Religion is colliding with the law all over the place.
-
A Malaysian woman was jailed for worshipping a teapot. It was a very large teapot, two stories high; does that help? There’s also a wonderful Catch-22 in the story — Malaysia allows freedom of worship, but under Sharia law, apostasy is a criminal offense, so she can be arrested for violating Muslim law.
-
In a sensible contrast, Britain has voted to take blasphemy off the law books. Good news, you English — blaspheme all you want! I expect a chorus of “goddamns” in the comments now.
-
The US isn’t quite so rational, since we’ve got loons pushing a religious agenda everywhere. Look in Idaho, where a public school is teaching creationism because atheism is immoral (nice chain of non sequiturs in that), or Mississippi, which offers public school assemblies to indoctrinate kids in Christianity. That’s two places where I think the law needs to step in.
-
Texas is contemplating the theological necessity of goats. Can we please get to the point where everyone realizes that theological necessity is no necessity at all? Oh, and Santeria is just as wacky as Christianity.
I expect a chorus of “goddamns” in the comments now.
Goddammit, it’s still on the goddamned books in goddamned Massachusetts.
Goddamn, UK, welcome to the club.
Goddamn back home in New Zealand it isn’t a crime. The Presbyterian church did once try one of its own, Prof Lloyd Geering on a charge of heresy, but that was done internally and was unsuccessful : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Geering
Here in Scotland it is of course a non issue since we did away with such things long ago, it is why we are no longer killing each other over internecine religious squabbles.
Note that the BBC got its facts wrong; the last PUBLIC prosecution for blasphemy was in 1922; the last actual successful prosecution for blasphemy was a private one brought in 1977 by right-wing Xian idealogue Mary Whitehouse, who successfully prosecuted Gay News for publishing a poem in which Judas fantasizes about sex with Jesus.
Good news about the abolition though… gospel, one might even say…
Goddamn! I’m pleased to see that ridiculous law struck from the books. Now for the House of Lords then after that, disestablishment. Lotta work to do, see you later …
Goddamn great! Another goddamn reason to be goddamn proud of my goddamn Country (they’re rather thin on the ground these days)!
Why can’t they keep their grubby little religious beliefs to themselves? Why the compulsion to force it onto others? What is it with that? Mind your own god damn business already, you pea-brained, self-deluded, myth-believing, deity-worshipping, thumb-sucking fools!
Goddamn Richard Dawkins vs Goddamn Francis Collins on Goddamn Fresh Air this morning.
Darnit.
(If you miss the broadcast, you can download the podcast, so don’t panic, Goddamnit.)
Gah! This is where they’re succeeding! They’re succeeding in incrementally creating an increaing public perception of evolution=atheism=immorality! Triple-whammy!
I read a few years ago about some Icelandic neo-pagans who wanted to sacrifice a goat to Thor. Because the local animal cruelty laws would not allow the slaughter to take place, the poor pagans had to offer a butcher-shop pork chop to the Thunderer.
Oops, almost forgot:
Zeusdammit!
Goddamm – less material for my British-based blog.
Also, PZ, it’s slightly ironic that us Brits don’t say “Goddamn” anyway As a rough guide for you, we tend to use:
“Jesus Christ”
— “Jesus H. Christ”
— “Jesus F*cking Christ”
“Holy shit”
“Jesus Wept”
“Sweet Jesus”
— “Sweet Mary”
“Hells Bells”
“For God’s sake”
— “For Christ’s Sake”
“For the love of God”
“In the name of God”
— “In the name of all that is holy”
“Oh my God”
— “Oh my f*cking God”
And oddly enough, although nobody knows who he is:
“Gordon Bennett”. Seriously.
A lot of these have fallen out of usage though recently due to the rise in Britain of “fuck” and “shit” as punctuation.
Hope this helps!
Martin,
layscience.net
Christ up a drainpipe!
OT: Anybody got a subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education? If so, is this article of interest: http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/03/1978n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en ?
I haven’t got a subscription, but I get the Daily Reports emailed to me just to see if I can invoke a sense of frustration.
As an atheist, I’d give anything to have emotions….
I read a few years ago about some Icelandic neo-pagans who wanted to sacrifice a goat to Thor. Because the local animal cruelty laws would not allow the slaughter to take place, the poor pagans had to offer a butcher-shop pork chop to the Thunderer.
