It is an absurd law [Section 295A of the Indian penal code] but also extremely dangerous because it gives fanatics, whether they are Hindus, Catholics or Muslims, a licence to be offended. It also allows people who are in dispute with you to make up false accusations of blasphemy.
Interpretation
The quote critiques a law that enables individuals to exploit religious sentiments for personal grievances.
Richard Dawkins highlights the dangers of Section 295A of the Indian penal code, which he views as both absurd and perilous. He argues that the law allows extremists from various religions to claim offense easily, thus potentially weaponizing religious sentiments. Dawkins cautions that this law not only encourages real disputes but also opens the door for individuals to fabricate accusations of blasphemy against others, leading to intolerance and conflict.
In practice
In a debate about freedom of speech, this quote can highlight the consequences of laws that restrict expression.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"β here I opened wide the door; β Darkness there, and nothing more.
Plenty of people did not care for him much, but then there is a huge difference between disliking somebody - maybe even disliking them a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire.
Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news.
Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.
Veronika had noticed that a lot of people she knew would talk about the horros in other people's lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in the suffering of others, because that made them believe they were happy and that life had been generous with them
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