Teapots

[Griffin NoName]

Simon Hoggart today

While we're on religion, I'm almost certain it was Bertrand Russell (readers might correct me) who compared faith in God to believing that there was a teapot orbiting the sun. You might declare over and over that you knew, with total inner certainty, that the teapot was there. But you would need something more to convince anyone else.

And now, it turns out that a sharia court in Malaysia jailed a woman for two years for belonging to a cult that worships a teapot. It seems pretty harmless to me: the teapot in question is around 20 feet high, and symbolises the outpouring of goodness, but she's off to jail anyway. I think that Russell would have felt it confirmed a lot of what he felt about religion.

[pieces o nine]

Simon Hoggart today

...

And now, it turns out that a sharia court in Malaysia jailed a woman for two years for belonging to a cult that worships a teapot. It seems pretty harmless to me: the teapot in question is around 20 feet high, and symbolises the outpouring of goodness, but she's off to jail anyway. I think that Russell would have felt it confirmed a lot of what he felt about religion.[/size]

The problem with teapots is that some of them accommodate more than one cup at a time.
Can't have that. 

(No doubt 'Nataraja' would *really* get her in trouble with a Sharia court.)

[Aphos]

Griffin...

From what I read, the woman was not jailed for worshiping the teapot, but rather because she had converted from Islam to teapot worship.  It is against Sharia law to convert away from Islam.

Malaysia has a constitutional problem...they state in their constitution that they have religious freedom, while at the same time stating they support Sharia law.  Talk about a conflict.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Ahh, the good old Celestial teapot!

Poor woman. And screwy Malaysia.

[Aggie]

Malaysia has a constitutional problem...they state in their constitution that they have religious freedom, while at the same time stating they support Sharia law.  Talk about a conflict.

Ayuh, you can believe what you like...  as long as you didn't start Muslim and end up believing something else.  Religious freedom is more or less necessary with the huge ethnic mix in Kuala Lumpur, less so in the rest of the country which is primarily Muslim.

[Griffin NoName]

Griffin...

From what I read, the woman was not jailed for worshiping the teapot, but rather because she had converted from Islam to teapot worship.  It is against Sharia law to convert away from Islam.

To be fair to Hoggart, he didn't claim she worshipped the teapot, only that she belonged to the cult

Is it possible to belong to a cult without worshipping the object of the cult, I wonder?

I guess his error was saying she belonged, rather than joined.......

[Sibling Chatty]

<<Is it possible to belong to a cult without worshipping the object of the cult, I wonder?>>

I'm thinkin' there are some here that might feel that way about the FSM thing.