Recently the New Scientist published a letter from Tracey Hemingway-Wright that ridiculed a belief in God:
His article has shown me that even if there is a limit to what science can explain, there is no scientific bandwagon too high for these lunatics to jump onto to justify their lame-brained notions of sky fairies
Worryingly, there is a strong possibility that making this comment could shortly become a crime in the UK. The UK already has laws against inciting violence: now the Government is proposing legislation to make it a criminal offence to incite religious hatred.
The Home Office is trying to calm things down with an explanation which admits that simply claiming a religious belief to be false could fall within the scope of the offence if hatred is ’stirred up’ as a consequence.
As Rod Liddle pointed out, it might soon be perfectly fine to say that stoning women to death for adultery is barbaric
but it could be illegal to say that people who believe it is right to stone women to death for adultery are barbaric
.
Liddle then cites a conversation with a Home Office spokesperson. Liddle asked if he could be prosecuted if he said Islam was stupid
. Definitely not, was the reply. What about, Liddle asked, if he went on to say that people who believed in stupid things were themselves stupid? Might he find himself in court? Possibly
, was the reply.
Charles Moore, an ex-editor of the Telegraph, rather bravely tried to make his objection to the proposed legislation concrete by publishing an article in which wondered whether he would be permitted to speak his mind if this Bill was passed (if you wonder why I don’t repeat what he wrote here, I’ll ask you a question: if your home address was published in the domain ownership records for your website, would you be willing to risk it?) The reaction to him, which he writes about in another article, has been extreme.
More extremes. A correspondent to The Guardian writes,
What I want is protection against people attacking my religious beliefs. For years I have had to read, listen and try to ignore heavy-handed criticisms from right and leftwing secular fundamentalists who feel that just because they don’t see a place for God, then it is fine to attack, ridicule and subject people from any faith to the embarrassment that they do believe in God.
This writer is expecting the criminal law to protect him from embarrassment - or perhaps, less frivolously, from any challenge to his beliefs. What about you? How profoundly illiberal a society do you wish to live in?
