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Indonesian Man Faces Five Years For Atheist Facebook Post
An anonymous reader writes "31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting 'God does not exist' on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault."
It's one thing persecuting people for their religion but persecuting atheists is going too far.
31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting âoeGod does not existâ on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault.
The posting was made on a Facebook Page titled Ateis Minang (Minang Atheist), which Aan created. At the time of writing, it had over 1,700 Likes. Aanâ(TM)s posting has been removed, but supporters on the Page are urging police to release him.
I wonder if they were trying to make a believer out of him or just needed to re-assure themselves that they are right and he is wrong. Theirs must be a merciful god, a god of great compassion.
Atheism is a violation of Indonesian law under the founding principles of the country. Indonesia, the worldâ(TM)s most populous Muslim nation, recognises the right to practice six religions in total: Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism. Atheism is, however, illegal. According to Indonesian criminal law, anyone who tries to stop others believing in a faith could face up to five years in jail for blasphemy.
- further proving that governments are inherently evil.
You can't handle the truth.
This is what you get with religious rule.
...are on the "non-believers".
Religion is the most dangerous thing facing our population, not overpopulation. They all claim to be peaceful, but criticize them - and you'll see their true nature.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"If God existed, he would teach you compassion." Seriously, play to win.
This is true for most of USA too. While you probably won't get jailed for saying such, there are just as ridiculous laws and customs based on Christianity, especially compared to other more saner countries. Especially about gay marriage and abortion.
when the religious people kill you because you say it.
Be seeing you...
...is Islam. That religion has been a blight on humanity ever since it's founding. As with other religions, it began as a tool to get it's founder easy access to money, power, and women, but like religion always does, it spiraled out of control and this is what we end up with. For all the atrocities and violence Islam advocates I'm absolutely shocked that no one has the balls to stand up and condemn it for what it is: a repressive political ideology that seeks to propagate itself to the ends of the earth and utterly dominate the lives of all who are forced to live under it. Islam is nothing more than a brutal 6th century tribal religion infused with the culture of its day that has no place in the modern world. Christianity used to be like this in the dark ages, and that trend was only halted with the rise of secular government.
I'm posting AC because people feel some need to justify Islam for some reason and blame the poster for calling a spade a spade. I have no use for any religion at all.
All the guy did was tell the truth. One day maybe the world will get over believing in something created by folks attempting to explain the world around them. Doubtful in a few hundred lifetimes, but we can dream.
Yet another 3rd world reaction to the eternal pornographic issue - my deity is larger than yours.
Reminds me of one of my favorite Carl Sagan quotes:
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Even the religions with science in the name ("Christian Science" and "Scientology") are profoundly against freedom of inquiry, except where it is used to glorify their mythology. This story kind of backs up the whole "our god is a little god, we must coddle it" approach.
Ryan Fenton
...are on the "non-believers".
Religion is the most dangerous thing facing our population, not overpopulation. They all claim to be peaceful, but criticize them - and you'll see their true nature.
Do you realize that you're the first step on a dangerous road? Your generalizations will lead to believers being the next group hunted. I'm an atheist myself, but stating that religion is the most dangerous problem faced by society is both ridiculously naive and dangerous. There are believers who are a problem, but that does not mean that all religious types are nut cases.
+1 just my thought.
There's only a quantitative difference between the US and Indonesia. In many areas of the US you can not be elected to public office if you won't swear on the Bible.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
You probably haven't lived in Indonesia, have you?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Reverse psychology - you're right, it's equally dangerous to be pointing fingers at a minority, but religion is far from minority, in fact - it's directly responsible for wars all over the planet.
I'm all okay with religion as long as people don't take it to extremes, but history has proven over and over again that if you chose belief over facts - aka religion vs science, then you're bound to lose, no matter what the outcome would be as long as the outcome is anything but peaceful.
And history shows - people DO take things to an extreme. You don't see a bunch of scientist raging out on the streets over some cartoon-drawings, burning down embassies, cars and peoples homes?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I will never comprehend the "if you don't believe, I'll beat the shit out of you" mentality.
