Blasphemy Day
Today, thirtieth September, is apparently Blasphemy Day. It would be quite wrong, on that basis, to call it the two-thousand-and-ninth year of our Lord, so I will call it 2009 CE.
Blasphemy comes from the Greek βλαπτω, meaning ‘I injure’ and φημη, reputation. I do not know quite how one can injure the reputation of the almighty, given that more than a few religions believe that just hearing the words of their deity or deities of choice is enough to convince someone as not acting properly thereafter guarantees an unpleasant afterlife. I would say, in fact, that it is a contradiction in terms. It seems that it is not the deity having their reputation injured, but the religion and the pontifices maximi.
Freedom of speech, if it means anything, is the freedom to say what one wants about what is going on in the public arena. Religions are by definition in the public arena: they seek to give their adherents and others a framework for their perception of reality and frequently make not only generic statements but give concrete statements of public policy. Anything that does that has to be considered in the cold light of day.
Nothing is sacred in a logical world.
xD.
September 30th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I, for one, would like to blapto the fuck out the feme of the material conditional in sentential logic.
So let me be the first to say: FUCK the material conditional, and the plethora of philosophical puzzles to which it gives rise. It’s time for humanity to reject this crazy ‘false if and only if the antecedent is true and the conclusion flase’ nonsense and march towards Enlightenment!!
September 30th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Indeed. A is A.
xD.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I just love the way PCers change it to CE but still count it from the same event.
.-= jameshigham´s last blog: Ladies and gentlemen, please adjust your urls =-.
October 1st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
James,
That’s a really interesting comment. You can make an argument to say that it is politically correct to use BCE/CE instead of BC/AD as it doesn’t privilege any one religion, or you could say that it is politically correct to use BC/AD instead of BCE/CE because of all the nasty atheists that dislike religion. To say that deliberately using one version to say you dislike religion is politically correct is, I think, stretching the term to breaking point.
xD.