The police investigation into Stephen Fry for blasphemy also threatens RTE, the Irish Times and Atheist Ireland. The offence of blasphemy is committed not only by the person who first utters a blasphemous statement, but also by anybody who publishes it. RTE published the statement...
Professor David Nash of Oxford Brookes University is an international expert on the history and contemporary status of blasphemy laws throughout Europe and beyond. He has worked with Atheist Ireland at the United Nations and the Irish Constitutional Convention to seek abolition of the Irish...
Atheist Ireland welcomes the Irish police investigation into Stephen Fry for blasphemy. It highlights a law that is silly, silencing, and dangerous. On 1 January 2010, the day the new Irish blasphemy law became operational, Atheist Ireland published a list of 25 blasphemous quotes in...
Atheist Ireland welcomes the police investigation into Stephen Fry for blasphemy. It highlights a law that is silly, silencing, and dangerous. It is a silly law because it suggests that the creator of the universe needs the Oireachtas to protect its feelings. It is a...
The Dail yesterday voted to force all TDs to stand for a Christian prayer every day, asking Christ Our Lord to direct every word and action of theirs, and to force the Ceann Comhairle to read the prayer aloud. Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the...
Atheist Ireland thanks the TDs who spoke in favour of separation of Church and State in the Dail last night, and in support of the equal right of every citizen to freedom of religion or nonreligious belief. While still a minority in the Dail, they...
Fintan O’Toole writes today in the Irish Times about how the word ‘ethos’ is used in Irish schools to justify imposing arbitrary rules, based on the personal religious beliefs of those in authority. He points out that in the 1882 Eileen Flynn case, the school...
An Irish nun was excommunicated after she sanctioned an abortion to save a woman’s life in a Catholic hospital in Arizona in 2009. She was later allowed to return to the Church if she went to confession and resigned her position in the hospital. The...
The Irish State is planning to give a €300 million National Maternity Hospital to the Sisters of Charity. The Minister for Health has said that “only doctors and other healthcare professionals would make decisions about women’s health in the planned new Hospital.” However, the Sisters...
Much of the commentary about the new National Maternity Hospital has focussed on money. It is of course outrageous that the State would gift a brand new hospital, worth hundred of millions of euro, to a religious order which still owes millions of euro to...