the interlocutor is a supremacist political party of permanent offence.
There’s this confusion reigning everywhere, where separation of church and state hasn’t been distinguished between in its rivals; church from state or state from church.
All those for the former refuse to concede memory and the concept of conscience itself, playing into the hands of cultural marxists. Thus Islamophobia.
As for the secular liberation dogma, separation of religion and state into two distinct ideas and institutions was enacted the moment Christiantity was recognised by Constantine.
Countering the irrational leading to theocratic radicalism is perfectly laid out in the edict of Milan. So yes, christianity turned from sect to religion the moment christendom chose to establish the difference.
The definition then, that religion cannot be imposed otherwise is no religion at all, was one the edict’s central tenets making christianity a product of the west.
Islam chooses to challenge this very same notion by refusing any form of conscience and law written by humans, by extension, human rights.
That not all religions are the same. Inconveniently enough.
It doesn’t Josef but I understand you.
Far too many people simply use such freedoms to be crass, vulgar and go for shock value.
It is not just freedom of expression that is needed but a whole cultural revival. We need to start loving Western civilisation and take pride in it again for without culture freedom of expression will just lead to more equivalents of Twitter and juvenile drawings.
*Jozef. Bloody spellchecker.
Stuff religions, all religions.
If ever there is a god/s and there is a heaven, humanity will go to heaven not because of religions but in spite of religions.
If it was up to our bigoted population we would be right back to the Roman Inquisition, as most of our population still think with that frame of mind.
Although publicly they put on a liberal and secular appearance, their actions still reflect their bigoted mindset.
This is the first statement by Pope Francis which has really shocked me.
The analogy Francis uses with regards to Dr. Gasparri expecting a slap to his face if he were to insult the Pope about his mother makes nonsense of the very the basis of Jesus’s teaching with regards to ‘turning the other cheek’.
I am a convinced and practising Roman Catholic. I also firmly believe in freedom of religion; people should be able to believe whatever they want.
At the same time I believe that everyone who is in the public sphere, especially if paid by the public purse or in any way trying to influence others through ideas, should expect to have their lives or their ideas scrutinised.
One way to do that is mockery. This is a service of enormous social value keeping everyone radically honest, including secular, atheist evangelicals.
Huge crimes and genocides were also committed In the name of secularism in our own lifetimes.
Ultimately, freedom of expression has the power to protect us from ourselves and from our at times delusional ideas.
[Daphne – I’m afraid you are wrong. There has been no genocide committed in the name of secularism. And secularism is not an ideology. Nazism, if that is what you are thinking of, was not a campaign of secularism. It was an ideology, just as religion is an ideology. The crimes of the Nazis were committed in the name of Nazi ideology and not in the name of secularism. Something which is not religious is not secular by default.]
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” – A.Hitler – Mein Kampf pg.60
S_C, Pope Francis was joking, with a big smile on his face. He was explaining perfectly a situation of a personal insult, provocation and the first natural reaction. Pope Francis is also a human being, where in younger years, his first reaction to being offended in this way would probably be to show the fist. But for sure, he can control such an instinct and show restraint.
What happened in places like Russia and China under communism? We’re they not also pretending to be secular atheists? How many people lost their lives there? Isn’t secularism another ideology?
[Daphne – No, dear sir. Secularism is not an ideology. It is the separation of government and state institutions like courts of justice from religious influence or religious authority, and permitting no religious influence on the law of the land while allowing freedom of worship. Separation laws and state authorities from religious influence is, in fact, a function of freedom of worship: when you have one religion influencing a law or controlling a state authority, people of other religions or no religion are at a disadvantage and discriminated against, as are people who belong to that religion but whose decisions in some cases are in conflict with it.]
I posted more than once here hours ago today. Yet my comments do not appear. Is there a problem? Am I being censored?
[Daphne – No, Paul, it’s just that I’ve been out all day doing things other than upload comments. Sorry. When a comment isn’t fit for upload, I delete it not leave it pending. You’re still seeing yours, right? Also, the word is editing not censorship.]
