Blasphemy/heresy isn’t speech and banning it isn’t censorship.
Now, I want to be clear. While many people when they give the examples of blasphemy and heresy, they mean those as things that they think are actually good, but which people in power in the past thought were bad and therefore censored/punished.
That’s not how I’m thinking about these.
Blasphemy and heresy are things I view as actually bad.
As such, what I’m not saying is not “you supporting restrictions on hate speech is just enforcing your own dead dogma over an actual critical eye!” . No, that’s not what I’m saying.
So when I oppose censoring blasphemy/heresy, I am opposing censoring some things which I think are actually bad.
Likewise, even though e.g. racism is bad, I don’t conclude that expressing racist fact-claims is “not speech”. It is clearly speech, just bad speech. And as speech, it should be permitted(in some senses of the term “permitted”) in some venues.
(Whether the use of slurs needs to be permitted, when there are ways to express whatever claims without using slurs, may be a different question, due to it being a restriction on how something is expressed rather than on what is expressed. However, on the other hand, I do find the definition of “slur” to be, hm, something to ponder? Something that can be initially confusing.)
Though, of course, there should also be venues where it is not allowed, just as there are venues where spouting heresies can get one banned.
Now, I want to be clear. While many people when they give the examples of blasphemy and heresy, they mean those as things that they think are actually good, but which people in power in the past thought were bad and therefore censored/punished. That’s not how I’m thinking about these. Blasphemy and heresy are things I view as actually bad.
As such, what I’m not saying is not “you supporting restrictions on hate speech is just enforcing your own dead dogma over an actual critical eye!” . No, that’s not what I’m saying.
So when I oppose censoring blasphemy/heresy, I am opposing censoring some things which I think are actually bad.
Likewise, even though e.g. racism is bad, I don’t conclude that expressing racist fact-claims is “not speech”. It is clearly speech, just bad speech. And as speech, it should be permitted(in some senses of the term “permitted”) in some venues.
(Whether the use of slurs needs to be permitted, when there are ways to express whatever claims without using slurs, may be a different question, due to it being a restriction on how something is expressed rather than on what is expressed. However, on the other hand, I do find the definition of “slur” to be, hm, something to ponder? Something that can be initially confusing.)
Though, of course, there should also be venues where it is not allowed, just as there are venues where spouting heresies can get one banned.