I bought Sam Harris’s book, ‘The End Of Faith‘ at Heathrow to annoy any fundamentalist religious terrorists I might have found myself sitting beside on the flight to the US. If the plane was going down, their last minutes would be spent enraged by the infidel, I thought.
It was a refreshing blast of a book. Dawkins, in his review, wrote ‘Even moderate religion is a menace, because it leads us to respect and “cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence”‘.
Now Harris has brought out another book, ‘Letter to a Christian Nation‘, which promises more of the same but targetted more specifically at the US. Excellent, but I wonder if I’ll be able to read it in the UK now the religious incitement law’s here.
This latest Orwellian encroachment on freedom has just been applied in the manner its supporters claimed would never happen, by the police to threaten the Gay Police Association which claimed that a 74% increase in homophobic incidents was largely or solely motivated by religion.
Whether the figures are correct or not, a complaint from the Christian fruitcakes has resulted in police action and could end in a prosecution. As MediaWatchWatch says,
‘If this results in a prosecution, it will mean that it is illegal to suggest that religious belief can sometimes lead to violence.‘.
John Stuart Mill must be spinning like a top in his grave:
Mill argued that society may only legitimately regulate the conduct of individuals in order to prevent their inflicting harms on others. Crucially, he felt that offense did not constitute harm, and therefore he supported almost total freedom of speech.
One Comment
Spinning like a top? Did Spinning like a top? Did they bury him vertically then?
Surely he is more likely to spin like a motor in a diesel multiple unit (or maybe the electric motor of a hornby locomotive)