US judge rejects lawsuit against God A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit against God on the grounds that "a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed", the BBC reports. Sadly for Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who'd sought a permanent injunction to put an end to the Almighty's "death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon …
Do what they do in any legal case where the defendent is found guilty, seize all their property and assets....
As God's Representative on Earth, Ol' Rat-Singer, I mean the Pope, can attend in His stead and, if the Almighty is found guilty, then they can sell all of the churches and The Vatican can be liquidated in order that we all get our compo!! I like my idea....the Pope enjoys the various benefits and fame of being God's mortal representative and voice on Earth, so he has to start being accountible surely? If God's done wrong, especially against people who don't believe in Him, then the Trial must take place, with the Pope in the Box - especially if God, whose supposed to be everywhere (so why he can't turn up in a court room escapes me...He's done much more impressive stuff back in The Bible!!) - and bring the chap to account!!
I want my money!!!
"on the grounds that "a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed""
Hasn't stopped the US legal system making in absentia judgements against companies and individuals who don't live in the US.
And, being omnipresent IS in the US at least. He's already in the court even.
"So help me God".
Or is it only the ineffable that gets a bye?
Since God is omniscient, surely all they need to do is lay the papers face up, prefeably in a church. A few minutes should do the trick. Believers will be satisfied that papers have been served. If they don't then surely their faith is not 'complete'.
Since by refusing the case on the grouds that papers could not be 'seen' by the plaintiff, the judge is therefore saying that he/she doesn't believe in God, and since they pledge an oath to God, Country, and the Law, needs to resign immediately ?
The great beard in the sky has plenty of representatives on earth - and assets - therefore I see no reason why He cannot be sued. Think of it as a corporate case. Just because the Head Honcho can't be found there is no reason why his organisation can't step up to the plate (or, in this case, the stand).
The successful pursuit of this case would also bring about a great HHGG moment - God disappearing in a puff of logic because he has been proved to exist - "proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing" to quote the great Douglas Adams (and possibly, for I am not a Bible scholar, somebody who is also dead but much, much older).
Just need to avoid the next stop of proving that black is white so we don't all die on zebra crossings!
Or he'll have some heavies in bright pantaloons busting down his door!!
I've always wondered why an organisation so keen (allegedly) on peace needs what is, in effect, a private army and a load of special forces types knocking around apparently doing nothing for anyway??? Not like anyone's tried to destroy the Church for Centuries, like..
then again, has God done any decent miracles since The Bible?? Maybe they can't track Him down because He's gone on holiday for a few millenia?
This f***wit is a senator.
He's in the government. Does that not worry people? He makes Sarah Palin look enlightened and normal. Even Tom Cruise is was less loony than this chap, and hes running the most powerful show on earth. (The senator, not Tom Cruise). Possibly. Depends who you ask I suppose.
Nah, Ratslinger is only one of the many professed agents representing a singular deity (including the versions that are supposed to be multi-tasking). Like all salesmen they will insist that the product that is supposed to be harmful or broken is not one of their models.
"Sorry, we use a bit less evangelicalism in ours. You could try the Seventh Day mob, they're just down the road."
(Anyway Alan, with all them capitals I thought it was AMFM posting for a minute, but no, not nearly enough.)
And here I thought papers could be served by nailing them to your closest "house of God". According to visitors, he's always in attendance isn't he?
Or as someone else mentioned, it seems that the Pope (either one) might have power of attorney here, so perhaps they could be served?
Pity to see something so necessary get headed off by an unimaginative judiciary.
Mr Phudd, how very dare you...I'm from Europa actually *wink*
anyway, we could go big stylee then and have all heads of all the major "Ours is the Best" religions in court together, maybe lock the court room and leave them in there.....go back in and see if they've managed to kill one another or not......then we'd be left with buddhists and, unless Buddha himself decides to retrospectively try to sue Burger King, that'll be the end of that...
you can't sue Mother Nature as, lacking any true believers anymore, she has no definate form or place of worship in which to post the notices.
(Personally I'd love to see OT God vs NT God...that'd be fun!)
