Talk:Lawsuits against supernatural beings

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Daniel Finkelstein (27 August 2009). "The 10 best wikipedia entries". The Times.
Alexis Kleinman, Maxwell Strachan (14 January 2015). "The 49 Most Entertaining Wikipedia Entries Ever Created". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 March 2015.

Some suits don't seem relevant

Suing a church or a religious publisher is not suing God (not to mention that there have presumably been many other suits against such organizations). —KCinDC (talk) 21:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would of said it is an act of suing the representatives of God, or the word of God. In those cases, the ultimate complaint is against God. MickMacNee (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but there are lots of suits against churches and against publishers of religious books. They're not unusual or interesting in the way that suits against God are, and it's not clear why these specific examples of them are included in the article. —KCinDC (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other examples such as? MickMacNee (talk) 22:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suits against the Catholic Church related to sexual abuse by priests, for example, or suits by Episcopal congregations trying to secede from the national church (while keeping their property) because of its stance on homosexuality or the ordination of women. And religious publishers are just ordinary businesses and get sued all the time in disputes over employment or payments. —KCinDC (talk) 22:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think they realy compare with the act of suing God directly for something he or his word is responsible for. MickMacNee (talk) 23:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's exactly my point. Suing Zondervan or the Romanian Orthodox Church is not really comparable to suing God directly, which is supposed to be the subject of the article. —KCinDC (talk) 23:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(indent). The person liable is the same. Which is not the case in the other examples. I am not aware of any scripture that allows child abuse by priests, which is why it is the church that gets sued, as a negligent guardian of children rather than as a representative of God. Same for the romanian example, the 'conditions of contract' as it were stem directly from their role as representative of God. The publisher exists as a legal point of redress for spreading the word of God. That isn't the same as a suit against a religous publisher over an employment dispute. MickMacNee (talk) 23:13, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems pretty dubious to me. The plaintiff might not believe it is the "word of God," and simply is bringing an action against a publisher who allegedly has injured him. (Also a pretty dubious claim, but that's a different topic.) Quite different from the Romanian case where the plaintiff expressly sued the Church as the "representative" of God. --Russ (talk) 18:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since posting the above, I found a link to Fowler's actual handwritten complaints. To the extent I can understand them, it appears he alleges that the publishers deliberately mistranslated the Bible into English to make it appear anti-homosexual. Whatever you think of his theory, he is clearly alleging misconduct by men, not by a diety. --Russ (talk) 19:01, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I came here to explain why I was removing that part and am glad that there's already people who noticed the mistake. He is suing the publishers for mistranslating a quote. He is not mad at God. He identifies himself as Christian. – Saphseraph (talk) 20:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Went ahead and removed the irrelevant lawsuit. Consensus here seems to be that it's a suit against an ordinary human business.

Merge?

I see this acquired a merge tag (8 minutes after it was written!).
I’d vote Against a merger. this is a nicely focussed article as it is; merging it would lose that.
Maybe the “…religious entities” page should be trimmed and moved to “lawsuits against the devil”, to give it a similar focus. Moonraker12 (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There don’t seem to be any takers for this, so I’m being bold and deleting the tag.Moonraker12 (talk) 16:48, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS I’ve tidied up the opening sentence; I hope I’m not treading on any toes! Moonraker12 (talk) 16:49, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edits

I've made the following edits:

De-bold the article name as per WP:BOLDTITLE "if the title of a page is descriptive it does not need to appear verbatim in the main text, and even if it does it should not be in boldface."
Add comments to "See also" items: as per WP:SEEALSO "A brief explanatory sentence may sometimes be necessary ... when the relevance of the added links is not immediately apparent [... or] when the meaning of term may not be generally known by common people."
- I also removed Conflict of laws, Roy Moore, and Michael Newdow, which don't seem to have any connection with this article. If there was a Category:Religion and law, then all those articles and this one might be there -- some in the subcategory Category:Separation of church and state -- but in any case "see also" has a different purpose.
Remove "Issues in the actions generally involve debates around the existence of God, legal terms such as the Act of God, the religious aspects of human free will, matters of jurisdiction of human courts over the Kingdom of God, and the legal status of God's claimed representatives on Earth, the world's Churches. Real life legal actions where God is the defendant have all been unsuccessful." Apart from acts of god (already mentioned in the previous sentence) none of the examples given allude to any of the points lists.

jnestorius^(talk) 23:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was pretty self evident that issues of Jurisdiction, Free Will, Conflict of Laws and the Existence of God had all been covered in the various cases and should be mentioned in the lede, but I cannot really be bothered to go back through specific cases and point out exact passages/scenes if that's what you are after. MickMacNee (talk) 17:34, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

to challenges god?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.96.12.15 (talk) 12:56, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

fictional

sam gunn? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.64.244.78 (talk) 19:06, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Fictional section starts with "In the American comedy film..." and yet the link leads to a page titled "The Man Who Sued God" that correctly identifies this movie as being Australian.58.179.241.85 (talk) 23:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I have made this change Jno.skinner (talk) 23:54, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Rename to "lawsuits against gods"? (lowercase and plural)

This would take into account the lawsuit against Rama. Category:God says: "This category is for articles relating to the monotheistic God.". Apokrif (talk) 19:40, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Did Betty Penrose actually win the case?

The article currently states the following: When God "failed to turn up in court", Penrose won the case by default.

Is that actually true? The Indianapolis Star does not provide the results of the lawsuit, but it does say that "Tansie said he hopes to win a default judgment when the defendant fails to appear in court", saying that that was indeed the intent. The second source provided, "1001 hideous history facts : delve into the depths of our despicable past", does not seem reliable and does not state where it got the information from, at least on the page where the claim is made.178.155.5.169 (talk) 12:03, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Indian Movie Oh My God

The Indian movie Oh My God also depicts a lawsuit against god so I think someone should add a part on that to the Fictional Suits section 67.4.226.80 (talk) 02:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That movie sounds amazing! It is already mentioned in the article, however. Jno.skinner (talk) 02:29, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Trial of God by the Bolsheviks

It is information contained in this book: https://www.casadellibro.com/libro-juicio-a-dios/9788417044572/5640372

I have not found much information in English about it. It is assumed that it was a propaganda attempt in the context of the church-state separation carried out in January 1918 by Anatoly Lunacharsky. It may be confused with the 1922 Moscow Trial of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the same way, it should have at least some mention as it is done in Wikipedia in Spanish. 186.32.217.19 (talk) 18:07, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]