Sure, with the minor difference that your imaginary atheist lynch mob does not in fact exist.
Atheism isn't a belief system, but the rejection or lack of one.
Exactly, just as an empty set is not actually a set...oh, wait...
Ezekiel 23:20
The difference between that young lady's story and what happened in Indonesia is this: people were just talking, online, about how much they hate her. When she is being beaten up, or people are shooting at her, or Molotov cocktails are being thrown, then maybe the comparison will make sense.
In America, you can voice your dissent, you can call people garbage, and you can do so for any reason -- even if you are calling them garbage for putting an end to a blatant constitutional infraction. The constitution protects the rights of atheists and religious people of all varieties equally, and that includes the right to be rude, insulting, and to hate the very constitution that provides you with those protections.
Palm trees and 8
Absolutely. I am pro life. I am alive, and I consider life to be one of the most amazing things in the universe, and, as a thing that is alive, I tend to strongly support life, out of pure self interest. On the other hand, I think woman should have the right to abort their pregnancies. The reason this assholes call themselves pro-life is because nobody will rationally say they are "anti life".
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
When did Richard Dawkins start beating people up? Did you ever hear of Dawkins throwing Molotov cocktails into someone's home? How about threatening to kill someone? No? None of that?
You can be critical of others without getting violent. Dawkins is critical of religion, sure, but publishing a book is not even close to beating someone up over a comment on Facebook.
Palm trees and 8
"You never hear in the news, "200 killed today when Atheist rebels took heavy shelling from the Agnostic stronghold in the north"." - Doug Stanhope
One side is indeed, worse.
How does a belief that there is no God not count as a belief system?
Well, first of all, atheism is not "a belief that there is no God," it is a lack of belief in any gods at all (for some reason, Christians insist that there is only one deity anyone could believe in). Someone who had never heard of any deities in their entire life would be an atheist: people must be taught to follow religions or believe in gods.
That being said, atheism is not a system at all. I am an atheist, but I still practice my religion -- I simply do not believe that deities exist, because there is no evidence to support that notion. Yet I still keep traditions, moral beliefs, and philosophies that emerged from my religion -- that is the "system." I am not alone in this -- it is more common in my religion than people would like to admit, and I suspect that it happens in other religions as well.
Palm trees and 8
"Pro-life" is actually a poor choice if only their opponents would use it properly. Are they pro-life with respect to the organisms that cause the plague?
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Oh, how I wish my mod points hadn't just expired. Mod^^^^^. Listen up slashdot nerds, we're doing symbolic logic. Let's call "god does not exist" proposition P.
* Atheism: the value of P is "true"
* Agnosticism: the value of P is "unknown"
Thus "atheism" is by definition a metaphysical belief system (or at least a component of one), because it affirms at least one particular propositional statement about metaphysics. Defining atheism as a lack of a belief system is merely a convenient way of using weasel-words to avoid having to defend the propositional statements contained in one's position.
"The misuse of language induces evil in the soul" -Socrates
Censorship is the opposite of education. If neo-darwinism were defensible, people would not need to try and censor ID.
Remember that "pro-choice" means pro-choice for the woman, whereas pro-life means pro-choice for the human which will develop if the embryo not destroyed. There's nothing inherently correct about believing that a woman must or must not look after a fertilised embyro inside her, just as there's nothing inherently correct or incorrect about believing parents must look after their 8 year old kid.
The problem with the above logic is this.. even in this day and age, life from conception to birth is still has a really high morbidity rate. That is, women miscarry all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with abortion, and often times aren't even recorded. Sometimes the body determines that the embryo is not viable. Sometimes the embryo has a flaw which kills it early in the process. Sometimes it's late in the process. Sometimes random chance puts a perfectly viable embryo into a situation where it just grabbed onto the wrong spot (ectopic pregnancies), putting itself and the mother at risk. Post-birth, the morbidity rate drops significantly as the child's physiology isn't so dependent on a delicate balance between mother and child.