The accountability works the other way around. We are accountable for our actions to God (assuming He exists) who is not accountable to us in any sense. The precedent for this case was attempted a long time ago by the character called Job and it was written up as part of the Bible. The book reads to me as if it was a Hebrew play though I'm no expert on its origin. Job's comforters told him his misfortune at losing everything and getting covered in boils had to be his own fault. It wasn't, but it turns out that Job got things wrong by imagining that he could try God.
As to whether it's a good idea to sue the organisation founded by God on the faith and person of St Peter (trying to take on board both the Catholic and Protestant positions together), as His representative, for anything bad which you feel God has done to you, some of us who contribute resources towards this organisation are likely to welcome the debate and the raising of the profile this issue will obtain. Other Christians are likely to consider this a distraction from our main purpose which is to leave the world a better place than what it was and as less evil people than what we were and are.
Anyway, if you are considering litigation along these lines, you really need to read the legal precedent set by Job before you start.
Firstly, thank you for that very well thought out reply however you may well find that most people on here do not want to sue God, as it were, for being God and making life unfair. I would say this is kind of allegorical (like Job). What people have a problem with is the following;
1) One accepts God founded his Church on St Peter.
Ok, but now we have
2) Why does God let His message get so Garbled and Confused?
We have Three main religions of the monotheistic type. Each worships the same God (the One God according to each of them, so it must be the same One surely, logically speaking) but does so slightly differently. Each also decides that anyone who doesn't worship this deity their way is somehow inferior and deserves to be punished/languish in some form of flaming place for eternity/be forced into doing things their way/killed....many so-called adherants even use these facts and practises to justify genocide and atrocity/murder. Each major religion has, at least once in it's history done this. God did nothing. God sat on and watched impassively. God sent us Jesus (it is alleged). We made a complete hash of his "Love everybody and be nice" message and went off on a considerable tangent, made the place where this man died a place of conflict and do He knows what (and He knows everything allegedly) all in His name and He lets us do it.
Now the Bible is either Allegory or Fact. Be it Bible, Torah por Quran. Now, back in The Bible (to use an example), God did a lot of personal work to unbelievers and those perceived as bad/evil etc and prevented a great many misunderstandings about Himself and His religions. Surely if all these facts or true then it is obvious to everyone that God no longer cares. Else Yahweh would have saved his Chosen People from the Holocaust, he'd have stopped this or that Atrocities committed in His name; corrected His creations....seems like we've done much worse than those wiped out in the Flood did but we're still here.
So, to conclude. If the Bible is true and undeniable FACT then God can and did interced many times for reasons lesser than those seen today and in the past. He did not.
So God no longer cares about His creations?
God no longer accepts responsibility?
God no longer follows His own Plan?
Why God chose to let every single one of the Religions "founded in His name" break up into so many different sects and orders, all of whom disagree and squabble incessently rather than just making it obvious and correcting everyone and having everyone being given the simple choice of Worship Me or Don't not as it is today;
1) Be born in the right country
2) Accept the version forced upon you even if it's the Wrong One
3) Do what a particular interpretation of a Book tell you to
4) Die
5) Having in all likelyhood, been part of the wrong group of People Who get God Right, go to Hell through no fault of your own, or get killed by one of the other groups
In effect, explain to me why God would allow all of this to happen In His Name, if He actually cared as deeply as the Bible says He does? And don't give me the tired old ineffibility or the usual "God moves in mysterious ways" rubbish.....explain the apparent contradiction to me please.
God should be put on trial for refusing to fulfil His Contract with Man and, if the Bible is to be believed, abandoning the same to Satan...if you believe in either of those people of course
In other words, God is not on trial, but His churches most certainly should be
Just thought id like to point out a completely ridiculous attempt to turn the word terror into an all purpose catch all phrase.
You can be in TERROR.
You can be TERRIFIED.
You can TERRORISE someone.
You can be a TERRORIST.
You can be involved in TERRORISM.
But there is no suck f%cking thing as TERRORISATION!
Can all members of the American government please start learning another language, so you can stop destroying ours!
