God in the dock

There are a lot of things - most of them incredibly dumb - that can only happen in America and last week I read about another one of them.

God sued over pestilence and terror, the headline screamed.

The story originally came from the Associated Press and reported that a court in Nebraska is being asked to cast judgement on the ultimate judge - God himself. Fantastic, I thought, but only in America could something like this happen.

State lawmaker Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit, which also claims that God uses a number of aliases, against the Almighty for causing "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues" and other alliterative catastrophes.

These are actually quite clever alliterations and that made me think he must be taking the piss!

Even more brilliant are the claims that because God is onmipotent then this gives Douglas County District Court jurisdiction in the suit. Similarly, God's omniscience eliminates the need to issue a formal notice of the lawsuit, which is handy, and reminds me a little of the babel-fish-and-God-disappearing-in-a-puff-of-logic sequence from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Chambers vs God asks the court for a "permanent injunction ordering defendant (God) to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terrorist threats."

Of course, this whole thing is a publicity stunt by the authorities to draw attention to the fact that in the US a lot of frivolous lawsuits are served.

Is it a case of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em? I think was I right earlier and he's just taking the piss.

Thank god for that!