Glad to see I was not edited then. Thought as much, it was just a harmless joke on my part .
And God gave us free will which includes free speech…no terms and conditions attached.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/business/business_news/48511/corinthia_groups_ihi_to_acquire_island_hotels_for_106_million#.VLlg1NLF9mM
Interesting.
Freedom has limits, otherwise it’s not freedom.
I ought to be free to choose from a variety of good things, deeds, etc…
By your standards of freedom, those who expressed their anger using a Kalashnikov in the Charlie Hebdo case were justified. They felt like expressing themselves that way.
[Daphne – You know, this is exactly what I mean when I argue that it is far more important to bring up your children to be rational and analytical (and good) than to be religious. Of course there are limits to freedom. Those limits are where other people’s rights begin. Your right to use a Kalashnikov to kill people who annoy you does not exist because other people have the right to life. There is, however, no right to live a life free of jokes about your religion. Then there are limits to your freedom which are shaped not by the human rights of others but by, say, the need for sanitation – which is why it is against the law for you to defecate in the street and why you have to clean up after your dog. ]
Obviously, only a maniac would accept something like that because people were killed (even if only injured).
…sometimes words hurt as much as bullets, that’s why there should be a limit to what is ‘free’. Some kill using guns others using their words (example: slander) , both are evils.
[Daphne – “Sometimes words hurt as much as bullets”. If that’s the case with you, then I advise you to see somebody who can help. And I am not being trite. People who genuinely feel that way need to see a psychologist. The fact that there are several of them in Maltese society, and some very prominent in public life, does not mean it is normal. Ask the families of those dead people in Paris how much words hurt as much as bullets. Do people ever grow up in Malta? I’m beginning to have doubts.]
Unbelievable! And then people whinge when I say that is an Arab country and not a European one.
*that this
So Arab is a bad thing now?
Those of us who have a bit of depth to them know what I meant. I take that even you wouldn’t associate the Arab world with a respect for individuality, freedom of the press and open mindedness for instance.
Incidentally, two of our neighbours happen to culturally Arab and our mother tongue happens to be derived from Arabic.
And before you whinge any further I’d invite you to take it up with various prominent Arab liberal intellectuals. They seem to think the same way I do about their society.
You couldn’t have said it better: “Those limits are where other people’s rights begin.”
I wasn’t talking about jokes on religion, although I think one shouldn’t stir up the hornet’s nest (it’s like when somebody is touchy about something, if you really care you won’t pick on him – same with society).
I was more concerned about the flourishing mentality that anyone can say anything about anyone in the name of freedom.
[Daphne – You know perfectly well that you can’t say anything you wish about anyone you wish because 1. private citizens are protected at law as they should be, 2. anyone who feels he or she has suffered quantifiable damages as a result of what you said or wrote can sue you for those damages. But there have to be damages.]
“Ask the families of those dead people in Paris how much words hurt as much as bullets.”
Also, I used the word ‘sometimes’ and NOT always for the very fact that nothing compares to murder. But the argument still holds if somebody wants to ‘express’ himself by hurting others (bullets/beating etc…). Yes sometimes words hurt as much as bullets. Victims of serious slander tend to take longer to heal than victims of beating or bullet injuries.
[Daphne – Please stop insisting on this. Bullets quite evidently do not hurt as much as words and their effect is completely different. Given a choice between being shot and being insulted, what would a sane person choose? Why do you think the law regards shooting somebody – even if not with intent to kill – far more seriously than it does insulting them?]
By the way, do you know that somewhere in EU (forgot the name) they wanted to pass a law which legalises paedophelia. They argued that it’s the way some people can express their love towards the young.
…ALL in the name of freedom.
[Daphne – Oh give over. What sort of education did you receive that even the most basic logic fails you? Even if somebody tried to feed you this rubbish, you should have been able to work out for yourself that the reason paedophile acts (not paedophilia) are a crime is precisely the reason why they can’t be ‘legalised’: they involve sex with children and children are OBVIOUSLY protected at law from sexual abuse. Can you see why the law that makes sex with children a serious crime can’t have exceptions based on whether the abuser is a confirmed paedophile? It’s because the VICTIM REMAINS UNCHANGED – a child.]
