The Glade 4.0

Posted in HF, for safety reasons.

Question:

I hope he wins.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I suspect that there will not be any riots, flag burning, effigy burning, fatwas, bombings, or any other such things that certain other religious groups in India might engage in were this aimed at them.

I also expect that fact will be conveniently forgotten about.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't get this post at all, sorry. Perhaps you could comment on what was done, instead of what may not be done?

You should know by other threads here that DE doesn't waste his time with videos...

I wish I could say I'm surprised by this, but frankly I'm not. I have my doubts about rationality and facts overcoming the idiocy of religion in this case.

That's still supernatural! It's not rational at all! It's an excremental! The Golgothan!

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Contrary to what Aizle wants to claim, I do sometimes watch the videos here, and I did watch your video. He's just butt-hurt because I didn't watch his video even though I was already substantially familiar with the man's views, and was not going to waste my time with his "what this guy says is authoritative because it's in a video, and counterarguments by other experts are not as good because you found them, fully sourced, on Wikipedia." I am not aware of any fundamental superiority of video over text; Aizle seems to think that there is.

As to what I'm talking about, I'll comment as I see fit, thanks very much. To elabortate, India is 80.5% Hindu, and 13.4% muslim, with only 2.3% Christians. Given India's incredible population this works out to about 138 million Muslims and 828 million Hindus.

The propensity of muslims for violence when they perceive blasphemy against Islam is well-documented, and while I don't know that Hindus have the same issues the simple fact is that Muslim-Hindu clashes in India are a real problem, not to mention that India's neighbor and main national security threat is Pakistan, a populous muslim nation home to many hardliners, and both nations are armed with nuclear weapons; at ranges that allow delivery in mere minutes.

A law like the one in India, depsite its laws on freedom of speech, are an attempt to keep a lid on things by keeping the much larger religious groups from massive sectarian violence that could rapidly spiral out of control.

Christians are not likely to engage in that sort of thing, partly because Christians in modern times have generally not done so, and partly because they're so vastly outnumbered in India that it wouldn't go well for them. However, India is a fairly sophisticated and developed nation that does attempt to respect rule of law, and so it must allow this law to defend Christians as well as attempt to keep the 2 larger groups from each other's throats.

What the eventual result of this will be is anyone's guess. India may decide the laws are simply too incompatible and scrap the anti-blasphemy laws; it may decide to enforce the law; it may decide to drop the charges against the gentlemen; we simply don't know and none of us here understand the internal cultural and political dynamics of India well enough to say. Our ideas about the sanctity of freedom of speech may simply not be palatable to most Indians, and while we sympathize with the rationalist's complaint that's from our Western perspective.

He's clearly correct about the weeping statue, but the simple fact is that A) he's picking on Christians because they're a small minority in that country and therefore are simply making a legal complaint, under a law they are hardly responsible for creating in the first place and B) He's playing to western ideas for sympathy, as he's no doubt an educated man and knows that enforcement of this law on behalf of Christians will be perceived in Western countries as if the law existed here where Christians are the majority and such laws are forbidden. Hence, his running off to Europe hoping for foreign help, rather than stay in his own country and confront the issue.

This case actually illustrates the asinine nature of trying to create global standards of human rights. They're largely western ideas that Europe signs onto hoping the rest of the world will forget its past colonialism, America forgets don't hold any water in other countries, and non-western countries sign onto for political purposes on the parts of their governments and whose citizens think are great when they get the rights but are none to pleased when someone else gets the rights.

Frankly, I think the Catholics are being silly for not having noticed that the water was sewage in the first place and now resenting that someone noticed that (didn't it smell bad or something), the nation of India is having attention called to the fact that it's using a blasphemy law as a band-aid for a deep cultural issue, and the atheist is being a hypocrite ***** about the law and then running off to Europe after picking on a minority religious group rather than the groups that are the real reason for the law in the first place. Since he wants western ideas so badly, I wonder how he'd feel about being a subject of the Queen again? Then he could have British ideas about religious freedom and freedom of speech. Or are western ideas only good for India when they support atheists?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So are you defending the actions of the Catholics here DE? You think that this guy should be imprisoned because he showed FACTS that happen to contradict the beliefs of the faithful?

DE how is anyone picking on a minority religious group here? The guy found out people were licking sewage water and tried to stop it, and his own country charged him for it. If people want to go and pray at the crying statue that's one thing, but if you know for a fact that they're drinking **** water and don't say anything, you're an *******.

