• President Obama signs a law to fight British libel tourism by barring such judgments from being enforced in the U.S.

• My esteemed guest author, Sarah Braasch, has an article in the latest issue of The Humanist on the French burqa ban.

• After a scary brush with mortality, everyone's favorite squid-loving atheist professor is back in action. Visit his blog and leave some get-well-soon comments!

• Did a Catholic priest carry out an IRA bombing? And if so, did the church help cover it up and shield him from justice?

• Susan Jacoby contemplates the theodicy of the bedbug.

• And last but not least, An Apostate's Chapel has this outstanding example of the eloquence, wit and wisdom of Robert Ingersoll, written in response to a Salvation Army-organized vigil of several thousand Christians praying simultaneously for his conversion. (Spoiler: It didn't work!)

Well, it looks like we can add Russia to the list of countries where it's illegal to criticize religion:

Two Russian museum curators were found guilty of "inciting religious hatred" for displaying a painting of Jesus Christ with Mickey Mouse's head superimposed.
    A Moscow court ordered the two men, Yuri Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev, to pay fines of £4,200 each.
    They ruled that a 2007 exhibition in Moscow called "Forbidden Art" had caused psychological trauma and moral suffering to Christians.

"Psychological trauma and moral suffering". You know, I always thought the Bible told Christians to be glad when they were persecuted:

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

—Matthew 5:11-12

but apparently this verse, like many others, has been left by the wayside. In the writings of the church fathers, there are stories of Christian martyrs who gladly suffered torture and even death in the service of their faith. Whatever else I might think about their beliefs, I can give those people points for toughness, if nothing else. But now, instead of welcoming persecution, modern Christians in many nations have become delicate flowers, so protective of their fragile psyches that they can't even bear to see Jesus with mouse ears.

And no, it's not just the state taking action to shelter and coddle Christians against their will. The church, as you might expect, took an active role in the trial:

The two convicted curators said they would appeal against Monday's verdict, while the Russian Orthodox Church complained the fines were too small.

Well, naturally. The fines have to be cripplingly large, because if they aren't, these two hooligans might not learn their lesson. They might even be tempted to criticize Christianity again in the future, and that would be lethal to the poor, helpless Russian Orthodox church. Their weak nerves couldn't possibly survive another Virgin Mary sculpted from caviar!

We're seeing something firsthand that America's founding fathers knew well: any religion that gains secular power will abuse it, no matter how much experience they have of being in the minority. Decades of repression under the Soviet government apparently taught the Russian church absolutely nothing about tolerance of dissenting views, because as soon as they regained state favor, they immediately set about trying to outlaw all opinions they disapprove of; whether it's this case, or a similar story from 2007 about them lobbying the government to outlaw homosexuality; or from 2005, when the organizers of another sacrilegious art show were convicted and fined.

This is the first and most important reason why every nation needs a strong separation of church and state. Russia has granted the Orthodox church special status in its laws, part of a dangerous drive by its leaders to promote nationalism, and the erosion of Russian citizens' freedom is the obvious and inevitable result. There are still brave people in Russia, like these Voltaire-esque museum curators, fighting for human rights - but it's all too easy to see a new iron curtain, not made of concrete or barbed wire but nonetheless real, looming and threatening to close around the people's minds.

A few weeks ago, I was alerted by a Google alert to a post, "Conversation With An Atheist", on the site Everyday Christian. Since I'm always interested to find Christians who want to converse with atheists, to see what they have to say about us and to us, I checked it out. It turned out to be a fairly run-of-the-mill creationist argument by a Christian apologist named Jack Wellman.

Since my interest was piqued, I posted a comment in reply to Mr. Wellman, and then another when he responded (you can see them by following the link to the thread). Several others chimed in as well. Wellman kept responding, using the typical creationist tactic of changing the topic to a new argument every time the previous one was refuted. He also posted several remarks that showed a spectacular misunderstanding of evolution, such as inexplicably claiming that the universality of the genetic code was evidence against common descent, rather than one of the strongest pieces of evidence for it. I tried to correct these fallacies in as civil a manner as possible.

