You want a lesson in bullying, take it from the Catholic church. Sanal Edamaruku is being hunted by the police at the behest of the Catholic church in India, all for the terrible crime of exposing a Catholic icon as nothing more than a leaking pipe. The latest news is that the police are actively trying to arrest him, at which time they will throw him into prison for an indeterminate length of time…probably just long enough for the church to organize a kangaroo court.
If you haven’t already, sign the petition. It is a travesty that exposing religious fraud is considered a crime anywhere in the world.
Oh wow, how can this be. Sanal is such a hero…
Bit done at Facebook Gnu Atheism:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=458199157531884&l=e92aa03811
Done
Please, explain to me, why is this organization taking seriously as a voice for human rights and human dignity?
And again, to make the ramifications clear:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=458207140864419&l=4a69f3fe95
Hey, India. Truth alone triumphs. Truth. Alone.
So pull your head out of religion’s fifth point of contact.
The Catholic Church is a blot on humanity. It is cruel, hypocritical, greedy…I could go on but what’s the point. I simply cannot understand how they continue to sell their 2,000 year old line of crap to so many. BTW, do you really believe that the Roman soldiers were concerned about Jesus’s modesty and covered his private parts as an expression of concern for 21st Century xian sensibilities? Think about that when you are licking that cross-sicle. Shouldn’t all crucifixes be revised to show the “real” scene – a naked man on a cross? The way it really happened?
While agreeing entirely with the sentiment, online petitions are equal in value to online polls
Signed.
I see the Catholic Church is proving once again that it is the font of all morality….
/sarcasm
Is this an old story?
the indian government has as much to lose as the catholic church. with all the social problems over there india needs religion (any religion) to control the people. if they let people expose catholics then they have to let people expose hinduism and all the other religions over there.
Signed. That the Catholic Church is so brazen as to persecute this person for exposing an unambiguouis act of fraud is utterly disgusting, and acts as a cautionary reminder of what they would do the world over if they but had the power. Being summarily burnt at the stake is out of fashion – being hauled before a kangaroo court for the ‘crime’ of offending religious delusions is so much more modern…
I hope that this blows up in the face of the Catholic Hierarchy – they most assuredly deserve it; both for this travesty and for the countless other acts of evil directly perpetrated and enabled in the name of their toxic, barbarous, superstitious faith.
horseshit
As a former Hindu myself, I think India could nicely with some “exposing” of Hindusim.
@ #15 pramod says:
It’s already been done, many years ago, in Beverley Nichols’ “Verdict on India”, published in 1944.
You can buy a used copy of the first edition online for ca. $10 including shipping.
“Verdict on India” isn’t really an expose of Hinduism; rather it examines the question of Indian backwardness and concludes that it’s due to too much religion – primarily Hinduism, of course.
Nichols’ book may amount to much the same thing as an expose, however.
Thanks for the link. Done.
Signed and about 75% of the way there.
I read the petition, and it seems to be a plea to the Catholic Church to stop persecuting him. The government of India is only barely mentioned at the end.
Given that the church is itself the problem here, I don’t exactly see the point. Why isn’t this a petition to the government to stop listening to priests?
@Bartholomew Remmington #11 — “Is this an old story?” Not that old and it’s on going. The Catholic church filed the complaint in April, after he exposed the leaky pipe miracle on TV. The government has not arrested him yet, but he lost a petition of anticipatory bail and is at increased risk of arrest.
@ amodeo65 #12 — Ing said it best: horseshit. If the Indian government wants to move India forward it needs to stop underwriting superstitious beliefs, particularly junk like the leaky pipe. Informed and knowledgable people and an open government are the only ways to avoid the catastrophe of a political meltdown.
@ Elladan #19 — The Church is part of the problem, but Indian law is party to it because it has what amounts to a blasphemy law. This petition probably addresses the Church because they filed the complaint, so if they were compelled to withdraw it Sanal would be out of danger. There have been other petitions addressed to the government to get them to stop this non-sense.
BTW: Sanal has also spoken out about Mother Theresa’s atrocities in India while garnering enormous donations, echoing Christopher Hitchens’ exposé. One might imagine the Catholic leadership in India using this case as leverage against him for besmirching their sacred cash cow.
Signed.
I continue to hope that humanity can drag itself out of the quagmire of superstition and delusion, but things like this shock me into doubting it will happen any time soon.
How can any country arrest someone for telling the truth?!?!?!
Hello,
Greetings from Australia. I’ve been an avid reader of this blog for sometime now. I thought it was about time I registered.. The disgusting and vile spectacle that’s the catholic church knows no bounds. That it can unselfconsciously pursue such an ignominious and bogus hunt for this man who bravely exposed the fraud is highly telling of its pathetic attempt to subvert from the real issues. Petition signed.
Signed.
This is how the church acts when it’s allowed to. Anytime the Vatican can try to coerce people into letting them lie and obfuscate, they take advantage of it.
Signed!
Contact your local Catholic church for comment, report back what they say. It is one organisation.
Signed.
I doubt it will help. These petitions mostly just give us the illusion of doing something, but it only takes a couple of seconds to sign and at least I can hope this will be one of those rare petitions that makes a difference.
Signed.
Wrong. Unlike most online polls, this petition, and any others worth signing, require a name and address to be entered. Obviously, people can identify false details, but that’s a lot more trouble than clicking to vote multiple times, and if there’s a large proportion of such false names, it’s likely to be fairly obvious.
