Brent exposes an interesting Massachusetts law:
Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.
Uh-oh. I think I’m a … criminal. And oh, yeah—I’m contumelious. Contumelious like the dickens.
Thank the FSM Harvard and MIT rejected me.
Are we really contumelous or are we just telling the truth and people only think it to be contumelous? For a good laugh and to expose someone who is contumelous to all of reason see Randi’s little ditty of Deepak today.
You bastard.
You lucky lucky devil! No-one’s ever called me contumelious.
Well I am from the Boston area, and I had no idea about this. I mean really now, who the hell knew what “contumeliously” meant?
For this to really stick, wouldn’t god have to actually exist?
Atheists cannot blaspheme. That’s obvious to non-retards.
That many religionists cannot grasp this is quite telling. It’s amazing how many actually cannot comprehend that absence of belief means just that, and nothing more nor less. They have to rationalise it by assuming that the non-believers are in league with the devil or something. That is, atheists know “deep down” that this god thing exists but they willfully suppress this acknowledgment out of sheer spite or bloody-mindedness. Not worshipping god must mean worship of god’s nemesis. Or something.
They simply cannot come to grips with the fact that atheists simply don’t have anything or anyone to blaspheme against.
It’s only possible to blaspheme if you’re religious. It’s just a self-contradictory redundant and vacuous non-notion to everyone else.
Isn’t this a little contradictory? I mean, “exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures”, one shall be “be bound to good behavior.” Isn’t “exposing to contempt and riducule, the holy word, etc.” in fact good behavior in itself?
Dylan’s post, and the truth that atheists cannot blaspheme, remind me of an excerpt from an Anne Sexton poem:
And I said,
“To hell with God!”
And he said,
“Would you mock God?”
And I said,
“God is only mocked by believers!”
I gotta disagree with Dylan. Blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, otherwise, who would care?
Dylan’s post, and the truth that atheists cannot blaspheme, remind me of an excerpt from an Anne Sexton poem…
And Sexton was from Boston!
I wouldnt worry too much about it. Ive lived my whole life in the greater Boston area and I spent many years with a button on my jacket saying ‘please jesus, save me from your followers’ and spent many a night taunting a preacher who came to Harvard Square in the evenings to yell at, i mean preach to the heathens there (he actually called us heathens too, it was pretty funny. and he had a big hulking guy with him at all times, even holding an umbrella for him when it was raining) and i never got in trouble for it. But then again this was at least 10 years ago and Bush wasnt the president…
Silly people would.
The concept of blasphemy is nonsensical to an atheist, so I can’t see how it can be thrown at them as an accusation.
This is one of the reasons why I wasn’t too sure about the Blasphemy Challenge; if they really think what they’re saying then they can’t actually be blaspheming. It seemed to give credence to the warped religious perspective I described above.
Contumelious, what a fun word.
Mark me down as another one who’d never heard of the word “contumelious”. Is it biblical?
That law may have been written by retarded fucknuggets but at least they expanded my vocabulary. Fair play.
Last week The Countess discovered that Massachusetts has a law requiring government office-holders to believe in god… and not just any dog, but the really cloying one we all know and not care much about.
I totally agree with Dylan. However, by definition a true believer so wholeheartedly believes in god’s existence, it can’t be a surprise that they don’t “get the joke”. As a matter of fact, I’d even go so far as to say that someone who respects someone else’s beliefs or non-beliefs can’t really be a true believer. A true believer “knows” there is no alternative, and with a religion as pervasive, controlling and pugnacious as Christianity, they have no choice but to proselytize and/or condemn.
That, in and of itself, should be an answer regarding the founding fathers and their intent regarding this country. Sadly no argument can register. My upside is there are a lot of people who do respect other folks viewpoints, which means there’s less true believers than some people would like to think. Let’s hope they’re an evolutionary dead end.
Speaking of which, and rambling on some more, could belief in god be a genetic malfunction or a valid mechanism that has outgrown its need? Not like I can possibly imagine a need… but I wasn’t around back when, so it may have actually helped humans survive.