@ Everyone who said "he's a Senator...?"
STATE Senator for the state of Kansas, not U.S. ... There is *some* difference...
Frankly, I suspect the REAL reason that the judge dismissed the case was the unlikelihood of finding 12 Kansans willing to rule against the almighty...
@ Alan Fisher
"then again, has God done any decent miracles since The Bible??"
The '69 Mets.
Check the article again. The F*kwit is a STATE senator (in Nebraska), not a US senator. State legislatures in the US do all kinds of stupid, crazy things. I believe the GA legislature is purpoted to once have passed a law redefining pi to be 3. Nebraska probably has more cows than people (and definitely a lot more corn, aka maize to you chaps). It is also smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. It is adjacent to Kansas, and the Kansas school board ruling on Creationism is what led to the formation of the Church of FSM.
So the fact that a judge in Nebraska threw out the suit is actually a sign of progress! I would have thought it more likely that the judge would issue God a contempt citation for not showing up.
"The precedent for this case was attempted a long time ago by the character called Job and it was written up as part of the Bible."
Yep, and a damn poor showing it makes of God, too. In fact, 'twas reading the Bible cover to cover (twice) what converted me away from Christianity. The entity described in the Bible is so absurd as to have no chance of actually existing--but if he does exist, then he most assuredly is not good and most assuredly is not worthy of praise or worship, as the example of Job shows.
Rather appalling behavior on God's part, really, if you ask me. If we saw a monkey in a zoo behaving as badly as God behaves in the Bible, the handlers would likely be obliged to shoot it.
Pity the bloke doesn't exist. I for one would LOVE to see a lawsuit against him proceed.
Ernie Chambers is a piece of shit.
I live in Nebraska, and while the "lawsuit against god" is funny, it does not get anything done. If ernie chambers is good at anything, it's getting nothing done. This is the same fuckwit who got ticketed for speeding and insisted that the officer didn't know how to calculate his speed right, and contested the ticket in court (he lost). Evidently, he feels he has not wasted enough of the court's time.
@Mike Moyle; I wish he was from Kansas, it's embarassing to have that kind of douchebag in the government of my state. He is a state senator, and a detriment to society. Thanks to the introduction of term limits in Nebraska, he will shortly cease to be a senator.
@some dipshit: "legal precedent set by Job"
Read up on the difference between legal precedent and fairy tales. "Well, your honor, according to the Brothers Grimm, it's okay to stuff old ladies into ovens. So, you see, the legal precedent is set and I am free to go."
Whether the book of Job shows God in a bad light for negotiating Job's misfortune with Satan depends upon whether you read Job as historical fact (as some do) or as a dramatic play (as I do). You can say similar things about Genesis, but the God I believe in doesn't ask people to sacrifice their own sons. However, he did send his own Son to be sacrificed to spare us the consequences of what we get wrong. There are plenty of different ways of reading different parts of the Bible. Only a fool would regard all of it as presented as historical fact. Take the parables as an example - if these are presented as story telling with deeply philosophical and moral messages, then why take Genesis differently ?
1. God inspires many people in different ways. Many of these people incorrectly think they have the whole message, but because they hear and read different parts of it in different ways we end up with many different religions and denominations. As you say, this isn't a good reason to carry out evil actions. We may as well accept it as a fact of life.
2. People of all faiths are bad and do bad things and sometimes are good and do good things. This includes Christians, Buddists, Moslems, Hindus, Atheists (e.g. the crimes of Stalin) and Agnostics and those whose religion changes from day to day as the mood suits. Christians are no more collectively responsible for the actions of the inquisition or the crusades any more than atheists are collectively responsible for the crimes of Stalin. We are all individually responsible for our own individual choices. Institutions can also collectively repent for institutional wrongs done in the past by acknowledging these and by changing what the institution does now.
3. The Bible isn't either allegory or historical fact as it clearly contains both. I don't know anyone who considers the parables as other than allegory. We have to use our ability to read and understand the context in which different parts of the Bible were written to understand which is which. The Psalms are almost universally regarded as worship song lyrics for example.