However, at some point, it seems that either Wellman or the site moderators decided he wasn't faring well enough in the debate, and simply stopped allowing new comments to be posted. I subscribed to the thread by e-mail and got one final message several days ago, from another contributor complaining that his previous comments had been censored. But when I checked the thread, this comment had been deleted. Since then, no new comments have been allowed to appear.

This was my last comment, which was submitted over a week ago and hasn't been posted. There's been no explanation from the site moderators as to why it was rejected:

"And so you, evolutionists, and biologists had expected to see something that would link a primitive ancestor to the middle Cambrian animal Pikaia. Explain the archeological evidence that Pikaia had a less-complex ancestor then."

Easily done: Haikouella isn't an ancestor of Pikaia. You've jumped to the erroneous conclusion that a species living at time X must necessarily have been the ancestor of a species at time X+Y.

If you really want to understand this, Jack, I'm happy to explain it. Evolution rarely, if ever, works in a single, smooth trajectory of change - species A changes into species B, which changes into species C, and so on. Instead, what we usually see is a path of descent like a branching bush: species A radiates into species B1, B2, B3... and so on. Most of these go extinct, but B2, say, speciates into C1, C2, and C3, and again, some of the daughter species go extinct and others diverge in their own ways. But species don't have fixed lifespans, and there's nothing to dictate how long a particular species will survive before it goes extinct. There may still be living species from the A or B generation existing side-by-side with far more advanced descendants. It's like having an uncle who's younger than you: for humans, it's unusual but certainly possible. But in evolution, it's downright common.

For obvious reasons, it's difficult to reconstruct an exact line of descent from fossils, just as you probably couldn't put together an exact family tree just by looking at photographs. It's possible that either Pikaia or Haikouella is the common ancestor of all vertebrates, or it may be another species we haven't discovered yet. But what's certain is that evolution was doing a lot of experimenting with chordates in the Cambrian, and what's equally certain is that we came from one of those lineages, because true vertebrates - primitive fish called ostracoderms - start appearing in the Late Cambrian and then in greater variety in the next period, the Ordovician. This was why I wrote "Pikaia or one very like it" - all this detail is what lies behind that little phrase.

"Irises and humans have 25% of the same DNA, so based upon your faulty logic, we should be at least 1/4th part Iris."

It would be more accurate to say that irises and humans are very similar when it comes to the most basic functions of life, which is true, and is a prediction of evolution via universal common descent. Really, why are you so surprised by this? Sure, irises and humans don't look much alike, but at the lowest levels of organization, we have a lot in common.

We're both made out of eukaryotic cells. We both store genetic information in DNA, copy it into messenger RNA, and transcribe that RNA into proteins. We both use ATP as the cellular currency of energy. We both share basic components of cellular metabolism like glycolysis and the Krebs cycle. We have these and many other traits in common because we (that is to say, animals and plants) are both descended from an ancestral eukaryote that did all these things. We've both inherited a common toolbox of genes for performing the basic functions of life - genes that perform functions so basic, it would be essentially impossible for evolution to change them in any major way - and as the human and iris lines diverged, we each added our own specializations on top of that.

"Incidentally, you failed to mention the fact that the genetic code for protein-coding genes is nearly universal in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Millions of alternative genetic codes exist, so why do all organisms have nearly the same one?"

Again: because we're all descended from a common ancestor. This is actually one of the most powerful lines of evidence for evolution. Why do you think it should be a problem for us?

Note that an omnipotent creator could easily have created every single species with a completely different genetic code, a completely different way of turning genes into protein. That's the kind of evidence that would prove evolution impossible. Instead, what we find is near universality, with just a few very minor variations - the only signature we could reasonably expect from a process of descent with modification.

If you see anything so inflammatory in this comment that a site moderator would have cause to reject it, please tell me what it is, because I'm stumped. The only conclusion I can draw is that Jack Wellman realized he wasn't doing well and didn't want to deal with any further criticism, and prevailed on the site admins to stop letting it through. (I've also saved a copy of the thread in case they go back and delete earlier comments, which wouldn't surprise me at this point.)

