When Thinking is a Crime

By James Haught

James Haught is editor of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, and a senior editor of Free Inquiry. He is 87-years-old and would like to help secular causes more. This series is a way of giving back.

—

As prehistoric tribes evolved into early civilizations, tribal shamans were succeeded by elaborate priesthoods claiming to represent hundreds of magical gods. Priestcraft became a complex profession and gained enormous power over societies. Temples and sacrifices dominated many cultures. Shrewd men learned that they could live in luxury, instead of toiling like the rabble, if they were seen as conveyors of the holies.

“The first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool,” Voltaire wrote.

One way to guarantee the high status of priests was to inflict severe punishment on anyone who might question their supernatural connections. Thus blasphemy laws were born.

In ancient Greece, some of the first scientific thinkers were accused of “impiety” punishable by death. The list includes Socrates, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Alcibiades, Andocides, Diagoras, Theophrastos and even Aristotle. Stilpo of Megara, charged with saying that Athena was “not a god,” joked at his trial that she was a goddess instead. Aspasia, brilliant mistress of ruler Pericles, was charged, but Pericles tearfully won her acquittal. Prodicus was accused of atheism because he taught that “the gods of popular belief do not exist.”

In medieval times, the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned thousands for heresy and blasphemy. Thinking unapproved thoughts could bring violent death.

Arrival of The Enlightenment gradually erased the church’s power to kill people. But blasphemy laws still sent nonconformists to prison. For example, a Massachusetts law declared:

“Whoever willfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, His creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost… shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year.”

The last person jailed under this law was Abner Kneeland, a radical minister who lost his faith in divinely revealed scriptures. He was imprisoned in 1838. He espoused controversial causes such as birth control, racial equality and women’s rights.

—

A historic deadlock – a standoff between two irreconcilable worldviews – was created in the 1790s when America adopted the Bill of Rights assuring individual freedoms. The First Amendment guarantees free speech, free press and freedom of religion. It’s the heart of democracy, letting everyone voice any view, including criticism of religion. It’s in direct conflict with blasphemy laws that mandate punishment of those who doubt the supernatural.

Even after the Bill of Rights was law, some states continued to outlaw criticism of religion. In 1879, a Maryland law asserted:

“If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Savior, Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity… shall be imprisoned not more than six months.”

A famous American case involved P.T. Barnum before he became a circus tycoon. As a teen-ager, he started a weekly Connecticut newspaper, The Herald of Freedom, that denounced Calvinist “blue laws” against Sabbath work. His attack on church elders caused a libel prosecution that put him in jail for two months. Upon release, the budding showman staged a welcome-home parade for himself.

England’s laws required all officeholders to swear a religious oath “on the true faith of a Christian.” Freethinker Charles Bradlaugh, president of the Secular Society and publisher of a skeptic newspaper, was elected to Parliament in 1880, but refused to swear the oath. He was jailed briefly and expelled from the House of Commons, then won subsequent re-elections, and finally was seated in 1886. Previously, he and secular colleagues fought various blasphemy charges.

Today, many Western democracies are scuttling blasphemy laws – but Muslim lands still enforce them brutally.

The clash between free speech and blasphemy prosecution cannot be resolved. It ends only when religion fades so much that too few believers remain to be outraged by questioning. Witty British writer and Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1905:

“Blasphemy depends on belief and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.”

—

This essay appeared in the United Coalition of Reason Newsletter, January 2018.

—

Canadian Atheist Associates: Godless Mom, Nice Mangoes, Sandwalk, Brainstorm Podcast, Left at the Valley, Life, the Universe & Everything Else, The Reality Check, Bad Science Watch, British Columbia Humanist Association, Dying With Dignity Canada, Canadian Secular Alliance, Centre for Inquiry Canada, Kelowna Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists Association.