4. As to why there can be such suffering and evil in a world created by a perfect God, we can't fully understand this, but we can deduce that it has something to do with free will and the fact we are all capable of doing bad things. Would you have preferred a God who created us as programmed robots instead of intelligent beings capable of making right and wrong moral choices ?
5. As to whether God cares, Christians believe he sent his Son to die in the struggle against evil fully as one of us. What more could God do, given we were made with free will, have choices and responsibility for our actions, and were not created as God-programmed robots ?
6. Whether God accepts us, as I see this, depends a lot more upon whether we accept Him, than whether we belong to the right group. Believe me, there are Christians who have, like me, had a personal encounter but can't let their family know who they now follow for fear of total rejection and exclusion or even murder by family and community. The term "Muslim" means one who submits to God. No doubt there are many who don't try to coerce family in this way and submit to God with as much love for all and respect for truth as He could expect of a Christian. An Atheist who places love, truth and timelessness above all other things is effectively placing the qualities of what Christians understand God to be in the highest place. Perhaps a kind of relationship may develop from this even though it is difficult for Christians to understand how. It is up to God to judge these things and it is foolish for anyone, Christian or otherwise, to say that salvation is reserved only for those in the "right" group when we all do wrong and persistently so.
I hope these answers address your very relevant questions, even if I can't pretend to give you complete answers - we all have to try to discover these as best we can for ourselves.
I'm an American - more precisely, a citizen of the United States of America. I wish, like you, that my fellow citizens would learn and use proper English. British English would be my preference, but even standard American English would do.
A tombstone because English is mutating. Badly.
God spent a lot of time in the Old Testament being really 'hands-on' and smiting his enemies in ways that would have put Tarantino and Peckinpah off their lunches. That was until he had an argument with Jonah about what nastiness He was about to do to Jonah's persecutors and BACKED DOWN! Check it out...quite a watershed in the whole big story of God vs. Man, it almost makes up for the really boring bits.
After that, He could still be pretty vindictive until JC arrived with the new heresy ("can't we all, like, get along? yes, non-jews too") and upset everyone (well, everyone that mattered ie the pricks) with his new-fangled 'forgiveness' idea, which can subvert the Powerful even today. The last communication from God to Man after Jesus steps out of the picture comes from the drawing of lots (bingo!) and is basically an instruction to go forth and create bureaucracy (maybe "all the sixes, clickety clickety click")
IMHO, God subscribes to the view 'if you love something, let it go...' . What's the point of putting all that effort (a week of construction, sure, but what the Design stage?) into creating beautifully simple things like Evolution and Free Will if you just end up with a lot of little robots parroting your praises and doing what they are told? Sounds less like God and more like Man to me.
We are more than an ant-farm to Him, if not to the gubmints / corporations (as true today as it was then).
If I was God, I would find Mans efforts to sue me infinitely amusing and not a little cute.
<quote>And don't give me the tired old ineffibility or the usual "God moves in mysterious ways" rubbish.....explain the apparent contradiction to me please.</quote>
Since god is supposed to be a supreme being, neither you or I could be expected to understand what he does.
Is killing people ok? As a rule of thumb I'd say it isn't, but extending this would render all killing (e.g. wars) wrong, even if you fight the devils minions themselves and even when you're trying to defend yourself.
Mr. Example, a foot soldier in Operation Human Shield, doesn't have to know or care if what his general tells him is right or not. The operation might show him things that make him doubt in the correctness of waging war, but maybe the general knows better, seeing all things from above etc.
The construction used in all kinds of religions that ask you to have faith in whatever god will always have to rely on the "works-in-mysterious-ways" trick. That's the "faith" part. If you can't have faith you can't understand that argument and not a thousand rethorics could make you understand.
Love all around. :-)
Regards,
Peter
(Personally I'd love to see OT God vs NT God...that'd be fun!)
We all know the difference between the OT God and the NT God, it is even written out in the beginning of NT, see for instance Matt 1,18, and Luke 1,35:
It's the same lad, the only difference is that He got laid!
Paris, well she surely knows about divine experiences too
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