This is from the telegraph about a conference in cambridge
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10948796/Paedophilia-is-natural-and-normal-for-males.html
[Daphne – You cannot be serious. How is this in any way linked to your claim above?]
You said: Yes, you are free to teach your children religion and that is enshrined as a human right. But sensible parents prioritise other things and know that good people are not necessarily made in religion while very many bad people are.
Do you want your children to be good and rational, or do you want them to be religious? No doubt, you want them to be all three, but too much emphasis on the third very often affects the first two negatively.
One cannot equate religion with cultural mores. What you say holds true only when religion is used as justification for my actions – a God created in my image, rather than the other way round.
If one were to look (simplistically) at religion as an objective code of ethics that transcends human experience, one can already see an “external” source. In the case of Catholicism, the authority of that source has been established through revelation (not the the last book of the NT).
The crux of the matter lies in the willingness to believe the authenticity of that revelation. We can argue till the cows come home about which “revelation” is the most authentic. Judaism? Christianity? Islam? I’m limiting myself to monotheism here.
But the very basis of such arguments is precisely the acknowledgement that there is a true and absolute authority (whom some of us call God) whose duty it is to create and maintain creation.
That is why I can’t agree with you when you say that instilling a sense of the numinous kills the enquiring spirit. It enhances it. Religion is bad when, as is the case in Maltese partisan politics, we imbue the minds of our children with an us and them mentality, as though a set of beliefs were a tribal credo. Nazzjonalist/Laburist even Kattoliku minn guf ommu.
[Daphne – Unfortunately for your argument, Reuben, religions are not a code of ethics but an entire belief system based on unquestioning faith. The process of indoctrination from early childhood handicaps the inquiring mind because it discourages any form of challenging questioning.]
I know this isn’t going anywhere, but I’ll say it for completeness’ sake.
I’d like to clarify two things before I take off.
a) It is not God’s duty to create anything. In our language, limited by time and space, it’s more correct to say that it’s His function. b) I said that if one were to view religion SIMPLISTICALLY as a code of ethics. (How else could you justify that code if you didn’t believe in what “upholds” it?)
In my last paragraph I thought I made myself amply clear when I said that religion is bad when we imbue the minds of our children with an ‘us and them’ mentality, as though a set of beliefs were a tribal credo.
That is the point upon which you seem hung up. Unfortunately what you say about indoctrination is true in many cases. True belief fills one with a sense of wonderment even on a physical level. From wonderment comes inquisitiveness.
What you call “unquestioning faith” is the acceptance of revelation. Everyone is free to reject the divinity of Christ, for instance, or the “existence” of the Holy Trinity, but there is nothing to stop one from living a life based on all or some of the “tenets” that follow logically from belief in such “things”.
It is obviously very difficult to argue logically that something is good or bad, or that it ought to be done or ought not to be done, if one rejects the very premise that makes things good or bad.
[Daphne – It is really not at all difficult, Reuben. Bad acts cause harm – harm to others, harm to the environment, harm to public property (harm to private property falls under harm to others) and harm to the self. When there is a conflict of choice between harm to others and harm to the self in a particular act, choosing to harm others rather than harm yourself is the bad act. Choosing to harm yourself rather than harm others is the good one. But in those with a properly developed conscience, the choice between good and bad is almost always obvious. Decent people – as distinct from merely religious ones – make those choices naturally. Or they make the bad choice consciously and then feel guilt and distress. It is only rarely that things become more complicated. This is one such matter. The murderers were keyed into the Charlie Hebdo office by a woman receptionist who was there with her daughter (a strange sort of security arrangement with an immediately obvious weakness, but that’s not the point). To get her to key them in, they threatened to shoot both her and her child. They probably wouldn’t have done that because then they definitely wouldn’t have got in, but she wasn’t about to take that risk so she let in the murderers. Instead of three people dying – the receptionist, her daughter and the policeman outside – 12 did and many others were badly wounded. To save herself she sacrificed all those others. But then she faced a perceived choice between all those others and her own daughter. On the face of it, what she did was very wrong, and had she been on her own and not with her daughter, it would have been more obviously wrong. But in reality, I think it is impossible to decide.]
