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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.
Especially if they got elected in Oklahoma, Tennessee, or Arizona.
I say Mitt Romney picks that statue for a running mate to solve his Mormon problem. The only trick will be telling the two apart.
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 :(
Anyone can register a case for pretty much anything in India. If the police actually arrested the guy, or if he was convicted of blasphemy, it would be worth talking about. Right now, it's just a bunch of nutcases filing a case, not the government. Let's not fall for hyperbole.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
This isn't the first time that Tennessee has taken an anti-science position either. The unfortunate thing is, it's not the only state moving in that direction. A few years ago, I remember Texas was thinking of doing the same. The larger issue with Texas doing that, however, is that Texas happens to be of of the main producers of school text books in the US. I, personally, use that piece to explain why the US is so lacking in science education- the people writing the text books are under heavy theocratic control :(
-- (this is a sig) My Computer Programming Forumhttp://www.programers.co.nr/
NO chance anyone would actually get tried for blasphemy against the Catholic Church in Mumbai.
Not only does 98% of the local population not give a shit, but the church leaders in the Vatican will be smacking their foreheads when they see this. They have been trying for the last couple hundred years to undo the massive ill-will they have caused persecuting/prosecuting "heretics" throughout the ages...
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.
Emotions! In your brain!
protoman had to fornicate somewhere..
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.
Now they're seeking to make abstinence-only education the norm and to define hand holding and kissing as sexual behavior. I wish my state would also ban dentistry so we can look like the fucking toothless yokels we are for letting shit like this pass.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If you RTFA, you will know that it happened in a Christian church in Mumbai.
Dude if you think that worshiping elephant gods is fucked up, you should come to America and see some really crazy shit. In my country people worship some sort of zombie god/king. Their religious icon of choice is an ancient Roman execution and torture device. A bunch of sub-sects of this religion practice ritualized cannibalism and blood drinking. They think that their zombie god is going to come back some day and kill everyone, and they think that this is a good thing because it lets them get to their promised land or something equally crazy. I swear I am not making this shit up. These people are craaaazy here. I'll happily take some elephant worshipers over these psycho zombie worshiping cannibals.
The charge is entirely unconstitutional.
It's written in the Indian Constitution that people not only have the right to pursue the sciences, but have a duty to do so for the whole of society, under Article 51 A.
To wit: Article 51A(h) To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;
He's charged, but the charge won't stick even with a drunken lawyer.
He is roaming around free, because the police and the judge know the charge is bogus and a waste of everyone's time, but to do nothing would cause riots among the derp-infested.
--
BMO
Logic and rationalism are French ideas. On that ground, I reject them utterly.
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.
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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Drops of water on a holy statue? Sounds just like the Miracle of Peckham.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
If I remember correctly, someone once said that religion is the opiate of the masses
I must clarify that I am not an atheist - I do believe that there is a ***Creator*** - I see the religions that are being practiced by the billions on this earth contribute nothing to human civilization
Of course, those who believe will tell you that their religion is the "true one", that their version of "true religion" is "peaceful"
Ultimately, religion is a sales / marketing campaign, on a global scale, and many millions depend on "GOD" for the bread that they bring home to feed their kids - that the better they sell "GOD" the more income they gonna get
That is why I am not surprised at all at the anger of those Hindu priests --- Their anger is not towards that guy who expose the "miracle", but rather, they know full well that their income gonna drastically drop after the expose
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It is a very old tactic by the religious establishment, don't question us and we won't question you. Basically, you are free from religious control, unless you question the religious control. You are a free person, unless you try to exercise your freedom.
It has been the way to keep groups down for millenia, Jews are a famous example. Countries that claim to have been tolerant really just operated with "Don't be noticeable and we won't notice you to much".
The Catholic church was fine with evolution, they didn't push for creationism UNTIL Catholics who had accepted evolution made more sense then genesis started to think "wait a minute, if genesis is a fairy tale, then why is any of the rest true and why then is it required for me to remain silent about this priest in my ass?". Creationism and the attack on science didn't start until the church started to loose power because of it. In the 70's, people were still balancing the two. Proof? Their were plenty of scandals back then but people kept quiet because while they accepted evolution, they still believed as well. Enough to not risk upsetting the church. That has changed and the church NEEDS power. Without control, they are nothing. After all, you can talk to god anywhere, why pay for churches and priests when god is everywhere or nowhere?
The church isn't anti-evolution. It is anti-critical thinking. Critical thinkers wonder why the pope has a super luxerous seat on an airplane that could be carrying medicine. Just why gold is needed on a cross for a carpenter. And why people to poor to feed their kids should pay for it all. Can't have that.
The renaissance was another age the church lost a lot of power in because people started thinking. The post-war new age thinking (In Holland, ont-zuiling, the end of the columns of power, where your faith defined who you where and you trusted your boss, doctor and politicians without question) cripped the church even more, now they are determined not to become totally irrelevant. Because the most dangerous idea a church faces is a religious person who realizes that Jezus never founded a church. You can believe without ever going into a church or being buggered by a priest. That is scary as hell to the establishment, those kind of people might even believe you can love your country and STILL question it! It is no accident the religious zealots and the right wingers go hand in hand. Romney and co want you to believe, so you won't think and question. Not just god and the church but the free market, the wars, wallstreet bailouts. Breed, have lots of kids who can't afford to be picky about jobs so Ann Romney can afford a domestic while she bitches about her struggle as a super rich stay at home mom.