Without excusing the superstitious nonsense, vile misogyny and hideous caste practices of Hinduism, much of India’s backwardness was and still is due to my fellow Brits, who quite deliberately destroyed the flourishing Indian textile industry in the 18th century, and thereafter kept the country in the role of primary producer; they also produced a number of calamitous famines through exporting grain in times of shortage, and sheer inaction (admittedly, the record is mixed in this respect – sometimes effective action was taken, as in the Bihar famine of 1873-4). Since independence, however, there have been no major famines in India, despite a number of major crop failures.
Signed, and I hope it will do good. This is fucking ridiculous.
Is it a coincidence that Sanal Edamaruku also worked on that? He’s the guy who showed on national TV that a so-called “holy man” practicing tantra was full of BS…
Signed, twitted, FB’d and +1’d, damnit.
Aquaria:
Damn right. Whenever they have the slightest bit of power, they reveal themselves as the vile little fascists they really are.
Telling the truth is illegal? That’s what happens when religion has political power.
And yet again:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=458417640843369&l=26685cbb86
As I understand it, the complainants are the Maharashtra Christian Youth Forum, and they have a Facebook page. Please be firm but polite if you choose to leave a message.
I signed this petition on June 8, but apparently it did little good. At this stage letters should be written to the Indian government. They will be most effective coming from people within India (I’m sure the Indian Rationalist Association are marshalling support from within the country), but the rest of us can do our part to help.
@amodeo65:
No, it doesn’t. Perhaps some people in developing countries need religion to console them while their infrastructure is being developed (developed infrastructure will give them an actual chance at happiness), although in my experience beer and poetry work better, but saying they need religion to “control the people” as if they’re some kind of wild animals ready to go mad is just offensive.
The Indian government “lets” people expose Hindu frauds all the time. Mr Edamaruku is president of the Indian Rationalist Association, which is dedicated to promoting rational thinking and debunking all religious frauds. Because Hinduism is the dominant religion in India, they spend more of their time and energy concentrating on Hinduism than anything else. The most famous example was this televised contest in which Mr Edamaruku challenges a Hindu Tantrik (a religious mystic), who claims to have miraculous powers, to try and kill him with the power of prayer alone. (irenedelse linked to this above.) It’s very embarassing for the tantrik, who becomes more and more frustrated as he performs his arcane rituals and Mr Edamaruku is clearly unharmed.
I wonder what Leah Libresco would say to all this?
So the Roman Catholic Church can have people arrested in India with apparent impunity. Is there anything the Roman Catholic Church CAN’T do?
They could not control anti-democratic governments meant to be a bulwark against modernity and communism. They so wanted fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to actually work for them.
“Is there anything the Roman Catholic Church CAN’T do?”
Try googling “the roman catholic church can’t”
They can’t allow truth to spread too much.
Keep their hands of little boys?
“Is there anything the Roman Catholic Church CAN’T do?”
Actually, I think the blanket answer is “behave itself.”
THIS, from a church that just finished their “Fortnight for religious freedom.”
IIRC, they can no longer burn people alive on stacks of firewood after torturing them.
Hitchens: Xianity lost its best defense when it was no longer allowed to burn people alive.
You know they would be doing it in a heartbeat if they could.
raven @ 44
Absolutely…preferably young maidens!
They seem to regard the burning as a superbly erotically themed shenanigan.
It is their very own version of a perfectly scripted and well acted snuff movie.
As the flames lick higher and the clothing shreds away in flame and ash the outline of the female form writhing in the exquisite agony that the RCC has come to regard as their very own theme tune tickles their dead gonads like no other sight.
A boys only club with the not so underlying veneer of repressed and twisted sexual inadequacy masquerading as the passion of the christ rather then the bitterly twisted and pathetic ego boost they seem to demand from anyone in earshot at all times…these cretins are dangerous because they are marginalized it is no wonder their cheap thrills involve children and imagining what is happening in societies private bedrooms and having the arrogance and perverted voyeurism of a
mentally insane serial wanker…which basically is what they are.
Their sadism is and has been the bedrock of their faith, it is what makes them tick.
I shared this on FB, and a catholic apologist jumped in and demanded proof that Edamaruku was actually being persecuted for his debunking of this “miracle”, rather than something completely unrelated and actually criminal.
I just signed the petition. Seems thats all you can do at the moment. Are there any local protests/events organized by the Indian Rationalist Association or maybe Nirmukta? I couldn’t find anything.
Nitric Acid,
I just watched a TV9 debate segment on Youtube which had Sanal Edamuruku, the Archbishop of Bombay(or Delhi, I can’t recall correctly) and a couple other RCC people.
They seemed to be saying that the RCC never officially called it a miracle and that, Edamuruku must apologize for saying they did and also applogize for claiming that some priests of the RCC at Irla were handing out bills calling it a miracle and collecting money from “piligrims”, when in fact, they weren’t.
At least thats what they’re saying in that segment.
Even granting they didn’t do any of that, they sure as hell do not seem to have taken any steps, at that time, to dispel rumours of miracle and informing visitors of their official stand. Not until Edamuruku took to investigating it and calling it out. Not only did they not do that, but they seem to have enabled the visiting believers to pray, worship, collect the dripping “holy water”, light candles etc. at the premises of the church at Irla.
Which, at the very least, makes them culpable of lying by omission.