RE: Nigerian scam. RELIGION.
September 11, 2020 at 11:36 am
(This post was last modified: September 11, 2020 at 11:38 am by BrianSoddingBoru4.)
(September 11, 2020 at 10:24 am)Brian37 Wrote:(September 10, 2020 at 8:37 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: The article wasn’t about religion, it was about a man arrested for running afoul of anti-blasphemy laws.
I’m on his side as well - I support freedom of religion (probably more than you do). But religion being a scam has nothing to do with the article. No, he should not have been arrested for criticizing religion, but - again - that’s not the point of the article.
Let’s try an analogy. Suppose I believe that the banking system is a fraud. I know it is illegal to rob a bank, but I do so anyway. Is my arrest for bank robbery a ‘scam’?
Boru
How can one run "afoul" of anti-blasphemy laws?
Since when should it be illegal to criticize any religion?
Who did he rob? He merely questioned religion, and offended people.
You can run afoul of anti-blasphemy laws by knowingly breaking them. I should have thought that was pretty obvious.
It should NOT be illegal to criticize any religion. Anti-blasphemy laws are stupid, childish and undemocratic. This man’s arrest was morally wrong because he broke an unjust law. I’m not defending his arrest. I’m just saying that it wasn’t a scam (that’s a word you might want to look up).
As far as I know, he didn’t rob anyone at all. Even if he had, it would have had nothing to do with his arrest for blasphemy. I brought up bank robbery as a purely hypothetical analogy. Since you don’t seem to understand what I was getting at, I’ll expand it a little.
Suppose I can make the case that robbing a bank is not immoral and should not be illegal, that it’s actually a net positive for society. Depositors are insured, so they lose no money. The bank is insured, so they lose no money. It gives people something to read about in the papers and provides the people there at the time with an exciting story to tell, and maybe even a spot on the evening news. It occupies the police and gets them out of the doughnut shops for a bit.
But even with all this, the laws against bank robbery are still on the books. I know about these laws, but I go ahead and rob the bank all the same, for which I am arrested. My arrest may be morally unjust, but it is still legally proper.
This is precisely what happened with the man in your story. He knew what he was doing was illegal and that was likely to be arrested for it, but he was courageous enough to take the risk all the same.
It wasn’t a scam.
Boru
