Atheist and Other Religions

[ashfire]

When I seen the news today that a atheist has taken a Roman Catholic priest to Italian courts and using Italian laws to make it that the priest is committing a crime by falsely preaching that Jesus existed.
The man feels that he will lose because of the strong Roman Catholic religion in Italy.
I have wonder why atheist have never been mentioned attacking other religions around the World who believe their God is God or who ever they follow as their saviour?
Why is the Christian Religion the only time we will hear of this?

[CDLviking]

I think it's because this is the first time something like this has ever gone to court. If the plaintiff were to win (hardly likely), it could have a dramatic impact on all religions in Italy, and possibly Europe. It would require all religions to be able to empiracly prove themselves, or be faced with similar lawsuits.

[peacetracati]

It's due to the fact, or so I believe, that a lot of people think the bible is nothing but a book full of made up stories and just to make people go crazily good and that the book of revolations(the book I most praise and fear the most) is never going to come to be. People are blind to the fact the time of judgement is comming soon, and many think it's just nothing but, a hoax, I know how most think because of my time when I was wiccan and then converted my soul to Christ at the age of 15. It is true everyone religion thinks they're reiligon is right, whether budist, wiccan, atheist,satanist, heck even scientologist, but in the end, it is those who are truly blind are forever lost in the dark.
I personally don't mind other reiligions, in fact, I study other reiligions because, someday when I travel the world, I'll understand them and from their point of views, I can help them understand Christ in their own way, and soon I hope, they will be saved, and childern in their next generation will be truly blessed, after all, you notice other world countries, a lot of childern are starving because of what they're fore fathers have done so long ago, and each generation is more curse than the next...okay I think I'm going over board....AHH!!!!!>.<''''''
well...if you can inturprit my ramblings...you'll get what I mean...and if you don't please don't take it the wrong way ^.^''''

[Lady Macbeth]

I've been following this story very carefully for the last several weeks (it has actually been ongoing for some time now; it's just that it's only now making it to widespread news networks).

For those who want the article for this: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/22/christ.book.ap/

(I had avoided posting it myself for obvious reasons. I think it would have been more likely to stir debate had I posted it.)

I just wanted to clarify a couple of points:

1) This atheist is taking his case to court because he can. The way the Italian law is written is very ambiguous, and it left him an opportunity to make this maneuver.

2) This atheist is also very obviously bitter about toward the Roman Catholic Church in particular. He has not stated in any articles I've read about what the source of his bitterness is; he just feels that the Church is deceptive and intentionally misleading people.

The article that I linked to states that Righi and Cascioli were schoolmates when they were boys. It doesn't say what a previous article stated, that they both attended the same Catholic school.

This particular quote seems to be one of the hinge points of his argument:

Cascioli is quick to stress that he has no problem with Christians freely professing their faith. Rather, he says in his complaint, he wants to "denounce the abuse that the Catholic Church commits by availing itself of its prestige in order to inculcate -- as if being real and historical -- facts that are really just inventions."

It seems that this point has burned him at some point in the past, and he's feeling it now in his advanced age.

I agree with CDLviking that we're hearing about it ONLY because it has no choice but to go to court now - the oversight in the wording of the Italian laws has come around to bite them in the rear.

Atheists are mentioned attacking other religions on the web on a daily basis - but none of it goes to court. In many countries "other religions" are not even officially recognized as religions, and thus the cases couldn't go to court. Other countries have their laws worded specifically enough to avoid cases like this.

And, for many, it's just not worth the effort when a lot of times "other religions" are viewed as something for crackpots, treehuggers and orange-robed-mountain-guys anyway.

[Slater]

see but here's a flaw. If you believe in something, then you believe it to be real. If not, then you don't really believe...

He's pretty much asking the world to redefine what the word believe means.

[Lady Macbeth]

see but here's a flaw. If you believe in something, then you believe it to be real. If not, then you don't really believe...

He's pretty much asking the world to redefine what the word believe means.

Because I was once an atheist, I can speak from an atheist's perspective:

"Real" to an atheist means documented, tested, proven, retested and reproven with less than a 10% failure rate. Atheists believe in the Laws of Physics because even though they have some failures, they have many more instances of success when put through the scientific method. They believe in the existence of Abraham Lincoln because there are extensive records of his life, death, term in office, even DNA samples from bone and skin fragments kept after his assassination. You'll find that the further you go back in history, the fewer people atheists "believe in", because there is less substantive evidence of their existence. Even the royalty of Europe, who have kept an extensive genealogy of their history, are delegated to the realm of "mythology" by atheists, once their ancestors disappear from the known, recorded, proven and corroborated history.

It's a sad and restrictive life to lead, IMHO, but it is the foundation for their "belief" or rather "non belief". And trust me - it is exceptionally difficult to argue with an atheist that "belief" can supercede "fact" even for them.