Time to flush the gene pool!
Anyone know how long the Mooninite fearing people of Massachusetts have had that law?
I have a hunch it’s an old one. I’d be shocked if it’s new.
Wikipedia has the last person jailed for blasphemy in the U.S. being incarcerated in the 1830s.
OK, I was just at the Borders on Boylston St. in Boston’s Back Bay, and I bought “The God Delusion.” Did my business transaction break the law?
Blasphemy (as I understand it) is not speaking in such a way to offend my own beliefs, but to speak in such a way as to deride or revile someone else’s who feels I should hold to their beliefs. So for me to say “There is no God” is not blasphemy to me, but others could accuse me of blasphemy. Not that I would care, but it would be accurate.
Oh, crap. I hope the city prosecutors don’t read my blog…
Oh, it’s a state law! Even worse!
I guess I’m glad that Dreamhost obscures my domain WHOIS, then. ;)
“exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures”,
The quickest way to see that the Bible is ridiculous is to read it. Time to toss all those Bible reading Christians into prison. Or at least tell them to stop being contemulous (whatever that means.)
Heh. Click through to the General Laws of Massachusetts, whence that one came, and you’ll find:
“Section 34. Whoever commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with a beast, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than twenty years.”
and
“Section 14. A married person who has sexual intercourse with a person not his spouse or an unmarried person who has sexual intercourse with a married person shall be guilty of adultery and shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than three years or in jail for not more than two years or by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars.”
not to mention
“Section 33. Whoever exhibits for hire an albino person, a minor or mentally ill person who is deformed or a person who has an appearance of deformity produced by artificial means shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars.”
I’m just curious as to how an offender would be “bound to good behavior.” Perhaps it involves appropriating a nun to follow you around with a ruler always at the ready.
That looks like a very old law.
Pretty funny, really, seeing as same-sex marriage is constitutional in that state.
It probably could be used like the ‘spitting on the sidewalk’ law in California – so the cops can jack someone up they find suspicious, though. Someone might want to get that 1 off the books toot sweet.
Yeah, I went to the General Laws of Massachusetts web page, found a number of wierd laws… but also saw a number of laws those repealed within the last ten years. Rather amazed this one hadn’t been axed yet.
I suppose in keeping with how the Salem witch trials came to an end, it’s going to take an “important” person to be charged for the law to disappear.
Still an all, a law like that, if pressed, could really be a damned nuisance, since it’s the legal costs of defendiong one’s self that is the real deterrent.
I wonder who was the last person prosecuted under the Freakshow Provision?
Oooh! My afternoon is lost, as I’ll have to go look for Texas laws next. One last one from Mass.:
“Section 21. Except as provided in section twenty-one A, whoever sells, lends, gives away, exhibits, or offers to sell, lend or give away an instrument or other article intended to be used for self-abuse, or any drug, medicine, instrument or article whatever for the prevention of conception or for causing unlawful abortion, or advertises the same, or writes, prints, or causes to be written or printed a card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement or notice of any kind stating when, where, how, of whom or by what means such article can be purchased or obtained, or manufactures or makes any such article shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or in jail or the house of correction for not more than two and one half years or by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars.”
Count,
Read “Breaking the Spell” (Dennett). It’s a great read regarding evolutionary mechanisms leading to the development of religion and god belief.
Don’t you mean “contumelious like a fox”?
The $300 you can probably spare, but being “bound to good behavior”? I’d rather be stoned to death.
I knew about the Mass. blasphemy law: I think the usual cowardly pols just won’t repeal it for fear of offending Mrs Grundy. But I haven’t been able to get a straight answer about whether it is still illegal to practice witchcraft. Since the nutters at least claim to believe in witchcraft, why aren’t they demanding the death penalty for it?
Somewhat OT, as an alum of the better university in Cambridge, I must point out that PZ’s use of “tool” as an insult is incorrect: a tool is a nerd too busy studying to hack (or groom). And from my other university, “squid” is its synonym!
