Does freedom of speach include the right to offend?
Should we be able to express our opinions via any medium (including this forum), after all, are we not merely in pursuit of insight and understanding by stimulating and engaging in debate and, by default, exercising our right to express our opinions?
If we have the right to offend, should there be any boundaries?
There is no right to offend. But there is a right to express opinion. These are two entirely different things.
The “caricature scandal” that was initiated in Denmark is a perfect example. The caricatures were printed in the newspaper with the main view to tickle the muslims. When muslims complained (incl. ambassadors from 10 muslim countries) the Denish prime minister refused even to talk to them.
That is the point that exactly the same statement can be made as offensive and as a debating argument, but it all depends on the sircumstances and intention.
Sure it does.
If the PZ could say for the RS that he is just a “stoopid” and 2000 of his post are “not informative” at all.
Who could guilt PZ for that?
Except the RS who had started the “New offend Crusade” agains PZ.
We all enjoy and watch for that:)
But at the same time there could not even be the democraty among the unequal members.
For instance that same PZ still beeing unfair mod banned me without any discussions or correspondence.
Thanks to him for that:)
Now he is getting back the shit:rolleyes:
If we have the right to offend, should there be any boundaries?
We do not need any boundaries here:)
The any bondaries only limit the democraty.
The one never will offend the other members ( if he is enough adequate and resonable)
The inadequate members could not even be presented here…
Would you consider this as being of the same genre and, if so, is it offensive:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7GQWehrsU
Perhaps if the RC church had condemned Mr Allen to death I wouldn’t have to ask.
Perhaps they did :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4340115.stm
I have watched a half of it or so. It does not appear blasfemic to e me as the jokes are sentered around the preast not around the God. That is the difference.
BTW that is why I not going to watch “The life of Brian”.
The cartoons are touching the person in Islam that undisputible for them. It is one thing to critisise in a theistic discussion and it is entirely different thing to draw a cartoon and print in a newpaper.
This is hilarious, I don’t find it offensive at all…the world needs more humor like this. To bad Islam cant laugh at themselves.
But they do, Mike. Check out The Little Mosque On The Prairie:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4689644836814333621
For me freedom of speech & expression sure does include the right to offend, particularly art and science. That’s what a lot of people in certain cultures don’t get. The reason why this needs to be included is that if it wasn’t anyone would come up and say he was offended by this and that et voila, back to the dark ages please, no discussion allowed. Freedom of speech is the single most important feature of the western civilization and the reason why we progressed much further than everyone else in the past centennials. There mustn be tabus in what we talk about.
What if we rephrase the question as: Does freedom of speech give every religious zealot, other zealots, uptight anal retentives, and other oversensitive idiots the right to be offended by things said by people who don’t share their views?
Of course it does.
But is that a reason for limiting speech by people who say things that offend them?
I don’t think so.
Should we be able to express our opinions via any medium (including this forum), after all, are we not merely in pursuit of insight and understanding by stimulating and engaging in debate and, by default, exercising our right to express our opinions?
If we have the right to offend, should there be any boundaries?
Probably.
Should we allow people to instruct others in crime or incite crimes (allowing for the difficulties in determining what those terms mean)?
But then we can get back to Tudor thought control legislation or an Orwellian world, which ain’t that far away in some respects.
Should we allow rock spiders to argue for man boy love as a right to a beautiful thing? (Where I’d be arguing for something similar in reverse, like shoving a 25 pounder shell up the proponent’s arsehole and then detonating it. If they’re still arguing in favour of anything after that, I’m prepared to listen. :D)
Should we allow regurgitation of anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic Nazi vileness? Germany doesn’t, with good reason, but most other places don’t restrict it, which I don’t think is all that healthy.
Conversely, why should Zionists get the free run they get in the Western press justifying Israel’s conduct?
In the end, everybody wants boundaries, but not the same ones.
So the only truly balanced approach is to let everyone say everything, and hope that people are intelligent and informed enough to sort the wheat from the chaff. There isn’t any historical or current educational achievement evidence to indicate that they will.
