1    Dr Potter        Nobody Has A right not To Be Offended

It's Sunday morning in Brighton, UK, and all is peace. It's the one morning of the week when I am less likely to turn on the bedside radio, because the usual weekday programmes are replaced with hymns and an assortment of 'clerics' mostly Christian but increasingly others – Muslim, Hindu et al.

Even secular news commentaries are slanted to include 'moral exhortations' – this morning, it was a broad spectrum of theologians from several 'faiths' expressing concerns about proposals to expand 'embryonic research', which they defined as yet another example of humankind's 'sinfulness', arrogantly attempting to 'play God'. Every day of the week the BBC's morning programmes gives us "Thought for the Day" where speakers claim to be giving us insight into the mind of their creator. On Sunday it's worse: full 'worshipping' services are broadcast, culminating near eventide with "Songs of Praise".

This Sunday, (16/9/07) most of early news services consisted of items with a religious bias. The Archbishop of Canterbury described his hope that when the Prince of Wales became the monarch, the title "Defender of Faiths" (note the plural case!) would replace the existing one. Then reference to recent Prime Minister Blair's advocacy to expand the number of "faith schools", which seems to have received on-going government support. Then an item reporting the resignation letter sent by Zimbabwian Archbishop Neube to the Pope, following accusation against him by the Mugabe regime of a 'sexual affair' (his alleged partner being a consenting adult female; totally unacceptable conduct for a Catholic priest!).

Finally, an update on "missing" Maddie McCann. We were told the parents were attending Sunday mass at their own village church in Rothley, Leicestershire, and for the umpteenth time reminded of the child's parents' Catholic convictions and their special pilgrimage to Rome for the blessing of the Holy Father. For the true believer, the McCann's highly publicized Christian commitment is obviously evidence of their 'innocence'!

That so much on-air time is readily available to those hawking beliefs the majority of people now regard as superstition appears incredible to those, like myself, who have spent a lifetime campaigning for a secular society. The 'loss of faith' in today's Britain is greater than ever before. Less than 6% of the general population belongs to a church (or mosque, synagogue, temple or whatever) – and half that figure is children. In England, 2007, most weddings do not include a religious ceremony; increasingly priests are disappearing from funeral services. Put bluntly, in today's Britain, religion has lost its significance.

Parallel with the rapidly increased momentum of decline in belief during the last half century, has been a lessoning of the restrictions placed upon "free thought". After hundreds of years of the Blasphemy Act (1697-98), legislation that made it an offence to "defame the name of a god or gods", the last imprisonment under this Act was in the early 1920s. The last prosecution, leading to a fine of £500, was in 1977 (the action was largely initiated by the infamous Mary Whitehouse against the editor of Gay News, for publishing the poem The Love That Dares to Speak its Name. He was also given a suspended prison sentence).

As a teenager in the late 1940s I was a regular speaker for the Rationalist Association of South Australia (long defunct!) in the Adelaide Park. Our meetings always attracted a good, very argumentative audience. Almost always I took a Bible with me to the platform and frequently my contributions revolved around the absurdities of Scriptural tales, atrocities and the faulty morality of that atrocious book. Many Christians (always a good sprinkling of Catholics) attended and argued bitterly and probably left the meeting feeling they'd 'put that little upstart in his place'.

But not once in the years when these meetings were one of the highlights of my life, did anyone claim the speaker "had offended them" by ridiculing their treasured religious beliefs! [Of course not only Christianity came under attack; I often quoted Islamic and Buddhist texts (with much less hostility to the latter), but I don't remember any devotees of non-Christian communities participating.]

Sixty years have passed and it is a very different world. The United States of America was founded by freethinking heretics but is being 'taken over' by the religious right. Symbolically, in the 1950s, God's name appeared on their currency notes. Whereas Abraham Lincoln made no secret of his not being a Christian, such a view today would immediate exclude a person being a viable presidential candidate.

Grounded in the mid-West, fundamentalism flourished, creationist thought took root, the Republican Party of Abe Lincoln, founded primarily to abolish slavery and 'modernize', culminated in Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, both, to a great extent, basing themselves on Biblical prophecy. (The latter claims God speaks to him direct – and told him to "go invade Iraq"!)

World politics are determined by economic factors, rather than religious belief, and a major determinant in the policies of those controlling today's productive resources revolves around oil reserves.

Look at a 'mineral' map of the world for immediate understanding of why so many are occupied killing each other in today's Middle East. When one nation invades and occupies another, the natives resist; but the first principle of political propaganda is to refuse to recognize the resisters as 'patriots', defending their homeland. The Nazis never battled with resistance fighters but with "bandits" and "terrorists". So today, those fighting against the US occupiers are "devil-inspired" followers of the 'terrorist' bin Laden [an individual armed by the USA, always a bitter enemy of Saddam Hussein whose Iraq was a "secular state" and who offered full support to George Bush senior at the time of the first Gulf War!] That's how it is.

For reasons that should be obvious to anyone who thinks, it helps the 'powers that be' in the USA, Britain (and Australia!) to describe it all in terms of Islamic terror versus Christian civilization. (Significantly and ironically, only one topic takes up more space, overall, in today's media coverage than 'religion' – that's 'terrorism'.)

An aspect of today's 'modernized' world is the influx of immigrants from the Islamic world into Western Europe. Under the cloak of 'remembering the Holocaust' comes the demand to 'make diversity work'. But rather than tackle this issue in a rational manner, rather than progress along the path of encouraging open discussion of contending views, replaying the past battles of 'freethinkers' everywhere, the governmental manipulators, the international 'leaders' of the nations engaged in the economic world struggle, choose the safer (for them) option of maintaining the status quo.

Rather than free and open discussion they maintain the divisive and exclusive autocratic fundamentalist factions, and eliminate any attempt to rationally examine and challenge these universally outmoded traditional beliefs. Civil peace must be achieved by suppressing any "free and open discussion", prevent any objective search for material truths rather than the less-challengeable spiritual truths.

So new offences are created. People are given a new 'right' – the right not to be offended.

The London "Times" carried a letter which encapsulates this 'new' approach to 'free speech'. A Tourist Guide described how he had taken a party around Vienna, showing them a beautiful baroque monument, built by public subscription to thank God for saving the city from the Plague. He added that apparently nobody ever asked why the Almighty had sent the Black Death in the first place, killing millions of good decent, God-fearing citizens. One member of the group regretted his guide wasn't a broadcaster on Radio 4. Another, anonymously, complained to the tour company about his remark and the Guide was officially reprimanded for "causing offence".

It is quite wrong to argue that all opinions must be respected. In a civilized society, all people deserve respect, but opinions do not. Reinhard Heydrich had an opinion known as the "Final Solution" at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Why should any intelligent person "respect" that opinion? As an atheist I find many religious sentiments, particularly in relation to women and gays, offensive, but I fanatically support the right of these people to freely express their point of view irrespective of how objectionable I believe those views to be.

Bob Potter (# 117) argued that people have no right not to be offended. The Bible, with qualifications, agrees with him.

Jesus sometimes used blunt talk that offended:

Despite their offensive message Christians don't want to offend:

        May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy… (I Thessalonians 3:13)

        For he chose us…to be…a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy
        and blameless. (Ephesians 1:4; 5:27; Colossians 1:22)

Bob Potter went on to show that some people promote the right not to be offended so as to "make diversity work" in today's multicultural societies. Such a right would presumably promote peace by stopping religions and ethnic groups from criticising one another. However, it would also stifle debate, and undermine science, which relies on free interchange of ideas.