Or do you think the right like people having less children who can afford higher education and grow up to be thinking, questioning citizens? Things were so much better when people had a dozen kids who could be send of into domestic service for whatever usage the rich saw fit. And if a girl then inevitably got pregnant by a rich landlord after rape, well, that just ensured the supply of cheap labor would continue.
A fool thinks that those who desire power desire slaves. Far better is a serve, a man who thinks he is free but forges his own chains. Religion and the American dream forges the best chains.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
May Allah/God/Buddha bless you son.
And likewise, may Eagle's mighty wings carry you on your journey to new heights of peace and wisdom (or something like that). :)
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Yesterday (10th April,2012) Sanal received a phone call from a Police official of Juhu Police Station in Mumbai directing him to come to the said police station to face the charges and get arrested.
Seems fairly serious to me.
You're confusing your Christians. The young-earth Creationists are fundamentalists, not Catholic. The Catholics may be many things (cough*child molesters*cough), but they're not fundamentalists like that. Catholicism takes the Bible, and adds a bunch of extra stuff they call "revealed knowledge" and a lot of other odd practices and ideas, like transubstantiation (the idea that the crackers are the real body of Christ), confession, the idea that people can't talk directly to God but must instead use a Priest as an intermediary (this I think was dropped in more recent history), praying to Saints to ask them to talk to God on your behalf, etc.; the Protestants, when they broke off, largely rejected all this extra stuff; they have varied beliefs, but I don't believe any of them believe in transubstantiation. The fundamentalists take it even further and proclaim the Bible as the complete, inerrant word of God and that it must be read literally. Then of course there's the Mormons, who believe in the Bible the way the regular Protestants do for the most part, but then they add a whole new book about Jesus coming to visit a bunch of fictional civilizations in the Americas before Europeans got there, and then they added another book (Abraham) about how God lives on the planet Kolob, and how good Mormons will become gods when they die and get their own planets to rule over.
Anyway, as far as I know, the only Christians that believe the earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs either never existed, or co-existed with humans and were wiped out in Noah's flood, are all of the extreme fundamentalist variety. While these sects are rare in the rest of the Christian world, here in the USA they're a large and fast-growing number.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's, my mum was a sunday school teacher up until I was about 6-7, I still remeber overhearing her saying to dad something like "I'm brainwashing my own kids", after that she quit and started encouraging me to read aboriginal dreamtime stories ( not as fact but to demonstrate there were lots of different 'stories' ). It probably helped that my dad was an engineer.
Anyway, my anectdotal experience over the last 50 odd years, plus a bunch of census stats from the US and around the world, tells me that people have turned their back on religion in droves during my lifetime. I agree it started with the sexual revolution in the 60's, but it has been accelerating ever since. More recently it has been put somewhat unkindly as "the internet, where religions come to die', and I think there is a great deal of truth to that because kids will find a plethora of dreamtime stories all by themselves. From a very young age they no longer have to rely on their parents digging out obscure books from the adult library, which is something even my own 80's era kids could not do until their late teens.
Religion is loud and angry in the US right now but it's losing its power and income base (which is why they still disaprove contraception). After millenia of being at the top of the food chain in all previous civilizations they suddenly find they have to start justifying their previously unquestioned claims of 'moral authority' in society with something more substansive than 'might is right'. They find themselves in a world where more and more of their 'sheep' are no longer affraid to laugh in their face and are willing to hold them to account for their hypocricy and crimes.
I don't think I will live long enough to see it but when governments start taxing what are essentially some of the richest organisations on the planet, then you will know reason has won the day. But reason can only take us so far, at some point you just have to accept an assumption, science has boiled it all down to a handful of very basic assumptions (ie: the fundemantal forces and dimentions exist). It may boil it down further but it will always require the assumption that the real world exists and is not some sort of matrix senario where it's all in our heads.
Of course the alternative to all this social upheaval is for everyone to simply tell the truth and just admit that nethier they nor I know the answer to the existential question (Why am I here?), none of us even know if the question makes any sense in the first place. The closest thing to a rational answer that I've ever found is more a statement of fact than an answer, it's a Sagan sounbite;"We are a way for the universe to know itself".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Don't let the bigmedia fool you - crazy religious nuts are only a small (but extremely vocal) minority, even in "conservative" parts of America. Even most churchgoing folks are nice, sane, civilized people who's faith is much closer to comfortable hypocrisy than fundamentalism.
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.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
You describe Pascal's Wager (That you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by believing in God, while you have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not believing in God). This can be a compelling argument to someone who already believes in God, or is in a culture where there is only really one choice of religion.
However, the argument is a poor one. An unmentioned premise of the argument is that there is only one possible God to choose to believe in or not; of course, we know this is not true. There are countless different Gods that people choose to believe in. There are the major religions, and all of the thousands of offshoots. Many of those beliefs include the idea that God HATES it if you worship the wrong God (think the First Commandment).
Because of this, you have to include in your calculation that you choose the WRONG God to believe in, and in doing so you actually piss him off more than if you had not believed at all. Maybe God exists, but his REAL desire is for no one to worship him, and worshipping him is what pisses him off.
There are infinite possible Gods, so the argument that you should just choose to believe in one of them because you have nothing to lose doesn't hold water.