One of my students was telling me the other day about trying to find a goat to eat for a major festival (her parents are from Sri Lanka). She could only get a leg, but had to transport that back to her apartment. Her friends were surprised for a while because whenever they’d open the freezer, there’d be a whole goat leg sitting in there.
About that goddamn – oops, holy – teapot: was it Russell’s?
Actually, I think my wife and I worship our teapot — we certainly pour libations from it often enough….
Seems the Malaysians are upset about the this teapot thing because the woman is worshipping THE WRONG TEAPOT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
I’m a big fan of “Jesus Tittyfucking!”, myself. It has a nice ring to it. Gorramit.
If I were to have married my Kenyan-Canadian ex (why, is that a bullet I hear whizzing past?), I would have had to bring a goat to her uncle living in Washington DC in order to ask permission (which would have been much simpler than asking her Dad at dinner on any given Friday night).
It would have almost been worth it for the experience at the Can-US border alone. Of course, by now I’d be shopping at Home Outfitters for a good smotherin’ pillow. (Assuming she hadn’t done me in first.)
(If you miss the broadcast, you can download the podcast, so don’t panic, Goddamnit.)
Goddamit, where’s the goddamned link?
I’m rather partial to “Jesus H. Christ!” — ever since I discovered that his middle name was actually “Hussein”
I’ll be goddamned goddamnit!
Sorry, that last post was off-topic too. Just needed to vent.
#12: And oddly enough, although nobody knows who he is:
“Gordon Bennett”. Seriously.
Back then… I used to wonder if it was, perhaps, a substitute for Gor Blimey. Makes as much sense as anything else, but it certainly would be nice to find out just who this Gordon Bennett fellow really was :-)
Any chance we Canadians can get blasphemous libel out of our criminal code?
Ask and ye shall receive:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gordon-bennett.html
Hope this helps!
I think the ruling in California is significant, too.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/MNJDVF0F1.DTL
What’s interesting is that the home-schooling organizations in California admit that they didn’t see this coming. One goes on to say that if they’d been able to select a test case, they would not have selected this one (I presume this is because they knew it was a bad test-case).
http://www.hsc.org/Appellatedecision
Personally, I like this decision. My kids know a kid who’s being home-schooled, and now my daughter is getting Chick Tract-style emails from this kid. I doubt this child is getting a well-rounded education.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with requiring teachers or tutors to have credentials. California law is pretty clear on this. If the home-school advocates don’t like the laws, they should work to change those laws.
This decision is a big deal. Frankly, I’m pretty happy about it. I’m sorry, I’m pretty goddamn happy about it.
Since my home state of South Carolina is out of this brand of news (for the brief moment) I’ll take my turn to point at another state and say NAH NAH NAH. Stick out my tongue and laugh. … Ok not laugh or stick out my tongue, more feel their pain and anguish.
Oklahoma HB 2211.
CalGeorge, here’s the link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13
Any chance we Canadians can get blasphemous libel out of our criminal code?
Oh, approximately five minutes after we get rid of state-funded religious education, I wager. I get the feeling anyone agitating to have this removed is liable to be told “Come back when it’s an issue,” save for the CRAPs attempting to jump down their throats on general principles, of course.
It’s not over yet. Whilst the abolition of the specific crime of blasphemous libel is now – finally! – going to be removed from the statute books, there are very strong suggestions that the bishops may back the introduction of “religious defamation” laws into the UK. The problem – from the point of view of “religious leaders” – is that blasphemy specifically only covers the CofE. “Blasphemy” against other religions was always – rightly – fine and dandy as far as the common law was concerned.
The big concern, now, is that, given Labour’s approach to dealing with religions has recently become “equal time in government” as opposed to a push towards secularism. The idea that blasphemy against the CofE will only be outlawed to be replaced with a “blasphemy against anyone” law is not terribly far-fetched. Remember, this is the government that introduced the “incitement to religious hatred” bill that originally would have been more aptly titled, “outlaw religious criticism bill”. Do not think for one moment that the current government is pro-free-speach in any regard, not least against criticising religion.
That said, I will still be booking my tickets for the National Secular Society’s “Bye Bye Blasphemy” bash in June :)
I’m rather partial to “Jesus H. Christ!” — ever since I discovered that his middle name was actually “Hussein”
I prefer the more traditional Jesus Haploid Christ myself.
I don’t see the problem with worshipping a tea pot. At least the tea pot really existed, even if it probably didn’t have all/any of the powers attributed to it.
