{"id":180381,"date":"2017-05-06T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/06\/ireland-is-a-3rd-world-nation-in-europe\/"},"modified":"2017-05-06T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T23:30:00","slug":"ireland-is-a-3rd-world-nation-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/06\/ireland-is-a-3rd-world-nation-in-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland is a 3rd World Nation in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any country which has working blasphemy statutes on the books cannot be considered a modern nation state<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Police in the Republic of Ireland have launched an investigation after a viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on a TV show were blasphemous.<\/span>

<\/span>Officers are understood to be examining whether the British comedian committed a criminal offence under the Defamation Act when he appeared on RTE [Ireland’s National Television and Radio Broadcaster]<\/span> in 2015.<\/span>

<\/span>Fry had asked why he should “respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world…. full of injustice”.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/b><\/span>

<\/span>Appearing on The Meaning of Life, hosted by Gay Byrne, in February 2015, Fry had been asked what he might say to God at the gates of heaven.<\/span>

<\/span>Fry said: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery? It’s not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”<\/span>

<\/span>He went on to say that Greek gods “didn’t present themselves as being all seeing, all wise, all beneficent”, adding “the god who created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish”. <\/span>

<\/span>The Irish Independent reported a member of the public made a complaint to police in Ennis in the same month the programme was broadcast. He was recently contacted by a detective to say they were looking into his complaint.<\/span>

<\/span>The viewer was not said to be offended himself but believed Fry’s comments qualified as blasphemy under the law, which carries a maximum penalty of a fine of 25,000 euros (\u00a322,000).<\/span>

<\/span>The law<\/a> prohibits people from publishing or uttering “matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you think that your  God has such a thin skin, I kind of think that either you do not understand your God, or you are worshiping a very small and petty being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any country which has working blasphemy statutes on the books cannot be considered a modern nation state: Police in the Republic of Ireland have launched an investigation after a viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on a TV show were blasphemous.Officers are understood to be examining whether the British comedian committed a criminal offence …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[371,364,380,406],"class_list":["post-180381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-europe","tag-evil","tag-religion","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}