That “good” exists and that it is recognised as such across time and space (i.e. what is truly good – I am not talking about customs here – has never changed in history nor across cultures) should make one stop and think. That it continues to be sought after despite everybody’s freedom to reject it must count for something.
Winding up. All religions are necessarily based on faith. But faith without reason is like going to a gym and skipping “leg day”.
And another thing, some Maltese are very hypocritical.
They fear an Islamic Europe, yet believe that someone like the Pope is the know-it-all on what is right and wrong. At this point, they are not better than those rednecks in the US deep South. How exhausting.
The Maltese should convert to Judaism. I tried it and it’s so liberating. After years spent wincing at my own reflection, I’m now reconciled with my genes. Lowell eat your heart out.
Don’t feed the troll.
Would be a bit awkward for those who spent years fetishising the Palestinians and brown-nosing the likes of Arafat. What would the lost tribe of Malta in Gaza and the West Bank make of that? On second thoughts, I’ll take Dionysus and girls in togas with jugs of wine over Yawheh.
Two days ago, in France – one week on from the Charlie Hebdo murders – there is now a new media grouping. One of the 2 equal shareholders of the grouping is the 4th wealthiest man in France and Jewish. The grouping now comprises internet news channel, a print newspaper, a print weekly magazine, a radio station and a TV station: pretty comprehensive.
This is the style of exposure in its publicity campaign:
http://www.i24news.tv/fr/actu/international/56975-150107-i24news-lance-sa-campagne-publicitaire-en-france
Its objective is the “union of all points of view.”
Its policy as to source of funds is also particular.
Splendid. Now that I’m officially Jewish, will they hire me?
Hilarious, Baxxter.
Now that would be a study: gene reconciliation for the Maltese population.
I just think the Maltese should stop pretending they’re Catholics. They’re not. They’re Jewish.
@ Baxxter
Are you adopting me as your Jewish mama?
Thank God (which one?… joke) we’re LGBT etc correct now.
Don’t be facetious, and don’t take that snide tone that you Gentiles adopt when discussing us Jews.
Many of the religious leaders calling for censorship of ideas and ridicule are the same ones who call for the death of the Jews, Christians, Shiite Muslims and the fire-worshippers. Maybe the Pope should have a word with them instead instead of being a coward.
Professions always pull rank.
It would be hard to find a lawyer to sue another lawyer or a medical doctor to give evidence against another doctor.
Likewise the pope vis-a-vis other religions.
You lot still going on about Islam vs Christianity and Charlie Hebdo?
I tried Gilardu Kiosk. No luck, so I had to get Razzle instead. Cor!
Till now this Pope has been very close to Jesus’s teachings but this statement is really wrong not only from a secular point of view but also from a Christian one.
The Pope says that if someone were to say something offensive about someone else’s mother he should expect a punch.
Jesus taught us that when we get slapped we should offer the other cheek not retaliate.
And Jesus himself was ridiculed and offended as he was crucified and he neither retaliated nor asked the Almighty to shut them up or have them struck with lightning.
He asked God to forgive them for they knew not what they were doing.
That is the real teaching of the church and the Christ we believe in. No matter how much they try to ridicule you, you should never retaliate.
Religion is the root of all evil.
I suggest that everyone watch this discussion about Life of Brian.
It has lots of silly comments but John Cleese is really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5gm9hoTw6Y
Yesterday I heard our prime minister, who purports to be Malta’s Zapatero,appealing for the umpteenth time, this time from parliament, to all those concerned on the referendum debate and local council elections, to RESPECT and stop campaigning during the Holy Week which falls a week before the ballot date.
