Comments on: Jesus and Mo Wednesday, October 31, 2012

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:30:16 +0000

See… and I was hoping for a prince.

By: Acolyte of Sagan

Acolyte of Sagan — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:03:47 +0000

There is an old truism about comedy that says “a joke is like a frog; you can take it apart to see how it works, but the frog dies”.

Joe, leave the frog alone!

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 23:04:05 +0000

There are lots of laws that were eventually struck because of the charter… but they were still ‘enforced’ after the charter. They just…. shouldn’t have been. I’ve always found the legal language around ‘rights’ illogical and confusing.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only difference I see is that the blasphemy law wasn’t really being enforced much even before the charter… so no one has bothered to strike it down.

I agree it would be struck down because of the charter, but it could still take years to work that out in the courts… if those in power had been enforcing it.

I am pretty sure it was the charter that got rid of the ban on gay marriage (and abortion even) for instance. That doesn’t mean we have had gay marriage in Canada since ’82…

By: KC

KC — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:23:54 +0000

We also have a Charter of Rights that has rendered any number of laws unenforceable so its an interesting philosophical question whether we have a blasphemy law since a prosecution couldn’t be successfully brought. Any constitutional scholar who tells you that Canada’s blasphemy law could withstand constitutional scrutiny needs to lay off the glue.

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 04:24:47 +0000

It wasn’t really intended as a legal opinion. I find it somewhat ironic though when someone defends the use of ‘serial killer’ and claims I’m a being pedantic… and then turns around and argues for a strict legal definition of ‘libel’. Oh well, the point I was making was that the ‘zombie’ accusation was distinctly different from the ‘serial killer’ one. Jurisdictional differences aside, the latter is more slanderous… in the general sense of the word.

Strangely enough, in canada, there is an actual criminal law on the books… against blasphemy… a form of libel…. which would technically be applicable to both the zombie and serial killer accusations. Fortunately for us, that law is rarely enforced… but it is still there in the criminal code.

By: KC

KC — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:34:24 +0000

Debates over the usefulness of wikipedia aside, s/he is right that in the UK you cannot sue for defaming the dead.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 22:14:17 +0000

Yeah, I run into this a lot with atheists and believers.

The important thing to understand is that we are not talking about ‘objective’ morality when it comes to religion.

Plato deals with this in his Euthyphro. Many atheists reference this as a ‘proof’ against god, but it is not really intended that way. Socrates project was criticizing those who would teach virtue… in this case piety or goodness.

Religious morality is ‘absolutist’, not objective. It is morality by edict. The Euthyphro asks the question, is something good, because God says it is good, or is it good independent of God?

Being good vs doing good.

In religion, what god says is good is good by definition. So if prophet X does a really horrible thing(objectively)…. at god’s command(absolutist)… it is good because god commanded it.

This plays into the ‘god has a plan’, and god works in mysterious ways…. stuff.

I should note, I’m a relativist, so I don’t think ‘morality’ is absolutist or objective. But the difference is important if you want to understand religion… or seriously criticize it.

And yes, as atheists, I think we have to be careful to distinguish between the man, as a man, and the ‘prophet’ that religious people claim he was.

By: KC

KC — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:38:54 +0000

I think your point two is the most interesting for both this issue and the Banu Qurayza incident. It has always struck me as inconsistent to on one hand believe in the existence of an objective god given morality and to hold up a man as a model of morality to the point where you have a word for it (the sunnah) and on the other rely on more subjective socially constructed conceptions of morality to excuse behaviour when it is inconsistent with contemporary morality. It is one thing for us non-believers to cut Muhammad some slack because we recognize he was just a man within a particular social context. It is quite another for believers to try to do the same.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 09:55:55 +0000

Yeah, I should listen to legal opinion of a random anonymous guy on the internet, because that is much better than a referenced article in Wikipedia.

Now that is funny.

By: Acolyte of Sagan

Acolyte of Sagan — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 09:43:17 +0000

Mo really wanted to go as a paedophile but the police wouldn’t lend him any of Jimmy Savile’s clothes and jingle-jangle jewellery.