Did anyone find the name of the religion odd in the Santaria DMN article? “Look uh me, Babaloo Aiyay”??!? The Church of Ricky Ricardo! (Luuuucy…you got some ‘splainin’ to do.)
BTW, Texas is full of public schools hoping to convert all to xianitity, but many teachers in larger cities are too afraid of pc backlash, resulting in their dismissal, to be a martyr for their ideological (idiot-ological) cause. (To be fair, there are some teachers who try to be secular in the classroom for the right reasons)
Underhanded proselytizing abounds here. Most of the kids are so brainwashed that they refuse to turn in their instructors/principals when they breach that church/state separation, especially in the smaller towns where ignorance and piety rule. A few one horse towns openly flaunt it, but complaints are rare (and usually withdrawn) since the threat of social backlash keeps dissenters silent. Yeeehaw!
Oh, and uh, Goddammit, Your Majesty…
I find it pretty goddamn ironic in that article about Santeria where the oba calls it “ignorance” on the part of the police for stopping him from slaughtering an animal for his religion.
I know who Gordon Bennett was, pick me! pick me! oh Goddamn I’ll tell you anyway. Gordon Bennett was an Australian General in Singapore in ’42, he decided as the Japanese closed in that he was more important than his troops and took the last plane out to Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia) leaving his men behind. Thus his name became a swear word.
At last, a piece of religion related news that’s actually good. Our goddamn christ-buggering blasphemy law is gone (or going, very soon).
And it only took 140 years of campaigning by the National Secular Society.
You can read the full text of the debate here if you have the time and the inclination to sit through all the precious Christian whining.
But I can sum it up for you:
Some Lords: “this law is a stupid, unactionable, anachronistic bunch of crap. This is a no-brainer”
Some other Lords: “but we’re a Christian country, taking the law away will have symbolic value, everyone will start being really mean to us… waahhh, waaahh, and anyway if we become more secular the world will explode”
Some bishops: “well, ok, it’s probably a silly law, but now isn’t necessarily the time to do this (when would it ever be?), we need a longer consulation…..and this better not be a move towards….a…more…….(hushed whispers, furtive glances) s….s….secular….state”
One particularly stupid lord: “I think ‘The Dawkins Delusion’ is a much better book than ‘The God Delusion'”
Brownian, when crossing the border, you could have just said you were visiting your soon-to-be inlaws. Just buy the goat when you get there.
True enough: there was no blasphemy law in Scotland, but Scotland is hardly free of sectarian hatred. People may not be killing each other in droves over it, and it depends where you go, but it’s there.
With a bit of luck I might see you there… whoever it is you actually are :)
I can’t actually be too thrilled with that California ruling. We’re homeschooling our fifteen-year-old because she’s far enough ahead that the local school district can’t keep up with her (right now she’s doing second-year algebra, physiology, some humanities, and choir). Luckily, we’re not in California, but the whole “teaching credentials for parents?” argument does tend to go in waves– every time a court somewhere rules on it, half a dozen states pass laws one way or the other.
Goddamn Bryan Fucking Fischer, local pious fuckwit. I notice that he doesn’t mention which school it was, presumably because he knows it’s not kosher to spread manure in public schools. Not illegal, I don’t think, since he’s just a guest fuckwit, but hopefully since it was an accelerated biology class, they took him as an object lesson about how NOT to do biology.
Clicking through all the way to his wondrous web page reveals the Idaho Values* Alliance latest grasp at straws: picketing Planned Parenthood for some eugenics statements made by one of their founders decades ago. Of course, he ties Darwin into this. Bunch of disengenuous fucks.
* Sadly, “values” is another word forever suspect, along with “family”
“Goddamn! I’m pleased to see that ridiculous law struck from the books. Now for the House of Lords then after that, disestablishment. Lotta work to do, see you later …”
Here in Wales we have already disestablished the Church. I think the Scots did the same.
Matt the Church was never established in Scotland. The Anglican church here is often titled: the church IN Scotland, making its alieness even more apparent. Despite the fact that no church ever had formal establishment, it didn’t stop Scotland being a priest ridden country for a very long time. It was for eg not until something like 1968 before Christmas day was a holiday in Scotland.Though we do get the 2nd of Jan off as well as the 1st…
No, to heck with that, Peter Ashby — now, in Scotland people just kill each other over Rangers or Celtic.
Don’t tell me they don’t — I’ve been in Glasgow when the game got out.
Britain has voted to take blasphemy off the law books.