Sadly, in my experience, this isn't uncommon. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that it's pointless to debate creationists and other religious fundamentalists in any forum that they control, because they'll shut down the discussion as soon as they sense they're losing, even if the contrary comments are polite and on topic. They simply can't be trusted to allow a fair and open debate; they have too much to lose. And this isn't true just on web forums, but in wider society, where religious believers constantly try to shut down criticism with blasphemy laws, "hate speech" claims, threats, and every other method fair or foul available to them.

After some searching, I found Mr. Wellman's own site. I've sent him an e-mail to let him know about this post and to invite him to continue the debate here, or even just to explain why my comments stopped being posted. I don't expect much to come of it, but we'll have to see.

• It's about time! The SEC has charged a psychic with securities fraud for claiming to be able to supernaturally foretell the direction of the market.

• The staff of IslamOnline, a Cairo-based journalism website that offers a platform for liberal and reformist views, have gone on strike over plans by the Qatari owners to impose stricter editorial controls and force a more conservative viewpoint.

• I'm very glad to report that Ireland's government is now backtracking on the ludicrous blasphemy law it passed several months ago. The government plans to hold a referendum later this year on whether the law should be repealed. Now it's just up to the people of Ireland to do the right thing.

• Less positively, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld religious language in the Pledge of Allegiance, ruling against a new lawsuit brought by Michael Newdow, and reaching the ridiculous conclusion that "one nation under God" is not religious language. One of the judges who took part in the original decision (which Newdow won before his first case was thrown out by the Supreme Court for lack of standing) wrote a scathing dissent. Newdow plans to ask for an en banc rehearing.

• Also, there's a truly outstanding article by Johann Hari interviewing the Ethiopian women fighting back against bride abduction, the brutal practice of men finding wives by kidnapping and raping them (at which point, in agreement with biblical law, they're expected to marry their rapist - since they've been "ruined" and no other man will have them). In the shadow of a vicious dictatorship, there are heroic women, and men, fighting to change a culture where this is accepted and common.

Legal observers have noted for some time that the laws governing defamation in the United Kingdom are far more plaintiff-friendly than similar laws in the U.S. In the U.S., anyone claiming they were libeled has to prove that the allegedly libelous statements were false. But in the U.K., the burden of proof is reversed: the defendant in a libel suit has to prove that the statements they made were true. This creates a serious hazard to free speech: rich, litigious individuals can file lawsuits and win just by prolonging the court battle until the other side runs out of money to fight, at which point they instantly lose - and then must pay damages and court costs.

This is precisely the strategy that thin-skinned billionaires and powerful business interests, many of them not even based in the U.K., have been using to shut down anyone who criticizes them. It's become so common, it's acquired a name: "libel tourism". Most infamously, the Saudi businessman Khalid bin Mahfouz sued journalist Rachel Ehrenfeld in the U.K. courts for her book Funding Evil, which alleged that bin Mahfouz financially supported Muslim terrorist groups - this even though Ehrenfeld doesn't live in the U.K. and her book wasn't published there. Another example is the case of Simon Singh, a science journalist who wrote an editorial saying that there was no evidence for the effectiveness of chiropractic - and was promptly sued by the British Chiropractic Association. That case is still ongoing and has already cost Singh tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours defending himself.

And now, the U.K.'s libel laws are being invoked yet again in what promises to be their most outrageous and absurd application so far. Atheists might have guessed that this was coming:

A Saudi Arabian lawyer has threatened to use British courts to overturn a Danish free speech ruling by bringing a defamation case over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that depicted Islam's founder as a terrorist.

Faisal Yamani, a Jeddah based lawyer, is planning to take a case to London's libel courts on behalf of over 90,000 descendants of Mohammed who have claimed that the drawings have defamed them and the Islamic faith.

...Mr Yamani demanded last year that 11 Danish newspapers remove all cartoon images of Mohammed from their websites and issue front page apologies along with promises that the images would never be printed again.

