Principled blasphemy

May 1st, 2006 by Monitor

The Rev David Holloway of the rabidly-homophobic Christian Institute leads the anti-Jerry Springer: The Opera protests in Newcastle. He is quoted by the BBC as giving the usual “free speech but” arguments against the show:

… public wilful and relentless abuse of Jesus Christ, as in this production, has no place in a civilized society – hence our moderate blasphemy laws.

So it is refreshing to see Peter Fosl give a compelling argument in The Philosopher’s Magazine in favour of the principle of blasphemy.

What’s been missing has been an acknowledgment that blasphemy isn’t just something that must be tolerated. It’s something that possesses a special political value of its own. Blasphemy, in short, is a good thing. It’s something admirable, noble, and, yes, even respectable. Why have we forgotten this?

He goes on to demonstrate that there is nothing special about religious opinion:

Like other ideologies, religion instructs and even commands people about what they should value and how they should conduct themselves. And it does so in a powerful and effective way. Ongoing controversies concerning gay marriage, abortion, war, hijab , pornography, and social services offer clear examples of this. Many clerics actually tell their congregations how to vote.

Blasphemy is an important tool in democratic discourse:

What better than transgressive cartoons, ridicule, humour, and even swearing to inhibit theocracy and its enthusiasms? Blasphemy deflates some of the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, I’m-absolutely-right attitudes of the religious. It makes religion safer.

It does so by knocking religious authorities off their pedestals, by reminding us that their views (protestations to the contrary) are just those of silly humans, that they’re just like the rest of us—that they and their views are equals with us and ours, that they are not our superiors.

It is therefore the moral duty of secularists everywhere to blaspheme vigorously, creatively, and amusingly until at last the religiously censorious – from the hateful homophobes of Christian Voice to the bearded pubescents of the Muslim Action Committee – realise that the world is not obliged to take them as seriously as they take themselves.

(Hat tip: Butterflies and Wheels)

UPDATE: Speaking of noble blasphemers, Steve Bell’s latest editorial cartoon in The Guardian (online by tomorrow) fights the good fight, with an interesting variation on Michaelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” fresco

UPDATE: Steve Bell’s The George Bush impersonator at the White House correspondents’ dinner cartoon is now online.


One Response to “Principled blasphemy”

  1. Andy A says:
    01/May/2006 at 4:08 pm

    When G W Foote launched the Freethinker, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, he said this:

    We have had to encounter the dislike of mealy-mouthed freethinkers, who want omelettes without breaking of eggs and revolutions without shedding of blood. They object to ridiculing people who say that twice two are five. They even resent a dogmatic statement that twice two are four. Perhaps they think four and a half a very fair compromise. Now this is recreancy to truth, and therefore to progress. No great cause was ever won by the half-hearted. Let us be faithful to our convictions, and shun paltering in a double sense. Truth … can dispense with politeness; and while we shall never stoop to personal slander or innuendo, we shall assail error without tenderness or mercy. And if, as we believe, ridicule is the most potent weapon against superstition, we shall not scruple to use it.