FUCK GOD. Oh yeah, & all religions are crap.
“Despite the fact that no church ever had formal establishment…” Is that true? I’ve read a fair amount of Scottish history, and I thought that the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) had been estabished as the national church. Wikipedia bears me out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_scotland. There are some distinctions; the monarch is not the head of the Kirk, for one.
There’s a picture of the two-story Malaysian teapot (which has since been demolished) in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Kingdom
Looks like something at Disneyland.
Oh, I should clarify: my “why, is that a bullet I hear whizzing past?” line in comment #19 was a reference to ‘dodging the bullet’ in regards to the relationship, not any sort of commentary on Kenya’s recent instability.
It just occured to me that it might be taken the wrong way and I thought I’d make that clear.
Jesus Haploid Farting-in-Church Christ bouncing up and down on a crutch! Bring on the blasphemy!
“A Malaysian woman was jailed for worshipping [sic] a teapot.” –
Heh, maybe that was the “celestial teapot” that some skeptics think is the conceptual equivalent of “God”? Really, it’s no argument since the individual credibility of any unknown is what matters. The argument that any one unproven thing is equivalent to or just as credible/incredible as any other is a total fallacy in principle, aside from what credibility you assign to any given unproven claim.
You call that blasphemy? In my day, we had REAL blasphemy, none of this god-damned watered down shit you get today. Ahem:
Kids these days . . .
Goddams is so 19th century: the French used to call us ‘the goddams’ (among other things) in the Napoleonic Wars.
The rumor that Jesus is secretly a Muslim is a pernicious lie… and he does so say the Pledge of Allegiance!
We aren’t always lucky with British visitors. Yale University is going to hire Tony Blair after staff and students at a British one didn’t want to touch him with a barge pole.
Guess what warmonger Blair is going to be teaching.
“Yale confirmed yesterday he is to join the schools of management and divinity, at the campus in New Haven, Connecticut.” Management and divinity! Now there is a program.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/07/tonyblair.usa
But Blair has the necessary Jeebus experience.
“His decision to teach religion as well as politics confirms how important his Christianity was during his years in Downing Street. Fearful that it could turn off some voters, he played it down in the run-up to the 1997 general election and the early years of his premiership.
He is to set up a Blair Faith Foundation, based in London, before heading to the US for the autumn term.”
Sheesh dave, give us some time to warm up here…
Funny, I know Mary Whitehouse as the good Doctor’s most annoying foe.
@Brownian #14–
I go to school with a kid from Cedarville, (enchanting feller, full of fascinating beliefs which he is only now realizing people don’t automatically hold) and I recall him saying something about a deep schism between pro-sciencey phil/religion profs (why people insist on conflating my discipline with religion . . .) and hard core YECers that was causing quite the ruckus.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the “pro-sciencey” profs were just OECs, but progress is progress I guess.
Jesus Christ, I don’t have the words to express just how goddamn happy I am that blasphemy is no longer a crime in my country.
Well, Governor Arnold has vowed to reverse the court’s decision.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/INCHVG0SD.DTL
You see, that’s the problem with home-schooling; all kids will be taught is what their parents believe, regardless of how completely inane those ideas are. So if mom and dad doubt the solidly-established fields of astronomy, physics, biology, history, and so forth, well, then, odds are pretty good so will their EIGHT kids.
This case came about because 1, the parents were abusing the kids (allegedly), and 2, because the courts ran across the law on the books, since 1953, that says kids have to go to an approved institution or be taught at home by qualified individuals. And it does bother me that the mother of these EIGHT kids dropped out of high school.
I’m not sure why people are down on our schools anyway. Maybe we got lucky (my son attends a California Distinguished School, and my daughter’s school is also excellent). If your kids school isn’t doing the job, move them. Luckily, in the Sac City Unified District, there are excellent options. Some of the schools are bad; so pull your kids.
My kids are very challenged by the work they get. It is quite rigorous. And neither are in their “assigned” schools; we had to work to get them into better schools. Not very hard, I’ll add.
What I really want to know is whether Jesus Hussein Christ wore a flag pin?
“Long said he specifically objected to his children being taught in school about evolution and homosexuality.”
Operative words: “taught about”. Knowledge is BAD!
Yes. It is bad. Good people know that being ignorant and fearful is the way to go through life.