I once heard a lawyer say, there’s good law, there’s bad law, then there’s Massachusetts law. There’s something in Massachusetts culture that’s strange, and I haven’t quite figured it out. The legal system seems very elaborate and baroque, so people are somehow encouraged to ignore it. For instance, we have all these double lane rotaries. Who the hell knows how we’re really supposed to drive in them? No one knows. There’s probably a law collecting dust somewhere, but no one knows what it is. Too many schools and too many lawyers…
And Daniel Dennet is an alpha dweeb who teaches in Somerville, and publishes books that only other true dweebs read. I don’t think he has much of an academic following. There’s all this scientism in his writing and he has such a dweeby mechanistic picture of how the mind works, worshipping at the feet of Marvin Minsky yadda yadda. It’s perfectly understandable to me why he pisses some people off, dogmatically claiming there’s no such thing as reductionism, etc. Tiresome.
Thank you Alex.
It occurs to me…..if it’s illegal to exhibit albinos, are concerts by Johnnie or Edgar Winter lawful in Boston?
All right. All right. I have read him myself. He’s a smart guy and I disagree with him. Good person to sharpen your wits with… Good radio interview with him here:
http://www.radioopensource.org/is-god-in-our-genes/
I get it!
If the religious say something bad about ‘god’, then that is blasphemy, since for the act to be meaningful, you have to believe.
And if athiests or agnostics say something bad about the religious people’s ‘god’, then that is… FUNNY.
w00t.
from Merriam-Webster: insolently abusive and humiliating
and from wordnet.princeton.edu via google’s search function ‘define: contumelious’ we get: arrogantly insolent
I wonder then if the statute would not apply to those who spoke politely. Perhaps Orac will be given a pass.
I don’t hold much hope for PZ on any politeness defence. As he says, he is contumelious like the dickens.
OK, PZ, time to come clean: the truth is that all my activities on your blog have been designed to document your contumeliousness. Contumeliousness is a very serious matter. As is curmudgeonliness. And cephalopodiness. My zombie android creationist-squirrel hybrids have finally got you just where Cotton Mather wants you!
Snarl….SH
Pfft. This is nothing. Now Alabama! There’s a state with some weird laws.
Clearly something old. Look at the heterodox use of commas.
I wonder what else there lurks. In 1995 it was found out that slavery was still legal in, I think, Missouri. (Was abolished promptly and unanimously as soon as it was discovered, but still.)
I don’t want to suggest that failures to abolish stupid and unconstitutional laws were somehow restricted to the USA. In Austria a law was dug up a few years ago that ordered hospitals to take into account the “well-known laws of inheritance health” or some other Nazi terminology. I don’t remember it, but it sounded scary.
Clearly something old. Look at the heterodox use of commas.
I wonder what else there lurks. In 1995 it was found out that slavery was still legal in, I think, Missouri. (Was abolished promptly and unanimously as soon as it was discovered, but still.)
I don’t want to suggest that failures to abolish stupid and unconstitutional laws were somehow restricted to the USA. In Austria a law was dug up a few years ago that ordered hospitals to take into account the “well-known laws of inheritance health” or some other Nazi terminology. I don’t remember it, but it sounded scary.
If I didn’t already have a blog, I’d totally start one and name it “Contumelious”. Or maybe just “Contumely,” which has an even more archaic feel.
Oh, come on. If Minnesota had been founded by religious extremists in the early 17th century, it would have laws like that too.
Laws don’t really go anywhere. As others have noted, there are efforts underway to clean the general code up, but it’s a pretty impressive shelf of books, and it takes a lot of legislative time and effort to do.
Laws don’t really go anywhere. As others have noted, there are efforts underway to clean the general code up, but it’s a pretty impressive shelf of books, and it takes a lot of legislative time and effort to do.
What’s impressive about it? It’s all there because citizens will generally behave like a bunch of scumballs, if given half a chance.