This is a problem that has no good solution. That there is a ton of controversy around it only reflects that fact. I'm pretty sure that even most pro-choice folks would carry the opinion that abortions should not be a replacement for responsible behavior, and that we'd all like to see them performed as little as possible. Mandating that they cannot be done for any reason whatsoever places those prospective mothers into servitude at the whim of a potential child which may not even make it to term, which may kill the mother, or which may inflict years of torment on an unfortunate victim of rape. The idea of banning abortions completely, or the current tactic of defining a fertilized egg as a legal person, is a problem for women because this natural process is about as high risk a venture as is ever carried out. Flexibility is a must when there is this much risk involved, if you value human life at all.
For my mind, though, I just can't stand the hypocrisy of (generally) the same folks crying for less government interference in their lives, while going on how you should live by their morals (injecting government into someone else's life). Can't have it both ways.
Being a catholic doesn't preclude you from writing a good science textbook. It doesn't help, though.
And the people who wrote these textbooks have my admiration, as much as anyone who spreads knowledge and popularizes science.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
In a similar fashion, science shows precisely when abortion is no longer ethical, and it is when the baby develops a substantial part of its central nervous system.
Science may show the mental capacity of the fetus and it's ability to feel etc however by no means does this show when it is no longer ethical.
Ethics deal with morals, morals are generally based off values/goals, both of those can be arbitrary. Sure certain morals can convey a survival benefit etc, but survival itself could be considered a goal. Morals are a human construct, not an inherent aspect of the universe like things such as gravity etc.
And so the instant rebuttle to 'x is ethical' is generally, to whose ethics?
"A substantial part" is not precise. And if that "substantial part" is equivalent to, for instance, a full-grown dog, do dogs then also gain human rights? Scientifically speaking, of course.
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Ok, so I'm anti-life. Actually I am, this planet is overpopulated as it is, no need to increase the human biomass.
Let's face it, people. Whether I live, or you, doesn't really matter in the general sense, does it? Sure, you're happy to be alive, as am I, and there are probably a few people who won't be all that happy when we cease to exist, and not only because they have to borrow a suit for the funeral. But else? Nobody gives half a fuck whether you live. Or whether I do.
So why the heck should I care if someone I don't know has an abortion? Does it affect me? No. Could it affect me if it was cast into a law? Since I'm not a fetus anymore, and neither have the appropriate parts to have one inside me, no. Neither actively nor passively.
So why the heck should I have any say in whether someone has the right to choose to have an abortion?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
it was called the Cultural Revolution.
Do you have any actual evidence of that? Lynch mobs in the US peaked in the '20s or there abouts, they were almost completely "Christian" and they would lynch people for being black or Jewish.
Now the rates of such lynchings have gone down significantly since then and rates of atheism have gone up since then. We can't conclude anything at all from that, but it's kind of an interesting to keep in mind. Christians in the US do not have a monopoly on morality.
The conventional wisdom is that it's not possible to take down a major religion. The US, though, did it once - after WWII, the US Army took down State Shinto in Japan.
It's worth understanding how that was done. It took not only a military victory, but a determined large-scale occupation, with far more occupying troops than the US used in Iraq. It didn't prohibit worship. It pulled the plug on public funding of Shinto. It eliminated any political power wielded by religious figures. Separation of church and state was forcibly imposed on Japan. It worked.
Exactly, just how Atheists and Catholics share the same belief system.
Atheists and Catholics both believe unicorns don't exist.
Agnostics don't know if unicorns exist.
Therefore everyone is crazy, because obviously unicorns exist.
please take into account that set theory is not selfconsistent.
furthermore, atheism is not a belief system in the same way as when the amish say "I don't have a TV set in my house". whoever modded you insightful is kind of stupid.
new sig
Religious types don't do reason. Something is true because somebody says it is.
Probably you never heard of the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution or the Mexican Revolution or the Spanish Civil War. Probably none told you that Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Napoleon Bonaparte, Pol Pot were atheist. Probably you never heard of Tibet.
How does a belief that there is no God not count as a belief system?
Well, first of all, atheism is not "a belief that there is no God," it is a lack of belief in any gods at all (for some reason, Christians insist that there is only one deity anyone could believe in).