I'd hate to disagree in this scenario, because you're absolutely right, however, it disturbs me that in the video, this man only speaks of his right to freedom of speech, not the health issues involved and his duty to report them.

I entirely agree with both arguments, but I believe the second is stronger - drinking sewage is an easier to defend issue than freedom of speech. The fact that he picked freedom of speech as his soapbox leads me to believe that his concern is primarily debunking the "miracle," not protecting people's health.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The freedom of speech issue is clearly stronger. People have the right to consume what they wish - regardless of its effect on their health or the reasons behind the desire to consume.

His speech was violated, if he had tried to prohibit or halt the activity aside from speaking he would have violated their rights.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Actually, watch the video again. He speaks, admittedly briefly, about both the health issues and his duty.

A) You don't know that anyone knew that it was bad water until this guy did, so this "you're an *******" stuff is someone's assumption.
B) He's specifically concerning himself with Christian religious miracles because he knows that Christians being a minority and less disposed to violent retaliation than muslims, and thereby less likely to provoke retaliation from the Hindu majority, are likely to make a legal complaint rather than car-bomb him. He wouldn't have found out it was sewage water to begin with if he hadn't gone out and specifically decided to go after this miracle to begin with.

As for his country charging him, that law is in place for a reason. He violated it. He's trying to ***** about the law from abroad now as if it were simply a matter of freedom of speech rather than keeping 2 far larger groups from each other's throats. He may be right about the law, but he's pretending this law is there to protect Christian sensibilities rather than stop Muslims and Hindus from slaughtering one another.

As for his duty, he found out about the sewage by trying to debunk the miracle. That was just him lucking out with the dirty water angle. He's right about the sewage, but it is not a matter of him concerning himself with a duty to public health.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE we don't know anything about why he looked to disprove this "miracle". It could be because there's something tangible to work with and/or he lived close to the "miracle".

Non of that is relevant other than to fuel your apologist BS.

Additionally, the reasons for the law are equally irrelevant.

What IS relevant is that we have a case here where someone has FACTUALLY proven something to be false and is being persecuted for it.

It's **** Galileo all over again. It's pathetic that in almost 400 years we haven't seemed to make any progress.

Except for the part where they totally did create the law in the first place. There were no blasphemy laws on the Indian subcontinent until they were brought there and instituted by the British in the 1860s. As Christian missionaries from Britain began to migrate into India, they began to find it rather inconvient for their citizens to be prosecuted under the laws they had instituted. The laws were rescinded for a time, but reinstated in 1927 after Christianity had become an established, if minority, religion.




You can't uphold the blasphemy laws as being the genuine cultural will of the Indian people while at the same time dismissing their ideas of democracy and civil rights as some kind of faux Western overlay since both ideas were imported by western foreign rule. Regardless, India has been independent for 65 years. They've had ample time to reform their government into whatever shape they please. They've chosen by their own will to maintain an essentially democratic form of government with a variety of civil rights. Those ideas belong to them as much as they belong to westerners, unless of course you believe that the Indian people are stupid to think for themselves.


I rather suspect that not getting fined/imprisoned is a vastly more significant factor in his decision to flee India than whether or not he gets sympathy, but I fail to see the relevance even if he is. This remains such an exceedingly insignificant event on the world stage that no country -- if they even care in the first place -- is going to apply diplomatic pressure. At that point, it's just opionions and I doubt India gives any more shits about our opinions than we do about its.

Either way, you're making a pretty hasty generalization about the west and its tolerance for blasphemy. Again, it was the West who introduced these ideas to India in the first place. As for the modern West, I submit for consideration the numerous blue laws in the U.S., that laws against sodomy weren't ruled illegal until 2003, and -- most directly relevant to this specific case -- the fact that Britain didn't rescind its own blasphemy laws until 2008. If he's looking for sympathy in the West, he's barking up the wrong tree, both historically and contemporarily speaking.


It's reallly nothing of the sort (see below).