Yes, it's those Danish cartoons of Mohammed again. Five years after they were first published, the Muslim world just can't move on, and is still demanding that someone, anyone, must be made to pay for their hurt feelings. From angry mobs in the streets and ax attacks on cartoonists, to libel lawsuits and pushing defamation resolutions at the U.N., it's clear there's nothing they won't try to censor and intimidate anyone who criticizes them in any way at all.

But even under the U.K.'s plaintiff-friendly defamation laws, this suit looks even less meritorious than its predecessors. First of all, on what basis does anyone assert the right to sue on Mohammed's behalf? Can a many-centuries-dead person be libeled? And what "factual statement" was made by these drawings that the plaintiffs claim to be defamatory?

But whatever legal issues are raised by this lawsuit, the question of its merit is irrelevant. Like all libel tourism, its purpose isn't to prevail on the merits, but to intimidate and harass media organizations with protracted, expensive litigation and the threat of a catastrophic judgment, thus chilling their speech and making them afraid to offend any deep-pocketed individual. Whether it's pseudoscience groups protecting their cash cow from scientists' criticism or the perpetually aggrieved Muslim mob and their petulant demand that no one be allowed to express any opinion they disapprove of, the strategy is the same, and the result is too often the same as well.

America has this problem too of course, with so-called SLAPP lawsuits - but in our system, with the burden of proof the right way round, it's much more difficult for cults and corporations to succeed in silencing their critics. Britain's libel laws, on the other hand, are far too easily abused by those who flee from criticism and avoid open debate - but eagerly use thuggery and coercion to shut down their opposition if given the chance.

Fortunately, the U.K. has seen the rise of a broad coalition seeking to overhaul the libel tourism laws and put the country back on a more rational footing. But too much damage has already been done, and more is being done, so reform can't come soon enough. If you live in Great Britain, contact your MP and tell them to support this effort! We need to take action before any more scientists, atheists or freethinkers are silenced by the allies of corruption, censorship and superstition.

Quick! Somebody call the accommodationists!

Several men who went to a suburban mosque to perform morning prayers Wednesday were shocked to discover two bloodied wild boar heads wrapped in plastic bags in the mosque compound, said Zulkifli Mohamad, the top official at the Sri Sentosa Mosque on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city.

This unpleasant stunt is just the latest symptom of a smoldering religious war that recently erupted in Malaysia, a multiethnic and multireligious country with a Muslim majority and significant Buddhist, Christian and Hindu minorities. The catalyst was a decision last year in which Malaysia's highest court ruled that the Herald, a Roman Catholic newspaper, had the right to use the word "Allah" in its Malay-language edition as a term for God. This overruled a "years-old government ban on the use of the word in non-Muslim publications", and this was the result:

Among the attacks in various Malaysian states, eight churches and two small Islamic prayer halls were firebombed, two churches were splashed with paint, one had a window broken, a rum bottle was thrown at a mosque and a Sikh temple was pelted with stones, apparently because Sikhs use "Allah" in their scriptures.

The New York Times gives further details of the ensuing violence and protests, including this bit:

"Allah is only for us," said Faedzah Fuad, 28, who participated in the rally. "The Christians can use any word, we don't care, but please don't use the word Allah."

...Hand-lettered signs reading "Please respect the name of Allah" remained in a stack on the ground where Ms. Faedzah had prepared them.

Another article notes that Malay Muslims "paraded a severed cow’s head in the streets" in November to protest the building of a new Hindu temple - one wonders if they inadvertently inspired the latest act of vandalism.

So far, prominent accommodationists like Chris Mooney and Karen Armstrong have yet to blame the Malaysian violence on Richard Dawkins, though I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they come up with some connection.

But I'd really like to know how people who hold such views would respond to this. Should the Christians have sought permission to use the word "Allah" in their own publications? Why or why not? And how would they respond to protestors like Faedzah Fuad? Since Mooney and his allies hold that religious beliefs must be respected, does being respectful require that the rest of us be forbidden to even use a word if a particular religious group claims ownership of it?

