Indian Man Charged With Blasphemy For Exposing "Miracle"

bhagwad writes "When a statue in Mumbai began to miraculously drip tears, huge crowds began to gather, pray, and collect the water in vials. Sanal Edamaruku has exposed such bogus miracles before, and when he was called in, his investigations showed that it was nothing more than a nearby drainage. The entire investigation was caught on tape. The priests were outraged and demanded an apology. When he refused, a case of 'blasphemy' was registered at the police station and they now want to have him arrested." In related news, today Kuwait's parliament "passed amendments to the Gulf state's penal code stipulating the death penalty for those who curse God, Islam's Prophet Mohammed or his wives." However, they made no change to the penalty for playing a joke national anthem at a sporting event.

Comments

Hopefully

[jeremy85mai]

Hopefully the world will start to grow more accepting toward skeptical beliefs(such as atheism, Agnosticism, etc). It makes me sad how often these beliefs are persecuted :(

Re:Hopefully

[grege1]

The world is rapidly going the other way. Back in the 60s and 70s people thought that The Age of Reason had won and we could move into the future with hope. Now reason is under attack from the religions of the world. And it is getting worse by the day. All the fundamentalists from all religions should be made to sit and watch The Life of Brian at least one a year and eat halibut.

Re:Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact they're getting louder doesn't mean they're winning. It might be taken as a sign of desperation.

The first people to leave a majority religion are the ones who don't fear ostracism, the rebellious, the suborn and the alienated mostly. After them are the ones who go when it ceases to be socially unacceptable. Then there are those who leave when it becomes increasing obvious that their faith and their religion have parted company, and the religion is no longer something they want to be a part of, disgruntled moderates for the most part.

The very last hangers on, the ones who will never, ever leave as long as they still draw breath, are the fanatics. A religion can have just as many total fanatics when it comprises 90% of the population as it does when it comprises 40% - they go from being a few bad apples to the gradual majority who drive away those disgruntled moderates I mentioned above.

Re:Hopefully

[shentino]

What I'd like to know is how any religion that professes to believe in an all knowing and creative deity would deny the mastery apparent in the minds of its own creations.

I mean seriously, why would God create a brilliant analytical brain, only to shun its use?

Re:Hopefully

[TheGratefulNet]

Maybe they're the ones to blame for the rise in religionism

yeah, they're to blame.

you nailed it.

(how this was not marked troll, I don't know. but to blame athiests FOR the rise in religion is hand-waving that not even sky daddies could pull off)

Re:Hopefully

[FrootLoops]

Your two posts summarize some of the major problems with religion debates. (The GP may not have been serious, but assume for now that it was.)

mvdwege:
  * Unfair generalizations: "The current crop of atheists is indeed loud, and particularly obnoxious." People are not a ubiquitous mass and treating them that way inevitably leads to problems. Humans like to personify everything, especially groups of other humans, but that natural urge needs to be replaced with complex mental models that accurately reflect reality to the extent a human mind can do so.
  * Defensiveness: "sheer seething stupidity" ... "current crop of idiots" -- those statements will only convince people to fight you.

TheGratefulNet:
  * Sarcastic responses: "yeah, they're to blame." See defensiveness.
  * Poor reasoning: "to blame athiests FOR the rise in religion is hand-waving". The obvious argument (likely missed because of defensiveness) is that religion felt threatened by a rise in atheism and responded by becoming louder. Whether there's any truth to that argument is a good question, but it isn't patently ridiculous hand-waving.

Each of the problems above is caused by an emotional response overcoming clear thinking. People in general could stand to be more like Spock when it comes to debates.

Re:Hopefully

[bryan1945]

I cannot comment on the world, but I can comment on my experiences here. People say they're atheist or agnostic, no problem. Someone says they're Christian, like I have in the past, and I'll get a bunch of replies mocking my belief in "fairy tales" and "how's that intelligent design going for you." And that's all I say- I'm a Christian, don't defend anything, don't push any agenda. I'll await the derision over in the left corner.
The point being I get derided just because I say I'm something different from you, but Cthulhu help me if I try to say anything against atheists/agnostics here, which I never have, BTW.