It should be noted that Daven Allen (at Large) was an atheist that continually saw himself as debunking ritualistic Christianity…
Which brings us back to the problem that Christian churches are fair game in the West and, although they don’t like it, largely put up with it. Well, they’ve gradually learnt to as their power declined since the Spanish Inquistions and Galileo and so on.
Unlike some of the more rabid Islamic elements who get upset about what they perceive as slights upon their religion or prophet being portrayed as unreasoning and violent, to which they object by calling for unreasoning violence against the offenders.
Or rabid Christians who think it’s okay to kill adults with families to stop them aborting a foetus.
Or rabid animal rights nutcases who think its okay to kill people to protect animals.
And so on.
The question from all this is: When speech provokes such actions, should such speech be allowed?
And if the answer is no, then a lot of Peter Singer’s excellent books on the morality of human use of animals would have to be banned, thus limiting debate on a legitimate moral subject.
Which still comes back to what are, ultimately, arbitrary boundaries.
In the question of having the right to offend, there is an element of ‘I don’t like what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it’.
Who decides what is offensive?
What I would argue we don’t have, is the right to spread hatred.
That may be so. I’m a Catholic, not an Atheist, and I find him hilarious, as I do Father Ted.:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=apNEnMlP_nY
There is humour and htere is reality. In some cases, the reality is more bizarre than the humour.
Yeah, Ted’s funny and so is Dougal, but Fr Jack is a lot feckin funnier! 
It’s commonly attributed to Voltaire but that is disputed and attributed te earlier writers.
I wouldn’t defend everyone’s right to say everything.
‘Death to infidels’ doesn’t resonate with me as a desirable declaration, any more than ‘Jews [or any other group] are a cancer in society and should eliminated.’
Me.
As does everyone else, on their own.
Whether or not it’s a right, it’s not desirable. But what constitutes ‘spreading’ and ‘hatred’?
We have racial and religious tolerance legislation here which has done little more than provide fertile ground for racial and religious bigots to convert their bigotry and stupidity into legal disputes to attempt to get temporal confirmation through the courts of the righteousness of their cause. Their gods chose not to deliver celestial confirmation of either side’s cause. It’s one of the few instances I’ve seen of desirable celestial reluctance to interfere in temporal affairs. 
Yes, it’s the group. I was referring to the programme title rather than the individual character, but then you knew that.
I had just made a rather eloquent, informed and convincing reply to this, but it’s disappeared along with the bottle of wine I was drinking.
I’ll have to get back to you, as and when, old chap.
I hope you find the bottle.
As for losing a post before submitting it, you can ofter recover it by using the back button (At top left of screen if you’re using Internet Explorer. I’m not treating you as an internet idiot, I’m just making sure you don’t think there’s some special back button on WWIIIC. It works on all forums.) The posts often go missing when you manage to hit some combination of keys that throws up a new screen but the post is often still a screen or three back.
If I’m doing a long post, which as everyone knows is most unusual for me ;), I usually do it in Word so I can save it as I go. If I don’t, I usually lose it just before posting it.
RS*'s First Law of Forums states: The probability of hitting a combination of keys that loses a post entered on a forum screen rises exponentially with the amount of alcohol consumed.
RS*'s Second Law of Forums states:The probability of losing a post entered on a forum screen rises exponentially with its length.
RS*'s Third Law of Forums states: The probability of recovering it with the back button decreases exponentially with the difficulty in recreating it.
The last time I cheked there exists nothing like “a right to offend” in the Democratic vocabulary.
It’s really to do with culture and freedom of speach.
RS respnded ‘Me’ etc.
I understood that to mean society. Our societies produce their own culture - even here on this forum - we observe certain customs, norms, mores, conventions and folkways.
http://christcollegemsw.blogspot.com/2007/07/notes-on-folkways-mores.html
However, not all societies are the same. We in our western democracies set great store by our right to freedom of speach. The pictures you mention in the Danish press were, maybe, offensive to minority in Denmark. The press were exercising their right to print such pictures. They were not printing them in Tehran.
When in Rome do as the Romans - I find it offensive that others, in foreign lands, can dictate to us in the West what we can and cannot print in our newspapers or books e.g. Satanic Verses.