Just look for the guy with the bottle of single malt, reciting the words from “Jerry Springer the Opera” (Act II) on the nearest armchair :-D
Being one of the two atheists in Idaho, I really enjoy hearing that the fall of our nation has a good chance of originating in my stomping grounds. For those other Idahoans reading this, my apologies for the use of the world “origin” and not “creation”. Just kidding. Most Idahoans can’t read. I think there’s a correlation in there, somewhere.
Interestingly enough I am pretty sure that we still have unenforced blasphemy laws on the books here in New South Wales, Australia. Every now and again someone talks about repealing them but no one gets around actually to doing it. Though to be fair our state government takes a while to get around to doing anything.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a moped!” is one of my favourites (clue in the spelling), and blasphemy laws never interfered with its use … but, still nice to shed the ridiculous mumbo jumbo.
Goddamn Francis Collins
ayup.
knew that guy was going to be a problem years ago. I didn’t figure he would turn out to be THIS retarded, though.
I hardly think anyone, even in the “framing” camp, can argue that Collins is much of anything but a liability at this point.
The ONLY value I can find, is that being the head of the human genome project, it gives him credibility (to those who value authority figures over the evidence itself) when he elucidates how the human genome research supports all of the predictions made relevant to it by the ToE (he even makes some basic errors in that effort, but not particularly noteworthy ones).
However, you then have to basically force someone to look away as afterwards he goes on a merry path of irrationality and ignorance.
In a sense, it makes him far more dangerous to the cause of good science than even Wells, as he tells half the story to gain credibility, then attempts to utilize gained cred to support some irrational drivel.
sad.
A minor addition regarding the Malaysian legal system.
Under the Malaysian legal system, it is illegal to defame any of the established religions (which I think are Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, not sure if Buddhism or the various Chinese religions are included), it is illegal to attempt to convert any member of those religions and it is illegal to apostasize from any of those religions.
If you’re born a Muslim/Hindu/Christian you die a Muslim/Hindu/Christian and are subject to the “personal law” applicable to that religion. Which results in such regular farces as Muslims in some states being charged with buying alcohol from non-Muslims who go scot-free and Muslims adulterers being prosecuted while their non-Muslim partners walk.
While Muslims are the largest religious group in Malaysia its misleading to say that this peculiar legal situation is based solely on sharia law.
There was a case last year where a woman who converted from Hinduism to Islam lost custody of her children to her Hindu husband, so the law cuts both ways.
Rather it’s part of the accommodation worked out between all the different Malaysian ethnic and religious groups at the end of the civil war in the 1950’s now euphemistically referred to as the Malayan Emergency.
There was a case last year where a woman who converted from Hinduism to Islam lost custody of her children to her Hindu husband, so it
Any chance we Canadians can get blasphemous libel out of our criminal code?
Looks like inherited that one from Mother England. I wonder when it was last (if ever) used in this country? These days, I doubt it would survive an actual court case, in which the accused would surely invoke the Charter. It seems embarassing, but most jurisdictions have these dead-letter laws still on the books, never enforced and non-enforcable. Occasionally, the legislators get around to cleaning up such legal kruft.
It might be a useful publicity stunt for some group (eg: Humanist Association of Canada, Secular Ontario, CFI) to do commit a blasphemy in order to provoke a prosecution, but I doubt any sane Crown Attorney would waste time on it. You’d need to bait some anal-retentive religous nut into it (while being careful not to transgress on the hate-speech laws — which ironically, actually *are* worth the effort of repealing).
Animal cruelty laws would take precedence over religious freedom, in any civilized society.
dzho said: “Animal cruelty laws would take precedence over religious freedom, in any civilized society.”
I don’t really get your point, but hey, luckily we have both.
I’m a bit late but those who would like to see photos of the now destroyed teapot go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/04/wteapot104.xml
There is also a photo of the unfortunate woman. She looks terrorist material to me.
Soooo….Britain…right direction…rest of the world…wrong direction…whatcha trying to say damnit? We don’t say god damnit, that would be pandering to peoples perceptions.
“The US isn’t quite so rational”
Is it because of something I don’t know about? Are we’re locking up people for changing their religions and adding blasphemy laws? Last I checked we’ve been more rational on both accounts.
Is there any link between the “smiting” of the UK blasphemy laws and shariah law in various non-muslim countries getting some news time, not to mention some of the work of the OIC in the United Nations?
Eg has someone worked out that that there might be some hypocrisy involved?
PS: “Jesus Horatio Christ” has the best sound, and somehow comes across as most authentic (God only knows why.)
Yahwehdamnit!