[Slater]

but haven't historians doccumented Jesus' existance? I remember reading one of them even detailing His hair as short, curly, chestnut-coloured...

Edit: I'm sorry, but the folly of atheists is just too much fun to mock...

"I was born against Christ and God," he said. "I'm doing it (the complaint) now because I should do it before I die."

Doesn't believe in Christ, so what better thing to do than be against Him?
Yes, logic at its greatest.

[Lady Macbeth]

but haven't historians doccumented Jesus' existance? I remember reading one of them even detailing His hair as short, curly, chestnut-coloured...

Yes, they have. That is what Righi point out in that article I linked to.

He cited many known observers, including non-Christian ones, who have written about the existence of Jesus, including the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, considered by scholars to be the most important non-Christian source on Christ's existence.

A passage of Josephus' "Jewish Antiquities," completed in A.D. 93, cites the execution in A.D. 62 of "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, James by name."

Righi also cited Pliny the Younger, who in the early second century described a policy of executing Christians who refused to curse Christ, and Tacitus, another writer of the same time who wrote that Jesus was executed by the sentence of Pontius Pilate.

Pliny the Younger is considered one of foremost historians and scholars of the ancient world. Likewise, Flavius Josephus is regarded highly for his work in cataloguing Jewish history.

Atheists, however, point out that these men are working not just off second-hand, but often many-hand accounts that were sometimes oral history rather than written history. There were not that many people - geographically speaking - with whom Jesus came into physical contact or who were at his sentencing and execution. Those would be the first-hand accounts that are considered "primary source" material in the scholastic world.

Anyone to whom those people related a fact about Jesus would be considered a second-hand or "secondary source". The information came to them through someone else, but that someone else was a primary source or had a primary source in hand and present.

Once the information goes down the chain of communication for there, it becomes increasingly subject to question. This is especially true for people for whom oral history and oral information was more important or more widespread than written information - it's like playing a game of telephone. If you're lucky, the gist of the message gets all the way to the end of the chain.

An atheist will follow this chain back down to its source and find the "break" in the written connection - where the written word jumped to someone who relayed it orally. If that oral relay was not a primary source, then it is considered suspect, and is compared against other sources. If there are no other sources available, it is considered unreliable.

That is where they will declare that "fact" has become "fiction", and base an argument such as the one this Cascioli fellow is taking to court.

EDIT: And yes, that is where I too have a problem with Atheism - those who waste all that time and energy to "disprove" something they don't believe in, when they could be using that energy more profitably elsewhere.

[Yojimbo]

but haven't historians doccumented Jesus' existance? I remember reading one of them even detailing His hair as short, curly, chestnut-coloured...

Edit: I'm sorry, but the folly of atheists is just too much fun to mock...


Doesn't believe in Christ, so what better thing to do than be against Him?
Yes, logic at its greatest.

Of course they have. It's pretty universally accepted even by most atheists and other religions that Jesus existed. It's just the crackpots like this guy that get attention by claiming He didn't exist. Now as for Him being the Son of God that is what atheists, Jews, Muslims, etc. will challenge. But that's not something that can be proven with records or historical evidence.

Historians can make all the assumptions they want about Jesus' features but I sincerely doubt he had hair like that. We're talking about people who lived in the Middle East two thousand years ago. Since most Hebrew Jews of Jesus' time were either killed, assimilated, or exiled during the many occupations of the Holy Land it's hard to tell. If anything the Jews in Israel during Jesus' time looked more like Palestinians, Lebanese, etc.

EDIT: Agreeing with Lady Macbeth's statement there. Almost all of the information we know about Jesus at least in that context was passed down from His Apostles and their followers. Like the stories of the Old Testament they were passed down many times orally, eventually recorded, and of course formed the Bible.

[Ashley]

While intellectual discussion is stimulating, I'm going to ask you guys to be careful and not let this degrade into a debate proper, okay?

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Christianity is always the target of the skeptic because people see Christianity as a close-minded, ignorant, religious system that is exclusive. In reality every religion is exclusive. Buddhism was a rejection of Hinduism, Buddhism also is pretty much Atheistic. The Quran states that Allah is one, the Christian believes in a triune God. (Not to mention it is only linguistically exclusivist: It must be read only in Arabic or else it is defiled) Bah'ism believes that all religions go to the same God, even when Jesus himself said "I am the way the truth and the life". Yet it exclude the exclucivists. You can see Hindu people saying "We are tolerant with what you believe" however that simply only means "practice what you believe as long as it follows our notion of truth"

And then you got things such as Wicca, Pantheism, and Cults.

Theres just too much, when everything excludes one another (for the most part) When things start going against each other, then some simply have to be wrong. (In the Christian's point of view, all are wrong besides Christianity)

It's quite mind boggling how a skeptic can say "What religion are you? Christianity? Bah! you close-minded Jesus Freak!" and also go to someone else and say "What religion are you? Oh you are wiccan? Sweet! I'm actually an atheist, but tell me about your religion, it sounds very interesting"

Bottom Line: Many skeptics don't know much about Christianity other than what is stereotyped, the half-truth, or something that is true but passed off incorrectly, and pass judgement too quick, making them the close-minded ones.

