DUBLIN, Ireland, Jan. 2 (UPI) -- Irish atheists say they're challenging the country's new anti-blasphemy law by publishing a series of anti-religious quotes.
The law, which came into effect Friday, was enacted because of immigration bringing a growing number of religious faiths to a country where only blasphemy against Christianity had formerly been covered.
The new law defines blasphemy as speech or writings that "intentionally cause outrage" among religious adherents, but Irish atheists say it tramples their right to be anti-religious, The Guardian reported.
The British newspaper said that despite facing penalties of up to $36,000, Atheist Ireland has voiced its opposition to the law by publishing 25 anti-religious quotations on its Web site, including sayings from Irish writer-politician Conor Cruise O'Brien.
"This new law is both silly and dangerous," the group's chairman, Michael Nugent, told The Guardian. "It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at (the) U.N. level."