Would anyone believe that this guy has just come back from Paris after attending the protest march against the Charlie Hebdo killings!
“Je suis Charlie!” he tweeted,
I think he’s an insult to the Maltese Ġaħan.
“Miskin kemm sar good boy f’daqqa wahda (post-Manwel when he was the one who should have resigned, actually).”
Prime Charlatan, yes, in his usurped function.
There is no need for Muscat to keep on appealing for silence. As if we didn’t notice that the date was planned to coincide with Easter and Holy Week.
Yes, Je suis Charlie Muscat wants to kill discussion before the vote. Any excuse would suffice and it need not be religious.
By the way, although you say I am irrational and lacking a proper education (which you are ASSuming from my writings) I will still follow your blog because it is highly informative and enlightening. I will also continue to submit my comments on other topics because after all I can only learn from what others reply to my comments.
[Daphne – Your use of ASSuming pretty much sums things up. I wouldn’t if I were you. It reveals too much of the wrong sort of information about you, if you to engage at any sort of level of intelligent debate. ‘I will still follow your blog’ – obviously. This isn’t a religious cult and the subject of discussion is why mentally healthy adults don’t go around taking offence at things they should take in their stride. Also, you are anonymous and emotional reactions and offence are inextricably linked to the other person and anybody else listening knowing your identity.]
Daphne, I decided to stop discussing because you turned the discussion from religion into where I come from, my education, my upbringing etc. which I think is out of context.
Moreover, the last post (the ASSuming one) was specifically meant to tell you that I took no offence. It was meant to tell you that my sarcastic post where no emotional reactions but simply “parting shots” ( for lack of a better description).
:)
Re your remark about my earler post.
Since the state does not protect religion as it protects individuals, would the law or the police not intervene if I want to be bad mannered and mock and insult an individual or a group of Moslems or Buddhists in a town or village street in Malta unless they react and use violence against me? Actually, the roles may also be reversed.
Would I not be provoking others to violence or risking such provocation at least? Is it not within the powers of the law and the police to prevent or stop such provocation?
[Daphne – When you mock and insult people in the street, it is irrelevant what religion they are. It is the act of mocking and insulting people in the street and disturbing the peace that puts you in breach of the law. They could be any religion or none at all – who cares, the law certainly does not. If you shout abuse against the Roman Catholic Church in the street, however, you will be prosecuted for that, regardless of who or what you are shouting it at. Insulting the Roman Catholic Church is a separate crime to harassing people in public by shouting insults at them.]
I was brought up in a deeply Catholic and religious family. That did not stop me from making my own decisions.
There were occasions when I doubted and criticised certain decisions and church leaders. In most cases, further reflection and research proved that I and not the church had been wrong.
There are many examples of people brought up in godless and absolutely irreligious families and environments who following their own research and studies voluntarily chose to join the Catholic or some other church.
[Daphne – When people brought up in ‘godless’ and ‘absolutely irreligious’ families make a point of hunting down a religion to join, Tom, it is as much a form of rebellion as when people brought up in hyper-religious families go out of their way to declare themselves atheist and bang on about it all the time to the point of boring others. People brought up in an environment that is relaxed about these matters don’t feel the need to be either religious or atheist. Both are extremes and extremes are always problematic, if not for the self than for those around them.]
A church is not defined by the actions of any of its individuals, from the Pope to the humblest member. As in every human society there have been in the church rotten members who did wrong not because they were following church rules but because they were rotten individuals.
History speaks of even Popes who led scandalous and rotten lives. We do not judge the church by the actions of such men, just as we do not claim that today’s Catholic Church is HOLY because the last few popes have been holy men. The Church is Holy because as a church it is holy. It is holy IN SPITE OF its rotten individuals including Popes, bishops and priests.
History also shows that many social services, like education., care of the old, the sick, widows and orphans originated in the church. But is seems that many prefer to look only at the black spots in church history.
In an earlier remark you said that it is the law not religion that keeps people from committing murder. But there were periods in secular history where the state law not only accepted killing one’s enemies but encouraged it.
