Je suis Charlie
Submitted by ftcsadmin2 on Thu, 01/08/2015 - 16:43.
by Andrew Seidel, Freedom From Religion Foundation
The satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo is the latest target for religiously-motivated violence. Three Muslim men didn't like the way the authors, journalists, and cartoonists thought, so they murdered them. Twelve lives ended. Families shattered. Children parentless. And Bill Donahue of the Catholic League says, "Muslims are right to be angry." Donahue sided with the murderers, condemning only their method but saying that we should not "tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction" and that it was "too bad" Charlie's editor "didn't understand the role he played in his" own death. Isn't it just like religion to blame the victim?
The time has come for the religious to understand that they have no right to be free from criticism. All ideas can be criticized—especially religion. Bill Donahue may not like it, but he ought to dig deep into his corpulent frame and find the courage—I won't say intelligence, that'd be asking too much—to stand up for that right because it is the essence of freedom.
Free thought and freethought only exist with the right to dissent and to proclaim that dissent. And yes, to criticize and even mock the ideas of others. Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams about his hope for the future: "the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."
The day that Jefferson predicted is here—and neither Bill Donahue's callous idiocy, nor religiously motivated violence will stop the dawn of reason or the spread of freethought. Je suis Charlie.
Andrew Seidel, FFRF staff attorney
Original source
http://ffrf.org/news/blog/item/22171-charlie-hebdo-bill-donahue-and-the-freedom-of-thought