Stephen Fry is apparently under investigation by Irish police for an interview a few years back in which he suggested that the problem of pain in this world does not reflect well on God.
Well, he put it a bit more bluntly, but, boiled down, that's pretty much it.
The investigation is under Ireland's "defamation" law, by which “who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence” and could be fined up to €25,000 ($27,500).
There aren't a lot of blasphemy laws left in the US. Some are still on the books in several states, but the courts have pretty much settled that even un-thoughtful blasphemy is covered under freedoms of speech and religion. Still, there are recurrent efforts in the US to resurrect such laws [2], and occasional moments where the existing ones rear their ugly heads again.[1]
And while Ireland's laws are nowhere near as strict or bloody as laws in some other nations (a number of majority-Muslim nations have much harsher punishment for blasphemy than a fine), they are just as biased in application to protect one faith as the old US laws were, and should be just as subject to ridicule. Fry's comments were impassioned, but anger against a God that allows children to suffer from bone cancer, etc., is hardly new or unique, nor is such argument about theodicy something that can (or should) be simply silenced by saying "You can't say that!"
Word has it that the Irish police do not expect to see charges filed against Fry, which is a good thing — though it might be an interesting exercise for Irish law and politics for such a thing to happen and have the matter play out in court.
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[1] http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/thats-history/45356-anti-blasphemy-laws-have-a-history-in-america
[2] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/fischer-wants-blasphemy-and-profanity-made-illegal/, https://www.onenewsnow.com/perspectives/bryan-fischer/2014/05/07/russia-bans-profanity-why-dont-we
Stephen Fry under police investigation for blasphemy after branding God an ‘utter maniac’
Stephen Fry is being investigated by Irish police over blasphemy claims more than two years after his outspoken comments about God on RTE’s The Meaning of Life went viral. Mr Fry described a hypothetical creator as “stupid” and an “utter maniac” for designing a world filled with undue suffering.
Yet, any other entity with God's long history of human rights abuses would be labeled similarly.
That God gets a free pass is just more special pleading.
Surely any God worth worshipping would be able to stand up for itself, without needing the Gardai to get involved!
Given that the complainant says he wasn't offended I'd guess he's trying to get this law scrapped by bringing attention to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2017/may/07/stephen-fry-capricious-mean-minded-stupid-god-video
Note that this blasphemy law in Ireland is fairly recent – en.wikipedia.org – it was put in in 2009 to "fix the glitch" of blasphemy being mentioned in the Constitution but not having a legal definition. Everyone's anticipating a suitable test case (hello Stephen Fry!) to get this nonsense thrown out.
I’m thinking of starting a new religion in which slavery, mass murder, and even genocide are OK, rapists can just pay their victim’s fathers, multiple marriages are OK, and children can be put to death for sassing their elders. But it needs a good name to sell it in Ireland. Maybe the prosecutor would have a suggestion or two?