[Daphne – So did the Catholic Church. It promoted the murder of its enemies and those who questioned its authority or broke its spurious laws. This is not an ‘attack’ on the Catholic Church as I have no interest in that. It is merely a statement of historical fact.]
It also inflicted capital punishment. Thou shalt not kill came long before any state law and has remained unchanged for thousands of years though some individuals choose to ignore it.
[Daphne – ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is neither a Christian nor a Roman Catholic edict. It is from Judaism, one of the 10 commandments of Moses, and it is common to all three religions of the book.]
That is why it is wrong to qualify a criminal by an adjective, be it Maltese, English, black. white, socialist, nationalist,etc. A criminal is a criminal no matter to which group he belongs.
I was just seeing the grim news from Niger and for goodness’ sake the irresponsible people of the ilk of Charlie Ebdo should now stop doing what they are doing. They are endangering minority Christian communities in Africa and some other Arab countries. This so called ‘liberal left’ magazine did more harm to integration than it could have been done by Le Pen’s party. All this, just to make a point. The irony is that these people in France are not doing it in the name of Christianity. Try to explain this to the people in Niger.
When one think of it, the actual freedom by media organisations to mock faiths is more regulated by commercial aspects rather than by law. Even in the most liberal of countries, any serious mocking of the Judeo-Christian or the Islamic faith may boycott an organisation into bankruptcy. It is the same reason why sporting company Nike had to recall million of slippers in the 90s which had a script logo remotely resembling Allah. So you can have all the liberal laws you want, but you are still not free to do anything.
Beyond that, such ridiculous mocking is relegated to specialised but uninfluential waste of paper like Charlie Ebdo.
The right to express one’s opinion and ideas through speech, writing or other media is limited if it conflicts with other rights and values according to the the principle of no “harm” or “offence” to others.
Legislative measures would be necessary and acceptable to prohibit expressions that are offensive or harmful thus causing widespread social disapproval. That is proved by the legal sanctions against child pornography, hate speech etc.
That limitation of the right of free speech is not something that Pope Francis is inventing now. It was said decades ago by non-ecclesiastic luminaries such as John Stuart Mills and Joel Freinberg.
I hope you report this as well on your blog,,,
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150118/world/Niger-Hebdo-protesters-burn-churches.552278
Many of your replies to other people’s opinions expressed in this website may be seen as guilty of the very same fault you are accusing others of committing.
If one does not agree with you, then one is an idiot, badly educated, does not think for himself, is bigoted, and so on. There is more than a hint of a superiority complex.
[Daphne – Not really, no. I am more than happy to adjust my perspective based on a fresh appraisal of facts or new information, because my views are not an entrenched part of my identity and sense of self as they are with certain individuals. But I have very, very little patience with those who can’t or won’t do the same because it blocks discussion. I am not unusual in this. The difference is that while others think ‘this woman/man is impossibe/an idiot/irrational’, but smile and say ‘We’ll agree to disagree’, I have a tendency to reveal what I’m thinking. Not always, though – at times I can be pretty inscrutable.]
I agree with many of the views you express on many subjects but when it comes to religion you are as fixed in your views as anybody with strong religious feelings.
[Daphne – Well, obviously, because my views are based on fact and not faith and facts are quantifiable and measurable. This means that my views will change only if the facts change or I acquire more information, or if I have a sudden conversion to faithful devotion, which is most unlikely to happen at this late stage. I am quite happy to let others believe and worship in peace, though – that’s the difference. I’m certainly not one of those people forever badgering believers about why they have faith, or challenging their faith. I am having this discussion only because those involved want to have it. In a social context, I don’t consider religion to be a suitable topic for conversation.]
I disagree with your views about religion and will oppose them vigorously without resorting to mockery or offensive language. But I will always respect your right to express them. Who was it who said “I disagree totally with every single thing you have said but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
[Daphne – Voltaire’s biographer, Beatrice Hall, in her book ‘The Friends of Voltaire’, published in 1906.]