Re:Hopefully

[digitig]

Despite the propaganda, you'll find reasoning people both outside and inside religion

Why would a reasoning person believe in the unverifiable? The only reasonable reaction when presented with a nonfalsifiable hypothesis is "could be, but I don't really know".

Religion is at best wishful thinking. And wishful thinking isn't reason.

Is there an objective reality? The existence of one is non-falsifiable. Is logic valid? The validity of logic is non-falsifiable. If you really believe that the only reasonable reaction when presented with a nonfalsifiable hypothesis is "could be, but I don't really know" then I assume you are an epistemiological solipsist, which is an intellectually viable position but one that challenges science just as much as religion.

Re:Hopefully

[LoyalOpposition]

I can't even conceive the idea to put belief (let alone faith) in something that's unprovable.

I suspect that you actually do put belief in something that's unprovable, but that you simply don't realize that you are doing so. For example, do you believe that the scientific method is a good way to learn about the universe? If so, then what proof do you have that such might be the case? Many people would answer that it can be proved using the scientific method, but those same people scoff when shown a claim by the bible that the bible is reliable, and call it circular reasoning. Ultimately, you're left with an infinite regress of reasons supporting reasons, which to my mind is more difficult to put faith in than the existence of god.

On the other hand, suppose you're skeptical about the scientific method. Ask yourself whether skepticism is the correct way to approach knowledge of the universe. Shouldn't one be skeptical of such a belief? One must either accept and operate on the assumption that skepticism is the appropriate opinion to hold, or that it's not. One must accept one of those beliefs on faith, as it were.

Stephen F. Roberts: "...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Mr. Roberts' claim proves too much. Let me show you why using analogy with mathematics, as I'm particularly fond of mathematics. Let's suppose I believe that there exists precisely one even prime, and analogously that precisely one god exists. Let's suppose furthermore that Mr. Roberts believes that no even primes exist, and analogously that no god exists. I dismiss candidates 3, 17, and 61 because they aren't even. I dismiss candidates 10, 34, and 100002 because they aren't prime. I dismiss candidates h, e, and pi because they aren't integers. I dismiss candidates -3, 0, and 1 because they aren't greater than one. I now understand why I dismiss all the other possible even primes (other than 2). Mr. Roberts' would now claim that I understand why he dismisses 2. In fact, I don't. Number 2 is even; it's a prime; it's an integer; it's greater than one. Arguments that claim that something doesn't have a property have no bearing on other predicates. Specifically, if I claim that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist because it was imagined by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to teach Intelligent Design, then that has no bearing on the god that we supposed I believed in at the beginning of this paragraph, provided that we didn't suppose I believed in the flying spaghetti monster.

~Loyal
 

Re:Blashphemy???

[Securityemo]

Well, people in my country worship a man who was allegedly tortured to death over 2000 years ago. There are life-sized statues of the man, wearing only a rag, nailed to a cross in every temple. People wear smaller depictions of the torture instrument as a good-luck charm of sorts. Part of the rites involve drinking wine and eating a small piece of bread in the belief that it, in a spiritual sense, is the blood and flesh of this poor man.

Well, I guess it's a lot more intimidating than a jolly elephant man at least? Keeps the unwashed foreign tribes at a distance.

Re:Fuck you, racist.

[epyT-R]

labeling someone a hater or fearer because he doesn't like or has a rational reason to not agree with something is not a counter argument, no matter what the political correctness thinktanks say.

Re:Tennessee Theocracy

[cheater512]

no conflict between the Bible and science

Except thats not entirely true.
Science and the Bible conflict an awful lot. Straight from page 1 onwards.

What you meant to say was that your religious world view and your scientific world view do not conflict.

Re:Blashphemy???

[Black Parrot]

Yeah, every religion is going to seem wacky to outsiders, but..

Everyone can clearly see how foolish everyone else's religion is. For some reason not many can turn the same critical eye on their own.

Re:A better question...

[JosKarith]

I've always wondered why an omniescent deity would require open worship. If God knows all then surely it knows how you feel without you having to say anything.