It's also worth noting, contrary to the worldview of the accommodationists, that the peace which formerly prevailed wasn't a cheerful democratic diplomacy that was disrupted by a few reckless agitators. On the contrary, it was enforced by coercion: it was illegal for non-Muslim publications to use the word "Allah", even if said publication was printed by people for whom that word was a part of their native language. Writing for Slate, Christopher Hitchens describes just how narrow the Malaysian court's ruling was:

The high court finding was very narrowly drawn; it said that the Catholic Herald could say Allah in its Malay-language edition, provided that the paper was sold "only on church grounds and bearing the label FOR NON-MUSLIMS ONLY."

But as Hitchens notes, even this incredibly circumscribed exemption was too much for the Islamists, and the court decision has now joined

the long list of actual and potential confrontations [between religions], derived from the infinitely elastic list of matters about which Muslims award themselves the right to be aggrieved... Who could have guessed that they wouldn't notice until last year that there were non-Muslims speaking the same language as them? Who could have foreseen that within weeks of this startling discovery we would witness the usual dreary display of yelling crowds, snarling preachers, and smoldering buildings?

Events like this show the futility of trying to keep the peace by tiptoeing around religious believers' sensibilities. Contrary to the accommodationists who believe all would be well if only we New Atheists would stop stirring up trouble, the truth of the matter is that there are millions of fundamentalists, of many different religions, who cannot be appeased, who will not accept anything less than total submission, and who need only the barest sliver of an excuse to resort to violence. Trying to keep these people happy is pointless: if we bow to one of their demands, that will just encourage them to demand more, until the whole world is shackled by their peculiar and archaic set of laws.

Violence like this is a reason why we need more atheist speech, not less. If religious believers expect that they can have any demand met by claiming offense, that only gives them an incentive to become more unreasonable and more prone to violence. We need to make it clear to everyone that no one's beliefs are above criticism, and no one can expect to escape skeptical inquiry. That attitude, and not hypersensitive demands for self-censorship, is the only thing that will lead to an end of religious warfare and violence in the long run.

This week, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders appeared in court in his home country to face charges of "inciting discrimination and hatred", which could carry a two-year prison sentence on each count. Wilders is, of course, the bomb-throwing right-wing populist whom I wrote about in 2008, made infamous by his short film Fitna (caution: some disturbing images).

When Wilders' blunt criticisms of Islam caused fury among Muslims, the nation of Jordan - of which Wilders is not a citizen, and where he has no political or personal connections - demanded that he be extradited there in order to punish him. Understandably, the Dutch government refused. And despite a flood of complaints, Dutch prosecutors - to their credit - refused to charge him, finding that he had broken no laws. Their statement on the matter was a clear and welcome affirmation of the principle of free speech:

"That comments are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable. Freedom of expression fulfils an essential role in public debate in a democratic society. That means that offensive comments can be made in a political debate."

But now a Dutch court of appeals, acting on its own initiative, has reversed this decision and ordered that Wilders be prosecuted - hence this week's hearing.

Before I respond to this, let me make one thing clear: Wilders himself is a hypocrite. Despite his vaunted love for the principle of free speech, he's called for a ban on the Qur'an, a ban on the founding of new mosques, and a ban on further immigration from Islamic countries. I disagree with all those proposals just as vehemently as I disagree with the plan to prosecute him.

But that's precisely the point. It's not Geert Wilders to whom I owe any allegiance, but the principle of freedom of expression. And the Netherlands is doing grave harm to that principle by its decision to prosecute someone for doing nothing more than voicing his opinion. As Russell Blackford astutely notes, it's not just Geert Wilders who's on trial now - it's the Netherlands as well. If it shows by its actions that it is now a country where a person can be jailed for speaking his mind, it's well on its way to erasing the distinction between itself and the theocracies of Islam.

In truth, it's not Wilders' fate I'm particularly concerned about. If he's acquitted, so much the better. If he's found guilty and punished, that will in all likelihood allow him to paint himself as a martyr (and rightfully so) and will probably win him even more support. The Dutch court has yet to learn the most basic lesson of free speech, that trying to suppress ideas by force tends to make them even more powerful and resilient.