Perhaps laws ought to be enforced every so often or declared null.
From my handy on-line 1913 Webster’s:
Con`tu*me”li*ous (?or ?; 106), a. [L. contumeliosus.]
1. Exhibiting contumely; rudely contemptuous; insolent; disdainful.
Scoffs, and scorns, and contumelious taunts.
–Shak.
Curving a contumelious lip.
–Tennyson.
2. Shameful; disgraceful.
[Obs.]
In 1995 it was found out that slavery was still legal in, I think, Missouri
Technically, slavery wasn’t legal in Missouri since the Thirteenth Amendment was passed back in the 1860s. It doesn’t matter what states permit as long as the federal government prohibits it.
Same deal here…Mass can claim that this is a crime all it wants, but it is so blatantly unconstituitonal (clearly violates three different provisions of the First Amendment) that no prosecutor who liked his job would try to use it. Things were different before the First Amendment started applying to the States in the 20s. Since then, these sorts of laws are little more than a curiosity — they persist only because legislators are too lazy to do anything about them.
I read somewhere that there’s a law in New Jersey that says anyone driving a car at night must be preceded by someone carrying a red lantern.
Not to mention the city of Chico, California. I remember reading somewhere that there’s a law on the books specifying that detonating a nuclear device within the city limits is punishable…
…by a fine of $500.
If you think that law is going over the edge into personal rights, in Kentucky, we are required by law to take a bath at least once a year!
Whether you need it or not?
“Perhaps laws ought to be enforced every so often or declared null.”
That could work. My version is for laws to simply expire, period, after 20 or 25 years; automatic provision on everything. Legislature could renew them before hand; the point is that the legislature would have to consider and vote for the thing. Get some more selection in the whole process.
Dick Cheney?
Bob
Back in ’88, I recall some Republican pundit castigating Dukakis because Dukakis wanted to get rid of anti-blasphemy and anti-sodomy laws.
marghlar: Actually, your constitution makes slavery not quite illegal – it says that slavery is legal for those convicted of a crime.
David, exactly! Actually, IIRC, there is a legal concept that states that laws that aren’t enforced on a regular basis can’t be enforced.
Stupid old laws still lingering in the books aren’t a monopoly of the US, as a frenchman I can for your amusement tell you about two which were not repelled when I heard about them (dunno if they still hold).
A small village in french brittany had been exempted of ALL taxes on salt by Louis XIV (or somesuch), in the 60s a villager found out this still had legal validity an wrote to the taxman for a refund of the VAT on a pack of salt worth much less than about $1. Alas it didn’t worked!
A Napoleonic military rule stated that the commander of the place of Brest had to provide a horse and a 3 days fodder supply to any officer who would show that he had his own saddle and boots.
A conscript who was an officer trainee got the exact rule statement, a saddle and a pair of boots and claimed for the horse. He barely escaped arrest.
Grr… automatic sunset provision on everything.
Keith, go reread the 13th Amendment and get back to me.
Gosh, I do love PZ’s blog. Today I learnt two more new words. “Contumelious” (PZ) and “Fucknugget” (Dylan Llyr, #15).
I wonder what tomorrow will bring…
Late to the game, and sorry for the nitpicking, but I found it hard to believe that no posters had recognized the word “contumelious” from the rather obscure work Hamlet (not sure how to underline in post). In act III, scene 1, the speech which begins “To be, or not to be” goes on to wonder if it is worth it to face “The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely”.
Probably because the ones who even read Hamlet didn’t regard the word as any more remarkable than Mary Shelley’s monster did.
We still have the “crime” in the Criminal Code of Canada:
Blasphemous Libel
Offence
296. (1) Every one who publishes a blasphemous libel is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
Question of fact
(2) It is a question of fact whether or not any matter that is published is a blasphemous libel.
[In other words, you won’t know whether you’ve committed a crime until the jury says you have.]
Saving
(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section for expressing in good faith and in decent language, or attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 260.