Quote: Atheism is a religion the same way not collecting stamps is a hobby. Unquote.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
"God" exists,
"God" is a concept oh so useful to the hierarchs.
"God" is a pernicious lie told to the sheeple under the steeple, to keep the path to power steep, to make the disloyal (called the unfaithful) weep.
"God" makes beautiful music. No arguing with that.
"God" the great pacifier in the sky - "peace be upon him/her/it"
"God", What a concept! - so much much bigger and badder than "Unicorns".
Reality: defn 1: That which is still there after you stop believing in it. Why does "God" need belief so much? Because it's just an abstract frickin' IDEA. Without belief, or at least being thought about, or written down, or sung about, it doesn't exist. It is only the IDEA of "God" that has an effect on the world.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Let's test that reasoning. Let's call "the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist" proposition M.
* Pretty much everyone: the value of M is "true"
* Pasta agnostics: the value of M is "unknown"
It's easier to understand if you remove the negative from the proposition, so let's try again. Call "there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster" proposition M'.
* Pretty much everyone: the value of M' is "false"
* Pasta agnostics: the value of M' is "unknown"
Thing is, propositions without evidence are typically false by default. Also, thinking something's overwhelmingly likely is not the same as logical proof and not the same as faith.
Yes, and some values are better than others. Notably, those values which result in the murder of people who are guilty only of speaking their mind, are the kind of values that should be treated with deserved contempt.
But evolution is not a religious conviction (in the way that atheism is)
How is atheism a religious conviction, when the overwhelming majority of atheists are quite simply saying 'I will not believe in unfalsifiable mumbo jumbo, there is no reason nor could there ever be to prefer "god exists" as a conjecture, so I will treat it like other unfalsifiable claims such as the tooth fairy'?
The only difference between atheism and agnosticism is how agressively they push 'unfalsifiable items are bullshit', in reality the two points are the same but one is more politically accepted even though both positions refuse to accept something without evidence (which can never be supplied, because for there to be evidence something has to be falsifiable)
However, religious tests are required for the popularity contest that is reaching a public office.
Thirty four characters live here.
Yeah, and you'd miss out on a stunning country and amazing people.
I don't know about GP, but as an atheist, it would seem to me that said stunning country and its amazing people have actually made it illegal for me to enter. Or, at least, to truthfully answer any question about my religion if I do.
Hitler was most emphatically not an atheist. He was a member of the Catholic church until his death, and was firm enough about it to order his peers to remain members. Mein Kampf, which he penned in his own hands, is replete with religious references. I encourage you to question what you've been told, because it's clear that you are accepting input from others who are plainly not rich in their historical education. Regardless:
When someone cites for me the list of "atheist" tyrants and the bad things they did, what I conclude is that when governments of any enforce religious creeds on the many, the result is always an epic fucking disaster. I hope this is your view as well.
C//
Atheism is not a religion, not even when you use "quotes". Atheism is relying empirical evidence rather than superstition. Atheism asks "why?" and doesn't accept "because god says" as an answer. It's hard to accept "we don't fully know yet", but it's a much better answer than "god". Once you write down "god" as an answer for something, you stop looking at the problem, or worse, it becomes taboo to look at the problem. That's a very bad place to be, because, god or not, I don't see anyone solving any human problems except for other humans.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Affirms my position that there is no God, and that followers of a myth are dangerous.
There are presently 69 comments that show as +5 under my preferences. (Long ago I think I disabled the funny bonus since some moderators have a tau on fart jokes suitable for dating planetary origins.)
Not one of these premium insights mentions Christopher Hitchens, far and away the most outspoken critic of clerical terrorism, much of which originated in the Salmon Rushdie context, and since expanded.
Slowly I've been recruited by ugly world events to Hitch's analysis of fatwa fascism.
Hitch makes a point about Iran that their nuclear ambitions and their intransigence on democracy are inseparable: the nuclear card is a gambit to retain domestic political power.
In the same way, if top leadership endorses fatwa decrees, the general population is going to feel far greater inclination to break down doors and lay on a can of whup-ass over dissenting opinion.