What does concern me is that there are those among the Dutch people who fail to grasp what's at stake here, who think they can solve all their problems with Islam by punishing the ones who call attention to them:

Gerard Spong, a prominent lawyer who pushed for Mr Wilders's prosecution, welcomed the court's decision.

"This is a happy day for all followers of Islam who do not want to be tossed on the garbage dump of Nazism," he told reporters.

If Muslims are indeed concerned with avoiding that label, they should be doing more to stop violence in the name of Islam. Speak out, support free speech, denounce the imams who call for violence, make it clear that they are not the sole authority on the teachings of Islam! Muslims have not done nearly enough along these lines, and throwing one Geert Wilders in jail will accomplish precisely nothing if their actions are such as to cause similar thoughts to occur in a million minds. If anything, it's likely to inspire more hatred, more anger, more xenophobia, and make the eventual outcome worse for everyone concerned.

So, there's an outside chance you've heard about a certain column by Nancy Graham Holm, who gifted the world with her thoughts on the ax attack on Kurt Westergaard earlier this month. Although we got a bit sidetracked, I still want to write a direct response to what she said, because I think there are some lessons to be drawn from it.

Muslims failed to see Westergaard's cartoon as satire. Instead, they saw in it a defamatory and humiliating message: Muslims are terrorists. Humiliation is a devastating feeling...

Why did the editors of Jyllands-Posten want to mock Islam in this way? Some of us believed it was in bad taste and also cruel. Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act.

...The free society precept is merely an attempt to give the perpetrators the moral high ground when actually it is a smokescreen for a deeply rooted prejudice, not against Muslims, but against religion per se.

Really, I'm marveling at that last sentence. "The perpetrators", she says. And who are the perpetrators, according to Nancy Graham Holm? Not the people who've plotted to murder Kurt Westergaard - including, let me say it again, the fanatic who bashed down his door with an ax - but the people who drew cartoons that certain Muslims didn't want to be drawn. Those cartoonists are the ones who started this; they deserve the blame for their "aggressive act"; they've unjustly sought to claim "the moral high ground". Presumably, if any of them actually are murdered by religious fanatics, Holm will tell us that it was their fault.

Is there an informative parallel here? Why, yes, there is; I'm so glad you asked. The parallel that I'd draw is to the people who claim that rape victims are at fault for being raped, because they "invited" their own sexual assault by dressing or acting provocatively and we all know men just can't be expected to control themselves when that happens:

The survey also found that 26 per cent of adults believed that a women was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing sexy or revealing clothing. Some 22 per cent held the same view if a woman had had many sexual partners. Similarly, 30 per cent said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk.

Another parallel is with the "gay panic" defense, which claims that men who are the recipients of unwanted homosexual advances are legally justified in murdering the other person:

Weighing the options, [the jury] chose to believe Biedermann and his lawyer, Sam Adam, Jr., who also successfully represented R. Kelly in his 2008 child pornography charges, and who is also ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich's defense attorney. They accepted as reasonable the premise that it had taken Biedermann 61 stab wounds in order to successfully fend off an unwanted sexual advance from another man.

The exact same reasoning is deployed by Nancy Graham Holm, here, in her argument that Danish cartoonists "provoked" the Muslim segment of society with their aggressive cartoons and therefore deserve what they get. As if any act of speech, regardless of the speaker's intent, could ever justify others committing violence against them! This is nothing less than a rejection of the charter of rights that makes democratic society possible in the first place. It's an abject surrender to the vicious thugs who would blackmail everyone else into submission by the threat of violence - as if it was our job to "back down" and "apologize" to them, both of which she calls on the Danes to do.

It's also, though Holm doesn't realize it, extremely prejudiced against Muslims. She criticizes the Danes for acting immaturely:

As a journalist now living in the same town as Westergaard, I thought some at Jyllands-Posten had acted like petulant adolescents.

