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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."
Indonesia ... recognises the right to practice six religions ... Buddhism ... Atheism is, however, illegal.
Isn't this kind of contradictory?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Sorry, but Sagan turned out to be, well, wrong:
Pope John Paul II - "Faith can never conflict with reason"
an interview with the gent who runs the Vatican Observatory
Why Catholics Like Einstein
A small peek into the whole controversy
a bit of insight
Everyone points at Galileo (quite a few centuries back) and screams, but turns a blind eye towards everything else that's been going on ever since.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
FTFA:
Indonesia, the world’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.
I'd go with Confucianism. If nobody can understand what he said, nobody can understand if you are practicing it or not.
If you live amongst a horde of unpredictable religious fanatics, it's best to keep your mouth shut.
My God told me so.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Assuming "he" exists, he probably has better things to do with his time than worry about some carbon-based life form on one of billions of planets in one of billions of solar systems that makes up "creation"....
Personally, I like the pagan version of it... yes, gods exist, no they're not omnipotent, they're certainly not perfect, and Yahweh is a self-absorbed twat with delusions of adequacy. The best analogy I ever heard was that he's like the cheerleaders in high school... petty, vindictive, cliquish, and vain.
I don't know anyone who is "pro abortion", but plenty who are "pro choice".
Pro life and pro choice are just market speak, the real issue is for or against the ability of women to legally have abortions. People who use pro life and pro choice are attempting to change the framing in order to get people on their side.
imho, people should be blunt about a topic, speaking as eloquently as possible about their real point without trying to dodge things. This is not a dig at you, but at oh so many idealists that refuse to do so.
100 years? I give it less than 10. Not for sharia law to be implemented, but for someone to get prosecuted for publicly claiming there is no god. Already, many EU countries have laws against insulting religion, and with tensions between various religious groups in Europe on the rise, that law is being applied more strict than before, and the European Court isn't making things any better with their guidelines on this matter. Already, advertising companies refusing ads like the "there's probably no god" campaign draws very little comment except statements like "that's understandable", while the same companies do show ads like "god is great" or "jesus loves". This same kind of thinking is argued in court cases: promoting your god is merely the exercise of freedom of religion, whereas stating that there is no god amounts to an insult to religion. As I said, I give it less than 10 years before this makes it into law, or at least into a EU court directive or guideline, or a ruling from the (batshit insane) EU Human Rights Committee.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And the Old Testament also tells you that slavery is OK and even goes so far to tell you how to beat your slave. Damn those heathens for outlawing slavery!!! The Bible says it's OK!
Are they pro-life with respect to the organisms that cause the plague?
You don't have to go that far. Just ask them if they support the death penalty.
You'll be amazed at how many "pro lifers" think that killing people a few years after they're born is fantastic.
Required reading for internet skeptics
You could check out the Umayyads that ran Spain. During their time in power, Spain was the most advanced state in Western Europe; and Jews were shown far more tolerance than in almost anywhere in Christendom. As well, check out medieval Baghdad, which was one of the great centers of learning and scholarship in the Medieval world, up until the Mongols burned it to the ground, with the loss of thousands of Classical and High Muslim volumes.
Modern Islamism, by and large, is a response to the failure of the Ottoman Empire and the fallout from that (which, one way or the other, the Middle East is still going through). The first seriously effective hard core conservative Islamist sect was the Wahabis, who were striking out against what was viewed in the Arabian peninsula as the decadent ways of the Ottoman Empire.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.