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Post by shane on Jan 31, 2011 22:48:01 GMT
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0131/1224288605039.htmlAtheist Ireland are writing “to all election candidates asking their views on six questions that are central to building a rational, ethical society with a secular State that does not support any religion”. The questions are: * Will you work to reform the education system so that all children in your constituency can access publicly-funded schools which have no religious ethos? * Would you support a referendum to remove religious references from the Constitution, including the religious oath for the President and judges? * Do you believe that blasphemy should be a criminal offence? * Would you support legislation to prevent State-funded hospitals from having a religious ethos that makes medical decisions based on religious beliefs? * Would you vote to ensure that religious bodies are treated the same as other organisations under equality and employment legislation? * Do you believe that religions, like other organisations, should have to pay their fair share of tax on income that is not used to fund charitable activities?
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Post by shane on Jan 31, 2011 22:57:57 GMT
* Would you vote to ensure that religious bodies are treated the same as other organisations under equality and employment legislation?
Hmmm, this is a rather ominous question. If religious organizations were required to adhere to "equality and employment legislation" then surely this would rule out an all male priesthood, leading to the effective proscription of the Catholic Church (and indeed many of the Protestant denominations).
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Post by irishmonarchist on Feb 1, 2011 8:35:04 GMT
I agree with shane, the question he noted smacks highly of State>Church.
If I was to take an objective view towards these questions, I can expect most politicians to answer rather neutrally to them if I'm honest, the same they would if Catholics where to ask them similar questions asking them to help construct a true Catholic Irish State.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 1, 2011 14:56:30 GMT
Of course the devil is in the unexamined assumptions. Thus, the first question is silent on the question of whether, under the conditions so stated, parents who wish to access publicly-funded schools which DO have a religious ethos will still be able to do so.
The second question implies that the presence of religious oaths for the President and judges excludes atheists from these positions, whereas I would have thought that if an atheist were ever to attain these offices they would be allowed to affirm rather than swearing an oath (as is the case with witnesses in lawcourts or with parliamentary oaths). In fact, I suspect this question may have already been settled as regards judges, since I believe there has been at least one Quaker judge since the foundation of the state (Quakers affirm rather than taking oaths.) What Atheist Ireland really object to is the option of swearing a religious oath since they see this as state recognition of religious belief, and they wish to withdraw that option from everyone.
The third question is quite straightforward (though I might note that it is theoretically possible for an atheist to support some forms of anti-blasphemy law for the sake of public order, namely that to have people publicly insulting one another's religious beliefs is likely to lead to disturbances).
The fourth question amounts to a demand that religious hospitals (and presumably other religious institutions) must perform operations repugnant to their beliefs or lose all funding, and that if religious believers want to maintain such institutions they must be subject to double taxation, paying for secularist institutions through tax and then for religious institutions out of their residual income.
The fifth demand is much farther-reaching than Shane points out. As well as excluding an all-male priesthood, it would mean that religious bodies could not favour members of their own denomination (or those who were prepared to abide by their precepts) in running their own institutions, even if those institutions were entirely privately-funded; and if "discrimination" is interpreted more broadly it could mean that the mere expression of certain doctrines (e.g. that same-sex relations are wrong, that sexual intercourse should only take place within marriage) would itself be iinterpreted as a form of discrimination and subjected to prosecution as hate speech.
The sixth question is deliberately loaded to push the person asked towards a "Yes" - the reference to "their fair share" and "like other organisations". It also is not clear about what is meant by "charitable purposes".
There is an implied but unstated dual standard involved. IN the first questions, the assumption is that the conscientious rights of atheists must be accorded so much weight that the freedoms of religious believers must be sacrificed whenever these cause the least incidental irritation to an atheist. In the later questions, the conscientious rights of believers are treated as nuisances to be brushed aside whenever the community as a whole so decides.
Religious freedom is implicitly equated with freedom of individual belief; the rights of individuals to publicly express and practise their belief, to associate with others of like mind for that purpose, or to establish institutions founded on those beliefs are discounted.
Of course AI do not expect politicians to give honest answers; what they do expect is that by putting these issues forward in the public arena (with the help of their IRISH TIMES cheerleaders) they will force politicians to give more weight to such views and thereby tilt the balance in a secularist direction.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 4, 2011 17:01:17 GMT
The recent report to the UN complaining that Ireland is falling down on human rights by (amongst other things) not legalising abortion has Atheist Ireland as one of the signatory organisations! given that they are an advocacy organisation and actually made representations about the state not being sufficiently secular, how were they allowed to sign this report as a "human rights organsiation"? If Youth Defence (say) were to make a submission saying that Ireland violated human rights by not overturning the X Case, would they be invited to sign the final document, and would their dissent be noted? Methinks someone in officialdom is deliberately accepting AI at their self-proclaimed valuation as the voice of all Irish atheists (and I suspect they regard anyone who does not go to church as an atheist). A worying development, and one to watch.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 5, 2011 23:25:32 GMT
Yesterday's IRISH TIMES (Saturday 4 March) pursues its usual atheist-promoting agenda with extensive reports on a World Atheist conference being held in Dublin. Ivana Bacik claims she is the only self-proclaimed atheist in the Oireachtas (I suspect this is self-aggrandisement, I can think of several other self-declared atheist or agnostic TDs). In her speech when referring to her laudable sponsorship of legislation to prohibit female genital mutialtion (incidentally, it has extra-territorial effect - so much for the claim it would not have been possible to do the same for abortion) she said she would be willing to introduce a bill to prohibit "male genital mutilation". This is very serious - it amounts to saying that Jews and Muslims are to be forbidden to circumcise their children, which is an absolutely central requirement of their religions. Has anyone noted this advocacy of religious persecution? No.
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