UK Detectorist 'Entitlement': "What God Does not Catch is MINE"

Metal detectorist presumes
to bargain with God

A UK metal detectorist makes light of me querying his treatment of the artefacts he finds. He now sets out in an update to his original post to show he is a "responsible detectorist":

I acknowledge that all finds of gold, silver, copper, brass, lead, in fact all materials found in the soil belong to the true landowner. The true landowner is entitled to it all and if the landowner finds it in his heart to let me have a few quid out of it that's fine and dandy by me. As God made the heaven and the earth (I assume earth means soil), he is the true landowner so its him who is entitled to all the cash. So from now on, once a month on a Sunday,  I will take all this cash I make from metal detecting to our local church. I will throw it all up in the air and what God wants he will catch, what drops to the floor is mine... sorted!

God also gave man and the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong, and a free will to be able to choose. Mr Janner decides that his path is to make light of knowingly depriving landowners of their property. Being a metal detectorist, Mr Janner will probably have reading difficulties and will not therefore know his Bible very well. If that is the case, I'll point him to with regard ownership of items in the soil Matthew 13:44, and then with reference to his attempt to bargain with the Almighty: Deuteronomy 6:16.


This has not been the first time that this metal detectorist has tried a similar line of 'argument' to attempt to deny the things he removes from  another's property do not belong to them, so he concludes a 'finder' can just walk off with them: 'Who Owns What?'

To set the record straight, the rest of us can observe that English law, even in Yorkshire, is perfectly clear about the ownership of items in a farmer's lands, and all that implies about what metal detectorists can and cannot, legally, do when removing them. Sticking to the letter of that law surely should be the minimum for any claim of "responsible" detecting and "best practice".