Richard Dawkins Challenges Irish Police To Arrest Him During Visit

It looks like Richard Dawkins is eager to spend a night in the cells when he goes to Dublin next month.

Not as punishment for going too hard on the streets of the Irish capital, but for blasphemy.

The professor and renowned disbeliever has invited Irish police to arrest him when he makes an appearance in Dublin on June 12th.

"I shall be giving a public lecture in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on June 12th, and I shall therefore be available for arrest on a charge of blasphemy," he wrote in an article for the Irish Times.

Image: PA

Quoting his book The God Delusion, Dawkins wrote: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

He took to Twitter to back his sentiment made in the paper. "The Irish blasphemy law must go. An embarrassment to the civilised world, it encourages the uncivilised one."

It comes in defense of Stephen Fry, a fellow atheist, who recently came under investigation for voicing his opinions on God back in a 2015 interview on Irish television.

Image: PA

The police dropped the investigation after failing to find enough people who still lived in 1648.

Blasphemy is a serious business on the Emerald Isle, punishable by a fine of €25,000 (£21,000) under the Defamation Act.

Fry's comments were made on RTE's The Meaning Of Life in February 2015.

Questioned on how he'd react if he died and found himself at the pearly gates he replied: "I would say, 'Bone cancer in children? What's that about?

"How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil.

"Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?

"The God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac.

"Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of God would do that?

Topics: Ireland

Josh Teal

Josh Teal is a journalist at LADbible. He has contributed to the 'Knowing Me, Knowing EU' and 'UOKM8?' campaigns interviewing everyone from student drug dealers to climate change activists.

@tealioni