The "real reason for the law in the first place" has nothing to do with religious violence between Muslims and Hindus or between Muslims and Christians. In fact, when you dig into the history of the law and its corresponding caselaw, it has little to do with religion at all. It was instituted to try to quell tensions between Punjabs, Mughals, and Hill Rajas. The 12 Sikh states that controlled the Punjab region from about the mid 1500s to the mid 1800s found themselves frequently in conflict with both the Muslim Mughal ruling class and with the Hindu Rajas of the Hill States. Though sectarian, the conflict wasn't about religion so much as culture and politics. The Sikhs advocated a casteless, tolerant society. Though the Misls were predominantly Sikh, they also contained Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Public officials of all flavors were extent. This did not set well with the caste societies of either the Hill Rajas or the Mughals. The British introduced the blasphemy laws probably not fully grasping the history and nature of the conflict. Although the fighting was between Sikhs on the one side and Muslims or Hindus on the other, the religions themselves were never really central to the conflict.

As to why the law still exists today, it seems to mostly be a case of inertia with a side of "holy ****, that's still a law?" Certainly it hasn't been a tool for constraining violence between Hindus and Muslims -- or anyone else, for that matter. In fact, prior to this case, it doesn't seem to have been used at all in a great many years. Seemingly the last time anyone was sued under this law was when Periyar E. V. Ramasamy smashed a Hindu idol in a 1953 protest against the role of religion in Indian society -- in particular the Hindu caste system (are we sensing a theme yet?). The case was dismissed.

Your characterization of this law, and its history, purpose, and usage are way off base.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Ok, first of all Christianity was well known (if not widespread in practice) in India long before British rule, so no, the Indian Roman catholics totally did not create it in the first place. The British were pretty anti-Catholic, in fact at the time they ruled India. The Christians of India did not create the law except in some sort of "they're Christians and the British were Christian so somehow it makes it the responsibility of the Indian Christians" guilt-by-association logic.

Second, the reason the British created it was, in fact, the tensions that existed there, and even though the exact nature of those tensions has changed, the fact is that they remained and that is the continuing purpose of this law. Whether or not it is well-advised is another matter. See below. Your own evidence demonstrates this, and the reason is that a small nation like Britain needs whatever methods it can lay its hands on to control a world-spanning empire when it has only so many regiments and ships to spare. The less local infighting there is to quell, the better.



Ok, what you can't do is take “our ideas about freedom of speech may not be palatable to most Indians” and turn it into “the blasphemy laws are the genuine cultural will of the Indian people.” That isn’t even close to what I said.

Second, you also cannot claim that Freedom of Speech is just as much an Indian idea as a western one after admitting it was introduced by the West, then claim that 65 years means that the Indians have adopted freedom of speech as their own idea because that’s enough time to mold their government, then turn around and take issue with the idea of blasphemy laws as something they want. Freedom of speech is an idea they have adopted, but evidently so are blasphemy laws, since those constitute a major restriction on that freedom.

Third, 65 years is hardly long enough to assume the Indians have come to any universal consensus on what Freedom of Speech means just because they adopted the basic idea. We certainly have not in over 3 times that long. There are over 1 billion Indians and any idea that they have some universal idea on any political matter, or for that matter, a unified “cultural will” is asinine. The fact that the idea is Western in origin and was adopted by them in no way implies stupidity; in fact it implies a greater open-mindedness than many other peoples living in former colonial lands.


I suspect you’re mostly correct, but playing for western sympathy is exactly how he’s going about avoiding getting arrested. It’s highly unlikely any western country would go to the trouble of extraditing him.


Well if he’s barking up the wrong tree, he’s barking up the wrong tree. In any case, Britain’s blasphemy law saw little enforcement since Indian independence, he probably is unfamiliar with trivial sodomy laws in the U.S., and as far as America specifically goes, we’ve historically been a lot more concerned with preventing **** than we have blasphemy. His impression of the west may or may not be accurate.

Except that it is, as your see below amply demonstrates.