Yet if Danish people are to be judged "petulant adolescents", the consequences of her view for Muslims are far worse. Her view treats Muslims as if they were wild animals - dangerous creatures who can't be counted on not to lash out if provoked. We, in contrast, view them as human beings, and accordingly expect that they should be able to listen to criticism and respond to it with an appropriate degree of maturity. In many cases, of course, this turns out not to be true. But arguing that we should censor ourselves so as not to anger them is as futile and offensive as arguing that women should never wear revealing clothes so they don't get raped, or arguing that homosexuals should stay in the closet so as not to be murdered by homophobic crazies. In a free society, we should all have the right to express ourselves in any way we choose. Why are some people so eager to call for the revocation of that right the moment a bunch of ignorant thugs object to it?

Scarcely two days into 2010, we've gotten a stark reminder of how free speech is still threatened by religious fanatics: Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who drew the image of Mohammed depicted to the right, was attacked at home Friday night by a murderous, ax-wielding religious fanatic. Fortunately, neither Westergaard nor his 5-year-old granddaughter, who was with him at the time, were harmed. They escaped to a panic room built into the house for just this purpose and summoned police, who shot and wounded the attacker when he refused to surrender.

This isn't the first time Westergaard's life has been threatened by crazed Muslims. As I reported previously, he's been the target of multiple death threats since the Mohammed cartoons were first published in 2005, and in 2008, three other men were arrested by Danish police and charged with plotting his murder.

In an October interview with the conservative National Post (which notes ruefully that Westergaard isn't much of a fan of Christianity, either), the artist was unrepentant:

"As I see it, many of the immigrants who came to Denmark, they had nothing. We gave them everything - money, apartments, their own schools, free university, health care. In return, we asked one thing - respect for democratic values, including free speech. Do they agree? This is my simple test."

The best way to defend this brave man is to ensure that he's not the only target. There has been too much embarrassed silence and self-censorship over this affair in the halls of Western journalism. We need more images and drawings of Mohammed, not fewer, to show Muslim thugs that their religious laws have no power over us - and to ensure that they'll have no single target, if they persist in the belief that they can avoid criticism by murdering all their critics. (Any Daylight Atheism readers have artistic talent?)

It's not just lone fanatics, but governments that are getting in on the anti-free-speech game. Sadly, Ireland's new blasphemy law, which criminalizes the publication of matter "that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion", has just taken effect. (Atheism is not similarly protected from offense, in case you were wondering.)

However, we should count ourselves fortunate for having the smart freethinkers at Atheist Ireland - who promptly challenged this idiotic piece of medievalism by publishing 25 blasphemous quotes, against a wide variety of religions, as a way of testing the new law and exposing its foolishness. Will the government dare to prosecute them? Stay tuned!

The Newsweek/Washington Post blog On Faith has posted a series of responses from panelists to the American Humanist Association's new holiday ad campaign (HT: An Apostate's Chapel). Here's the question they asked:

What do you think of the American Humanist Association's new "Godless Holiday" campaign? The ads, displayed on transit systems in five major U.S. cities, will say: "No God? ...No Problem! Be good for goodness' sake. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God." Is this another front on the so-called secular "war on Christmas"? Or is this another example of the pluralistic strength of America?

The responses run the gamut, including the usual plaintive whines from theologians who stomp their feet and insist that we're not allowed to be good people unless we believe in their god. There's also this air ball from John Shelby Spong:

The religious community needs to understand the God that the humanists are rejecting. This God is defined as a being, supernatural in power, external to the world, who periodically invades the world in miraculous ways.

No, Mr. Spong, that is incorrect. We atheists reject your thin, watered-down porridge of a god as well, just as we reject the traditional theistic understanding. That is the definition of what it means to be an atheist: we reject all notions of gods, without preference or partiality.

But this is all old hat. I wanted to focus on a more interesting response from Susan K. Smith, a pastor in the liberal United Church of Christ. You might expect someone from such a denomination to be sympathetic to us - but her post is titled, incredibly, "Humanists, leave us alone".

I cannot for the life of me understand why humanists don't just leave people who believe in God alone.

