Burning the Bible or the Torah or the Koran - is this an example for free speech?

[Munro]

Burning the Bible or the Torah or the Koran - is this an example for free speech?

 

[Munro]

1 vote so far

 

[Munro]

My answer would be:
no, it isnt, as burning things is no speech

 

[Munro]

What do the others think?

 

[fastfredy0]

Re:

Burning the Bible or the Torah or the Koran - is this an example for free speech?​

My answer would be:
no, it isnt, as burning things is no speech

Free speech, the subject of the thread, is defined as: "The right to express an opinion in public without being restrained or censored."
I believe people have the right to express an opinion in public without being restrained via burning a bible, koran or whatever.

Aside: I also don't care about the additional CO2 green house effect of the burning of books ... *giggle*

 

[Josheb]

Burning the Bible or the Torah or the Koran - is this an example for free speech?

hehehe...

Not if one does so silently .

Here in the USA, we live in a pluralistic Constitutional representative republic where the Constitution confirms a certain, limited number, of individual rights. It also empowers the will of the majority over the minority a long as the majority position does not violate the rights of those in the minority. These rights are said to be inherent. In other words, it is not the Constitution that gives us these rights.

People can burn books.

Books can be burned for warmth, or they can be burned as an act of protest. They can be burned as a means of censorship. Same behavior, different motives, diverse outcomes one of which they all have in common: the destruction of the books.

When it comes to books that are holy to a given population that means the person(s) burning the holy book is doing so knowingly in offense to a large group of others who hold that book sacred. Burning those books, therefore, is noever solely a protest about some content in that book (specified or not) but also always an overt act of disrespect and marginalization of those holding the book sacred. The same argument could be extended to the humanist or atheist who hold literature "sacred" (oxymoron recognized but not intended).

In the USA some 80%+ people believe in God. 63% of them are Christians (who, presumably, hold the Bible in some degree of esteem). 1.7% of them are Jewish and 1.2% of them are Muslim, which makes for a few million of each. One book burning is likely to offend millions, if not hundreds of millions.

And that's usually part of the methodology.

By those claiming to want tolerance, a change in thought, equal rights, and any number of alternatives that in the end prove hypocritical given the enormous disrespect shown by burning sacred books. The protest behind the book-burning is speech inherently exiting, affirmed by the Constitution, and empowered by the rule of law, but the book-burning itself is not "free speech," simply because it is not itself speech. It is a destructive act that logically betrays itself if the protest is about individual rights.

It's also likely to be a false-cause fallacy, but that's fodder for another post .

 

[Munro]

• Total voters 3

https://christcentered.community.fo...this-an-example-for-free-speech.676/poll/vote

1 x yes
2 x no

 

[makesends]

• Total voters 3

https://christcentered.community.fo...this-an-example-for-free-speech.676/poll/vote

1 x yes
2 x no

Consider that a large segment of the population don't do polls. But don't take it personally.

This is something I realized while I was still a teen, if I'm remembering right. A large segment of the population don't do polls, don't want to play the pollsters' games. And that segment is generally conservative! Which means the polls are necessarily skewed.

Not so much on this site as another, I have noticed that some of the polls are put up there rhetorically, to lead to the point the OP wants to make, just as in secular polls, so often, the polls are not shown in order to truly represent anything, but to make this viewpoint or that appear valid or popular.

 

[David1701]

Burning the Bible or the Torah or the Koran - is this an example for free speech?

No; burning and speech are different.

 

[Instant]

It is free speech, but I do not approve of burning the Bible. It cannot be made illegal, but I personally find it objectionable.