Fake Canadian Lawyer Charged With "Witchcraft"

[crazy canuck]

In which case, if the person having their cards or palm or crystal ball read to them believes in such things, how can it be fraud?

It all turns on what the person performing the ritual represents the ritual to mean and the intent they had in making that representation. 

[grumbler]

I agree completely, and this highlights my concern about that law. The assumption seems to be that someone participating in sorcery and witchcraft is trying to perpetuate fraud by default. At least, that's how it seems to me based on that law. That may not be what is intended, but that is the feel of the law. 

That isn't how the law looks and feels to me, but we are both just expressing personal perceptions.

Does this then translate to Tarot readings, etc.?

I agree with all of you that what matters is how the participant in the ritual feels much more so than what the person doing the ritual thinks or feels. In which case, if the person having their cards or palm or crystal ball read to them believes in such things, how can it be fraud?

So long as the person doing the "reading" isn't promising more than they can deliver, so as to increase the amount of money they make, it isn't fraud.

The reason I brought up the Navajo singer issue is that the purpose of the sing is to bring the subject of the sing into balance with nature (the Navajo traditionally believe that all sickness and evil, including criminal behavior, occurs because a person is "out of balance with nature," so to speak).  The subject, if properly blessed by the sing, feels in harmony once again.  Traditionally, this was thought to be true because the spirits drove out whatever evil was causing the subject to be out of balance (and the subject, by enduring the multi-day sing, demonstrates a desire to become balanced again).  Even Christian Navajos believe in the efficacy of the sing, even if they don't believe any more that it is "spirits' at work.  I don't see them as engaging in fraud to participate, even if they are paid to participate (and the subject does pay a fair number of people to participate, though his/her relatives do it for free).

Fraud occurs when you deliberately deceive for the purposes of getting remuneration you would not get without the deception.

[dps]

To my mind, this creates a difficulty in the context of religion, as your hypothetical reasonable person would be unlikely to agree that a Catholic priest, actually operating within the doctrines of the Church, was behaving with the sort of intentional, deliberate dishonesty as required by the Court here. Merely lacking faith in God is not, I would assert, sufficient to remove such a case from the ambit of what the Court described as  "... conduct which does not warrant criminalization".

I agree completely, and this highlights my concern about that law. The assumption seems to be that someone participating in sorcery and witchcraft is trying to perpetuate fraud by default. At least, that's how it seems to me based on that law. That may not be what is intended, but that is the feel of the law.

Because your belief that the ritual is useless doesn't make it so, and more importantly even if you are correct doesn't mean that the person performing the ritual believes it to be useless.  It seems likely to me that most Catholic priests and Navajo medicine men do believe in the faith that they purport to represent.  Your non-belief doesn't mean that their belief is a fraud.  Again, logically, even if you are correct in your non-belief, that merely makes them mistaken in their belief;  it doesn't demonstrate that they are claiming something that they know to be untrue.

Does this then translate to Tarot readings, etc.?

I don't see how it wouldn't.

As a Christian, I reject things like that as false;  but apparantly unlike Marty, I can conceive of the possibility that other people might actually truly believe in things that I don't. 

[Barrister]

The debate in this thread pretty much sums up why this section is never used.

No Malthus, I have never seen or prosecuted such a charge.

[Malthus]

The debate in this thread pretty much sums up why this section is never used.

No Malthus, I have never seen or prosecuted such a charge.

It would be ultra-cool to prosecute at a witchcraft trial, though. 

"Your honour, I move that the defendant be dunked into a pond ... "

[BuddhaRhubarb]

She turned Beeb into a newt. But he got better.

[Malthus]

She turned Beeb into a newt. But he got better.

A better newt?

[crazy canuck]

She turned Beeb into a newt. But he got better.

A better newt?

As a newt he was better then as a human.

[Jacob]

Hey buddha, is that daibutsu in Kamakura in your avatar?