...People like me who believe in God find comfort in the thought of an Almighty. Belief in that Almighty has been a mainstay of my life and of the life of my ancestors. I choose to continue to believe and will do so, and so I resent people telling me that I should not.

If your sympathies were with the accommodationists, you might want to use this as another piece of evidence for how disrespectful and rude the New Atheists are, that we're driving away even liberal theist groups like the UCC. But look again, and see what Smith is complaining about: not some scathing attack or vicious polemic, but an ad which simply expresses the message that belief in God isn't necessary to be good. You can't get less confrontational than that, short of being silent. But even this mild, cheerful message is enough to provoke Smith to wish that we would just go away and leave her alone.

Glaringly absent from Smith's piece is any recognition that religious people "don't just leave humanists alone". In fact, there are large, multimillion-dollar media and political ministries whose sole mission is to tell the rest of us what we should believe. The atheist ad campaigns, as laudable as they are, are just a drop in the bucket compared to the blizzard of religious evangelizing that pervades our society. And yet it's our ad campaign, not theirs, that raises her ire.

Michael Otterson, a PR spokesperson for the Mormon church, strikes a similar note in his response. He essentially says it's okay for humanists to speak out, just so long as they don't make any religious person upset:

The potential for trouble lies in whether a message like theirs is allowed to descend into ridicule or condemnation of those who do profess a belief in God. Just as those who consider themselves nonreligious expect their lack of belief to be respected, religious Americans should also be able to safely assume their profession of faith will be respected and not just tolerated.

First of all, I hope I'm not the only one who feels a small chill down my spine when I read the phrase "is allowed". This choice of wording carries the unmistakable implication that there should be some third party deciding which ideas may or may not be expressed.

But what really leaps out at me is the gigantic whopper in the second sentence. Did you catch it? Look again: He writes that atheists "expect [our] lack of belief to be respected", and so religious people have a right to ask for the same.

This is an utter fabrication. We atheists ask for the same legal rights as believers. That is all we have ever asked for. We emphatically do not seek to be exempt from criticism. As a look around the atheist blogosphere shows, we do not fear theist arguments - we're more than confident that we can defeat them, and generally speaking, we welcome the opportunity.

Otterson has distorted our position so that he can draw a false equivalency between our views and his. We seek only equality before the law, while he seeks the same thing religious groups have always demanded: freedom from outside scrutiny, from difficult questions, and from being held to account for the wrongs his church commits. He fears criticism and debate, while we welcome them. Make no mistake: he clearly wishes to be free from ridicule and condemnation even when his church does things that deserve to be ridiculed and condemned.

Remarkably, the person who most clearly grasps the point is an evangelical himself, Richard Mouw:

We evangelical types have paraded enough of our own in-your-face stuff in public places, so why should we complain when the unbelievers do the same?

Bravo! It seems almost superfluous to praise someone for recognizing such an obvious point, except that so many of his fellow believers seem incapable of grasping it. Religious groups of every kind, and Christian groups especially, have always had the freedom to advertise their beliefs, to argue with and persuade others, and to criticize beliefs that they disagree with. They have that freedom and they have exercised it to the fullest extent. It's much too late to complain now that atheists have started getting into the persuasion game.

And what's so terrible about atheists arguing for our point of view, anyway? America and the Western nations in general have a strong, lively tradition of free speech, which includes debate, ridicule, satire and harsh criticism. Every moral advance our society has made was because of rabble-rousers who spoke out against popular prejudices, even when they incurred the wrath of the majority or inspired fervent wishes that those nasty, uncouth radicals would just go away and stop disturbing the status quo.

This idea that public discourse should be gentle and peaceful and not disturb anyone, as if we were all elderly grandmothers meeting for tea, is a modern aberration. The reason we have a First Amendment is precisely so we can speak truths that other people would rather not hear. Free speech is only doing its job when it inspires action, passion, and anger, and so the New Atheists must be doing things exactly right, judging by the response we've received. So, no, we're not going away, and we're not going to be silenced. We're going to say precisely what we think, and we're going to do so as loudly and as often as possible. Do you have a problem with that? Tough!