People with a strong faith do not just follow blindly. At least, I don’t. I read and study but eventually I have to rely on experts in the subject.
I don’t know much about medicine, for instance. So when I don’t feel well I have to see a doctor. That means I have to have faith in what he tells me to do or take.
Even if I board a bus, I don’t go to the driver and ask to see his licence or whether he knows the route or is drunk. He is the expert.
[Daphne – Well, I’m afraid these are fallacious comparisons. Medicine and buses are both the products of science and so you are dealing with hard facts that have been scientifically tested. Religion is not a product of science and there are no hard facts for testing. So religious experts can only ever deal in faith-based opinion based on an examination of texts & c and never in facts. The emphasis is always on belief/faith and never on knowing.]
That is so even in unimportant matters I am guided by those who are the experts.
So what is so wrong to trust those who have made religion their specialized subject? I have faith in them and trust that they may add to my knowledge of my faith.
I have always learned that rules are.not made to annoy people but to make life easier and safer for those people. That’s why there is the road code, speed limits, drive on the left, etc.
[Daphne – Here’s the rub. Close consultation with religious experts does not make people religious. They consult those experts because they are religious in the first place. I find conversations with religious experts of whatever faith fascinating – but that’s because I love to find out about these things, and not because I am ‘searching’. I am not dissing religion here; I am trying to explain that lots of people are perfectly comfortable without it while still being interested in it as a subject of human endeavour.]
The church does not rule about sex before marriage or abortion or adultery or things like that just to vex people. Sex before marriage and free love create their own problems. Think of the consequences to innocent children when a marriage breaks down. Can a woman or man feel happy to know that her/his partner is sleeping around indiscriminately?
[Daphne – People don’t need to belong to a religion to know that cheating on your spouse is wrong or that marital breakdown causes harm (though sometimes, failure to separate causes more harm). These things had to be taught in the context of religion when people had no other way of understanding them. Some of them (adultery, for instance) were also the subject of state law. But we could discuss this endlessly and to no avail. My point has been, all along, that those who can understand wrong and right only in the context of religion and/or state law have a problem – and society has a problem with them.]
At the moment spring hunting is a hot topic. Why spring not autumn? Because spring is the time the birds return to their natural habitat and we want to protect those still unlaid eggs. Humans don’t lay eggs but we think nothing is wrong with destroying so many unborn children with abortion.
[Daphne – A fallacious argument: humans are not under threat of extinction and do not require conservation efforts. A ban is being sought on spring hunting not to ‘protect unlaid eggs’ for its own sake (the sanctity of life argument) but to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of birds to reproduce strongly. This is not about sentiment but about hard pragmatism.]
I am not a theologian and I don’t set myself up to judge those who decide to ignore these rules. For myself, and after considering the implications, I voluntarily choose to submit myself to the rules and have faith in those who teach me those rules.
All your comments on this post merely convince me that you are as dogmatic in your opinions as any church.
Science and knowledge of every kind advance because someone has a doubt or a theory and wants or tries to solve the former or prove the latter.
You would be first to admit that science has not yet solved all mysteries of nature or knows everything but yet continues to search without giving up hope.
It has taken many centuries to arrive at its present state. Has science managed to solve the mystery of life itself or has it managed to reproduce it? Does science have all the answers to the mystery of the universe?
Religion follows the same pattern. Over the centuries, religion and faith have sought to understand better even higher and deeper mysteries. Like science, theology continues to search and has not yet reached a dead end.
I believe strongly in religion but do not claim to know it all. Even at my age I am still on a course of exploration and have not yet solved my doubts. It has taken not only my lifetime but thousands of years for our knowledge of faith to reach its present state.
People are free to continue their journey of faith or to ring the bell, stop the bus and get off. But the bus will go on.
This comparison is defective, I know, for the bus will eventually reach its destination and stop. The bus of faith does not have a final stop in this world. Like Pilate, we ask the question, “What is truth?” and like him we do not wait to hear the answer.