These are five steps to civil rights in a secular Ireland. Atheist Ireland is lobbying to promote these proposals on an ongoing basis. We welcome any feedback before we send the final version of this list to all TDs and Senators.
Overview
Atheist Ireland wants a secular Irish State, where we each have the right to our religious or nonreligious philosophical beliefs, and where the State remains neutral on these beliefs. Religious States promote religion, atheist States promote atheism, and secular States promote neither. A secular state is the only way to protect equally the rights of religious and nonreligious people.
Step 1: Secular Constitution
- Remove the requirement for the President, judges and Council of State to swear a religious oath in the presence of Almighty God (Arts 12, 31, 34), and for the President and judges to ask God to direct and sustain them (12, 34), and replace these with a single neutral declaration that does not reveal any information about the person’s religious beliefs.
- Remove the references to all authority coming from the Holy Trinity and our obligations to our divine Lord Jesus Christ (preamble); powers of government deriving under God from the people (6); blasphemy being a crime (40); the homage of public worship being due to Almighty God and the state holding his name in reverence (44); and the glory of God (closing line).
- Amend Article 44, on Religion, to explicitly give equal protection to religious and nonreligious philosophical believers. Examine and amend other Articles that are unduly influenced by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
Step 2: Secular Education
- Establish a secular State education system, that makes no distinction between children based on religious beliefs, and ensure that secular primary schools are widely available.
- Ensure that all schools convey all parts of the curriculum, including religious education, in an ‘objective, critical and pluralistic manner’, as ruled by the European Court of Human Rights and recommended to the Irish Government by the Irish Human Rights Commission.
- Provide effective remedies for parents to vindicate, in practice and law, their human right to ensure that their children’s education is in conformity with their convictions.
Step 3: Secular Lawmaking
- End the prayer that starts each parliamentary day which asks the Christian God to direct the actions and every word and work of our parliamentarians, through Christ Our Lord.
- Examine all existing and future laws to ensure that there is one law for all, based on human and civil rights and not on religious beliefs.
- Remove the law against blasphemy from the Defamation Act 2009;
- Repeal Section 7 of the Equal Status Act 2000 and Sections 12 and 37 of the Employment Equality Act 1998, which allow schools, teacher training colleges and hospitals to discriminate on religious grounds.
- Amend the Charities Act 2009, which includes the advancement of religion as a charitable purpose, and tax religious organizations on income that is not for genuine charitable purposes.
Step 4: Secular Government
- Ensure that neither the Government, nor any institutions of the State, give preferential treatment or access to any organization on the basis of their religious or nonreligious beliefs.
- Until this ideal is reached, ensure that nonreligious philosophical organizations are given the same treatment and access as are religious organizations.
Step 5: Secular Courts
- Remove the requirement for judges to swear a religious oath, and replace it with a single neutral declaration that does not reveal any information about the judge’s religious beliefs.
- Remove the requirement for defendants, witnesses and jurors to choose between a religious or nonreligious oath, and replace these with a single neutral declaration (or a question asked by the judge) that does not reveal any information about the person’s religious beliefs.
Five Steps to Civil Rights in a Secular Ireland
I would add a zeroth stage in order to nullify the effect of the blasphemy provisions before the Constitutional amendments. Please see the draft I made a while back of a Constitutional Offences (Blasphemy) Bill at
http://a-long-night-appendix.blogspot.com/2010/03/constitutional-offences-blasphemy-bill_17.html
My draft of the English part of the Constitutional Amendment is at
http://a-long-night-appendix.blogspot.com/2010/03/twenty-ninth-amendment-to-constitution.html
Obviously dates need updating in both drafts and Irish text inserted as necessary.
I was bred and buttered in the mass Catholic hypnotic trance that was Ireland then. It took me years to deprogramme and find a seat in the Church of Reality.
I am so pleased to have found your blog and applaud your efforts to bring reason and logic to the governmental and educational process, not to mention medicine (see my post on symphysiotomy. You may not be aware of this horrific procedure that was performed on pregnant Irish women under the auspices of the Catholic Church and their control of the Obgyn College. My mother was a victim.
http://wisewebwoman.blogspot.com/2007/10/me-and-mother-church.html
All the best
XO
WWW
I’ve been summoned for Jury Duty. I have no problem meeting my duties as a citizen but I have a problem taking an oath citing something called a God with my hand on a so-called Holy Book. To me such an oath has about as much weight as swearing on the handbook of my car.
Surely in this day and age, there’s a secular oath for Jurors ? On the Jury summons, it says that “to refuse to be sworn in as a juror when called upon will result in a fine of Euro 500.”
Atheism is not (and should not) be grounds to be excused from Jury duty but there is something perverse about a State that demands its non-believing citizens to declare belief in both God and a Book when taking oathes.
Surely any trial could be shown to be a mis-trial if Jurors who’ve sworn on the Bible in front of God, are later found out to be atheist ?
Here’s the best part “Persons of Holy Orders” are excused from Jury duty. Why is this the case ?
It’s unfortunate that faith has beomce equated with religion. I have faith in a higher power, but it has almost nothing to do with religion. Religion is a man-made system, originally designed as a way to control primitive people through mass fear. There is a terrorist in the sky that will get you if you do this or that, and there is an even scarier terrorist down below that has a place of fire and burning and suffering waiting for you if you don’t meet the sky terrorists demands. Those were the 2 choices available to people before a few risk takers dared to explore reality and move beyond superstition as a means of explaining everything. As human ability to understand our existence became better, the fear based control methods gradually were exposed for the farces that they are. The core problem today is that religion has to compete with a reality that people are able to research and understand fairly easily.