Singapore jails teenager for hurting God's feelings

[anon28219805]

And here I was thinking something along the lines of Dr. Who, when I should have used Red Dwarf as my reference point. Smeg.

That’s the problem with us religious types: we tend to get too literal with our overreactions. All that earnestness gets on everybody’s nerves, especially if somebody makes doctrine into a life-or-death issue.

Minor understatements aside, I suppose he’s well on his way to deconstructing the system from the inside out, because now we see the violence inherent in the system.

Oppression is so, like, self-fulfilling … almost as if it were some sort of religious prophecy or something? And anyway, this was never about some sort of sincere religious discussion to begin with.

But yes, I also fail to see what windmill the authorities are going to keep him from tilting, so I’ll stop my blended snarkiness and move on to other cranky old man stuff. Thanks.

EDIT:
And then, of course, he says this $#!+ below … it’s shaping up like a Coen brothers film, where the protagonist is convicted for the wrong crime. But hey, he got 21 likes, that must mean something.

https://twitter.com/amosyee/status/761503989196206080

[ficuswhisperer]

Remember, folks. Christianity is stupid. Communism is good.

[popobawa4u]

Some big generalizations there in the whole “religion vs science as polarized paradigms” outlook, which is not shared by all. For me the overlap between science and religion is much bigger than the differences, but that’s because I see them both as value-neutral methodologies. For me, faith has no place in religion, or anywhere else, really.

The friction you mention I think results when people try to awkwardly compartmentalize disparate ideas, such as trying to use religious ethics in the bedroom and statist ethics for their taxes and science ethics on their paleology dig, and rationalize why some exceptions and priorities occur instead of others.

FWIW I think that prosecuting people for criticizing religion hurts people all around. Do people get a tribal exception for criticizing Christianity as a Christian? Criticizing religion, even one’s own are what theologians and religious scholars are for, and they are arguably the experts on religion. It’s the same reason why I hate web groups forbidding the discussion of illegal activities - it’s hypocritical, because people need to discuss something to even arrive at a consensus about its legality. So the practice serves only to allow certain special groups to discuss and criticize, while silencing others.

[billstewart]

The Singapore law isn’t about hurting a god’s feelings, it’s about hurting the feelings of believers by insulting their gods or their religion or whatever. It’s partly yet another Singaporean ban on being impolite in public, and partly a “don’t say anything that’ll make the Muslims pissed off because they tend to riot” (not that other groups don’t also, but they’re much more sensitive than most of the Chinese religions, especially the ones with lots of gods that you can take or leave), and of course if you’re disrespectful to religions, you might also be disrespectful to politicians, and we just can’t have that.

Yes, it’s still a violation on freedom of speech, and has no place in a civilized legal system. And yeah, the kid’s being an asshole, as many teenagers do, but it’s not the government’s business.

[anon28219805]

Just to clarify, I wasn’t claiming that religion and science are "polarized paradigms."
I don’t think they are polarized.

I did call religion something that people generally relate easier to than science.
Both science and religion contain elements of progress and regress. Both have cultural influences and are influenced by culture.

I’m referencing people like Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi when I use the shorthand word “paradigms.” I’m not talking about a conflict-model that rises to either Dawkins-level incompatibility, or Stephen Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” as a boundary-condition.

It’s just that I think it’s easier for people to relate to religions because they tend to be narratives handed down over lifetimes. In other words, it’s easier to get into the ritual or habit of believing them to be true because of their story’s longevity in contrast and comparison to people’s historical existence.

As a theologian, right away I am presupposing a starting point based within a particular religion. Right away I also presuppose a substantive difference between belief-models. Whether those models are true or not is something that’s tested against culture: “truth” in this sense is something that is negotiated regarding its value-significance, which may or may not overlap with the “factual” or “material.” So I tend to fall within the Theology of Religion sub-discipline of the larger Pluralist studies.

Compare this to science where repeated experimentation and peer-review are required components of “science culture.” Although I think Karl Popper’s views on falsifiability have merit, logical positivism is an acknowledged failure.

I am more interested in philosophical externalism (and spiritual categories of qualia) as a reply to the presuppositions of physicalism. So I would generally agree with you regarding methodological commonalties. Where we disagree would be the issue of faith: I see faith as an open-ended relational process (such as Buber), rather than adherence to a restriction.

BTW, thank you for your recognition that religious criticism has merit. This is what makes it possible for theologians to be able to gain expertise, much in the same way as scientific peer-review. Despite what most people think, theology DOES change, even when it seems like pastors have stopped learning after they got out of “cemetery.” (that pun was always dumb).

Religious trolling, OTOH, appears to be the fast-food punditry of intellectual anti-religious teenagers. Well, more power to them. They might pull a Schweitzer and get crushed like his Historical Jesus, but they could wind up doing some good in this world after all.

[anon28219805]

I actually think this is an interesting bit of Dadaism.

Wanna talk about Life of Brian?