Lord Ram has won in court over his right to a piece of land.
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-indian-land-claimed-in-the-name...
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
And from the High Court judgement it seems gods are 'persons' for the use of the court..FMD.....I wonder if that means I have to give Eric the Rainbow Farting Unicorn Who Lives in My Garage an actual lease now?
I bet that bugger Walter the Pink Wombat Who Poops Square Poops will trotting off to court to claim squatters rights.....well bugger that *loads shotgun*
Awww, shit... *hanging head in dismay*... Does that mean I may soon be dealing with a bunch of legal disputes involving all the different pagan god images/statues my wife has scattered about the house? Each one of them filing cases for rightful claims to specific wall spaces, shelves, and counter top areas?... *heavy sigh*... Dammit.... Well, at least my wife is a good negotiator. Maybe she can get them all to settle out of court... *shrugging shoulders*...
Not Surprised in the least :
Over the last couple of years, I've taken to reading the Huff Post India from time to time. A country in which millions of people believe cows are the reincarnations of humans.As such, cows are treated with reverence. One may not yell at or strike a cow ,let alone kill one .
Astrology is still taught as a university degree.
The majority of Indians still live in rural villages***, in which the caste system is alive and kicking. In the last year I learned of a case in which a dalit (untouchable ) man was beaten to death for having the audacity to grow a moustache,----another was severely beaten for riding a horse to his own wedding
Hinduism, with its 15 MILLION gods (or just one, depending on to whom one is speaking) is incredibly complex. The waters are still muddied by the also complex Caste-jati system .
Imo, the status quo will remain pretty much in proportion to poverty and ignorance. (as in lack of education). A correlation to be sure; I can't prove that that living in modest comfort and education to at least high school level reduces religiosity./superstition . I guess it's just one of them there coincidences like the fact that Australia has not had a mass shooting since 1996, when the gun laws were tightened. Another coincidence is that armed robbers in Oz rarely use firearms these days
.
***approx.70%
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/About-70-per-cent-Indians-live-in...
Can I charge Hades for rent then? Hes for all the wealth in the world
The mind boggles, though for perspective what would the result in a criminal court case in the states be if the defendant took the stand and refused in front of the jury, to swear on a bible as they were an atheist and it would be meaningless?
It's disheartening enough listening to theists peddle their superstitious wares in here, but to think that in the 21st century their hokum beliefs hold real power, even over life and limb, and even in the most powerful democracy on the planet, is pretty depressing.
Separation of church and state is just a pipe dream in many places throughout the world. In some places the state is entirely subservient to religion and its cruel irrational whackadoo bs.
Doesn't this set a precedent that can have far reaching effects?
If Lord Ram is viewed as a person with legal rights under the law doesnt this also mean he has legal responsibilities such as answering prayers or granting miracles for which potential litigants might have reasonable grounds to expect compensations when the miracle or prayer requested was not forthcoming despite favourable aspects of the stars?
It might be worth my while to look into an online Indian Astrological and Horoscopes Law Degree.
"Your Honour, may it please the court, especially as Jupiter is currently in conjunction with Venus...."
@Grinseed
What makes you think a precedent has been set? IE might easily have happened before.
Might well have been an earlier example.
There was a movie with Billy Connolly made here in Oz "The Man Who Sued God" and I recall it was based on an incident in South Australia. A professional fisherman claiming for the loss of his boat during a storm against God. The insurance company claimed the act of god scam, so he sued God . Never saw the movie and cant recall the outcome of the fisherman's bid. Perhaps Billy's character won.
Anyway perhaps a precedence has happened with Lord Ram. He is now as a god entitled to own property whereas the christian God doesnt own church land. The churches as organisations do. Thats how I understand it.
Do you know of earlier challenges?
I am home now. Wrote all the above on my cell phone on a bus. Further research shows the story was a fiction, but more reliable than my memory. No real fisherman. The movie was based on a story written by a legal guy. But the screenplay was co-written by John Clarke and for that reason I might try finding it.
Anyway no-one is going to sue Lord Ram outside of India and there are those who would dread Lord Ram's settling outside of court.
@ Grinseed
"The Man Who Sued God" is a great 'little" movie. I loved it. Because Billy's character couldn't actually sue god , he sued his representatives. Don't remember exactly. It might have been the Catholics, Protestants and Jews. I think he gets paid out, I remember it has a happy ending
On a serious note,"God On Trial".TV film of a play. Set in Auschwitz . A group of Jewish men who know they are to be killed the next day. They put god on trial for breaking the Abrahamic covenant. God is found guilty. Highly recommended .
It is my understanding that many Jews who survived the holocaust became atheists because of their experience, which I find unsurprising .What does surprise me is that so many seem to have remained believers. Don't know how else to put this: A god who allowed his chosen people to suffer like that is: unable to stop the suffering ,is a complete cunt, or doesn't exist . In any case, why worship him? Did I miss any major possibilities?
"God on Trial"...I am surprised at myself for forgetting that gem...damn memory again. Fully recommended.
As for the persistence of belief in their brutal god, after the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, and the loss of ten tribes, the pogroms in Europe and then the Holocaust, might be accounted for in the multi-faceted aspects, familial and traditional, of Judaism and Jewish culture.
@Grinseed
It as long been my position that without exception, a religion reflects the culture which invents it. It changes as the culture changes. If not in basic beliefs, then in emphasis.
From Wiki:
"In the oldest biblical literature, Yahweh is a storm-and-warrior deity[2] who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies.[3] At that time the Israelites worshipped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal,[4] but in time El and Yahweh became conflated------"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
The people who became the Jews were nomadic, illiterate bronze age goat herders.Their life would have been "nasty brutish and short" .So of course their god would have been 'harsh' . The YHWH of modern Judaism is NOT that god. Today's Jews have modified the mitzvot . For example fathers no longer kill recalcitrant children, people are not stoned for breaking the sabbath nor for adultery------Modern Judaism evolved, as indeed did modern Islam, for most believers .
Context: At the time of the Jewish diaspora from Babylon, (6th century bce) the Babylonians were still sacrificing their children to Bel. (a syncretization of several gods) .As far as I'm aware ,that practice continued until Alexander conquered Babylon in the 4th century bce.