The "real reason for the law in the first place" has nothing to do with religious violence between Muslims and Hindus or between Muslims and Christians. In fact, when you dig into the history of the law and its corresponding caselaw, it has little to do with religion at all. It was instituted to try to quell tensions between Punjabs, Mughals, and Hill Rajas. The 12 Sikh states that controlled the Punjab region from about the mid 1500s to the mid 1800s found themselves frequently in conflict with both the Muslim Mughal ruling class and with the Hindu Rajas of the Hill States. Though sectarian, the conflict wasn't about religion so much as culture and politics. The Sikhs advocated a casteless, tolerant society. Though the Misls were predominantly Sikh, they also contained Christians.[/quote]
So, in other words, it was to help keep a lid on tensions. Thanks. As you can see I was correct. The differences between the groups may indeed have focused on their ethnicities, but the simple fact is that when ethnic differences are compounded with religious differences, religion is an additional source of tensions and flashpoints for violence. If that were not true, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to make the law in the first place.
Furthermore, the fact that the original reasons for the law revolved around quelling Punjab-Mughals-hill Rajah tensions does not, in any way, indicate that it does not serve the purpose of avoiding Hindu-Muslim tensions now. Major religious violence goes back as far as 800 AD with Timur’s sack of Dehli. In more recent times we have the Sikh revolt and Indira Ghandi’s assassination in 1984, ethinic cleansing against Hindus in Kashmir, and numerous other examples by and against Hindus and Muslims and Christians.
It is hardly reasonable, therefore, to think that this law remains on the books simply because it’s been forgotten, or because it was introduced by the British. So no, I am not off base at all, as your own evidence amply demonstrates.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You know ...

I'm a shade more interested in the responses than the original post. Who cares why he did what he did? Who cares how he spoke about the justification or the legal outcome? It's rather insignificant. More to the point ...

The unabashed anti-theism Aizle displays is far more problematic than whatever likely skewed representation of events is available to us through the media.

We have someone who works for ICE accepting actions of war against non-combatant citizens. We have someone from the other side of the dogmatic spectrum being belligerently anti-faith. That's a curious thing ...

Seriously.

By the way, the invocation of Galileo is rather amusing, as is your blame, Aizle. Beyond the historical problems Stathol mentions, there would be certain alterity and liminality issues to broach. After all, we wouldn't want to impose a distinctly western reading of the various cultures and ethnic groups on the Indian subcontinent, now would we? In fact, you're presuming that India holds itself to a distinctly Western philosophical set of ideas, when their own cultural and ethnic topology is farm removed from anything you really understand.

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So? I don't live in India. That's the law in their country; I don't see that Catholics should restrain themselves from making use of it, especially since other groups seem to resort to far more violent methods. I think the law is a poor band-aid for underlying problems India has, but if it is the law, I see no particular reason Atheists ought to get special exemption from it, especially not jsut because they lucked out with the fig leaf of sewage contamination.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not at all talking about why he looked into this one in particular; but why he was looking into miracles at all. He’s presented as an “atheist and rationalist”, and really, why the **** else would he be looking into miracles?

The term “apologist” is, itself, BS, being both poisoning the well and begging the question.

Yes, in fact they are relevant. India is not obligated to disregard laws it feels are necessary just so that atheists can go around debunking miracles. That’s their internal business. India is not required to avoid making or enforcing laws it feels are necessary for its civil order simply because they wouldn’t be acceptable to us. India does, in fact, have a freely elected government, and protections for civil rights and is doing the best it can to have rule of law, and if their ideas of what freedom of speech means don’t happen to match up to ours, the best we can say is “well, the law is different here.” I don’t see any reason why this law becomes a travesty just because it’s an atheist that falls afoul of it; frankly I think India’s general problems with religious violence far outweigh the issues caused with dirty water at a shrine. In fact, dirty water in general causes nearly a million deaths a year in that country and eliminating this particular source of it is hardly a major victory in that regard.

Sorry, but it is not simply a matter of the freedom of atheists to go around debunking miracles. The law applies to everyone in India; if it were a Christian committing some sort of offense against Hinduism he’d have problems too if they made a complaint. ZOMG FACTUAL has nothing to do with it. The law isn’t there to deal with whether something is factual; it’s to keep bombings, shootings, and rioting down.

Galileo made his own bed; he was unable to adequately prove his theories and undertook to ridicule a pope that actually was supportive of him until he decided to do that. Galielo was hardly a travesty based on the standards of his own time. As for not making progress, no we haven’t in that atheists are still using Protestant distortions of the facts and circumstances for their own ends hundreds of years later.
By the way, since India was utterly uninvolved in Galileo to begin with, there is no “we” to have made any progress.

The simple fact is that either the law is necessary and proper, or it isn't. Here, it would not be. There, maybe it is and that's up to the Indians. Just because an atheist ran into it means nothing.

There's also the simple fact that just going out and debunking miracles is hardly scientifically necessary or important. He figured out it was dripping water. Whoop. De. Do. Any of us could have done that. The fact that the water is dirty lends no weight to the idea of persecution because he isn't charged with revealing that the water was unsanitary.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."