[GhostontheNet]

Anyone to whom those people related a fact about Jesus would be considered a second-hand or "secondary source". The information came to them through someone else, but that someone else was a primary source or had a primary source in hand and present.

Once the information goes down the chain of communication for there, it becomes increasingly subject to question. This is especially true for people for whom oral history and oral information was more important or more widespread than written information - it's like playing a game of telephone. If you're lucky, the gist of the message gets all the way to the end of the chain.

Actually, this would count as the folly of ethnocentricism in viewing other cultures through the veneer of one's own culture - if a case is to be built for any generic unreliability of the accuracy of oral traditions in oral cultures, it must be backed up with relevant anthropological or sociological data rather than simply launching silly children's games built in a culture that has a difficult time getting children to remember 2 sentence Bible verses. Even within our own culture, we know of individuals who having commited a good deal of effort to the mental memorization of complex data. To be sure, Luke's prologue with it's 'ministers (interestingly literally "under oarsmen" or "servants") of the word', ('eyewitnesses' aside but relevant) implies a group of individuals outside of simple Judean or Galilean Christians commited and entrusted to the preservation of the story of Yeshua. In this respect, and to answer my own challenge with positive data, to quote from Craig Blomberg's Historical Reliability of the Gospels p. 28-29,

Studies by anthropologists such as A.B. Lord on Eastern Europe and J. Vansina on Africa have enabled scholars to observe twentieth-century examples of oral folklore and sacred history being preserved by specially designated members of very traditional communities uninfluenced by the development of literacy or technology. (cites Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, and Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology) Their discoveries demonstrate the viability of a mediating view between the classic form-critical and memorization hypotheses, although it is a view that tends to be much closer to the latter than the former. Lord, for example, studied certain Yugoslavian folk-singers who had 'memorized' epic stories of up to 100,000 words in length. The plot, the characters, all the main events, and the vast majority of the details stayed the same every time the stories were retold or sung. Members of the community were sufficiently familiar with them to correct the singer if he erred in any significant way. Yet anywhere from 10% to 40% of the precise wording could vary from one performance to the next, quite like the variation found in the Synoptic gospels. Lord itemizes the types of changes as (a) 'saying the same thing in fewer or more lines', (b) 'expansion of ornamentation, adding details of description', (c) changes of order in a sequence', (d) 'addition of material ... found in texts of other singers' (e) 'omission of material' and (f) 'substitution of one theme for another, in a story held together by inner tensions'. (cites Albert B. Lord's The Singer of Tales p. 123) The similarity between this list and a list of changes describing the differences among the Synoptics is striking indeed. When one recalls that ancient Jews regularly sang, or chanted, their traditions, not least as a help to the memory, one recognizes the presence of a helpful analogy.

[Shepherdmoon]

When I seen the news today that a atheist has taken a Roman Catholic priest to Italian courts and using Italian laws to make it that the priest is committing a crime by falsely preaching that Jesus existed.
The man feels that he will lose because of the strong Roman Catholic religion in Italy.
I have wonder why atheist have never been mentioned attacking other religions around the World who believe their God is God or who ever they follow as their saviour?
Why is the Christian Religion the only time we will hear of this?

it is because of how they act to other religions .

"It's quite mind boggling how a skeptic can say "What religion are you? Christianity? Bah! you close-minded Jesus Freak!" and also go to someone else and say "What religion are you? Oh you are wiccan? Sweet! I'm actually an atheist, but tell me about your religion, it sounds very interesting"

well skeptics think all religions are just as mythical as the other.


also why do christians have to have a persucution complex?

[PigtailsJazz]

*Susan sighs at crazy and sad man from the article*

[Sammy Boy]

I think we need to be careful and not generalise atheists or sceptical people as those who see Christians as narrow-minded and anti-intellectual people.

Not all I've met in life despise religion. Some are actually aware of the important role religions played throughout history in advancing and maintaining culture and civilisations. Even if they do not agree with your beliefs, they may not necessarily think ill of you.

If we constantly adopt an "us vs. them" mentality, it will prejudice us in unjustifiable ways and may even cause us to lose valuable opportunities to witness to such people.

[Debitt]

also why do christians have to have a persucution complex?

I haven't formally discussed this with anyone else before, but this is my personal feelings on the matter:

I for one don't think I have a "persecution complex", as you call it. Yes, sometimes it hurts when I hear people say things like "those stupid Christians", but it doesn't get me tied up in knots. However, what gets me is the double standard "Christian bashers" have. MSP pointed out that some people openly bash Christians, yet readily embrce other religions - and this isn't just an illustration, it's something I see happen almost every day. It isn't the persecution, persay, but the hypocracy that seems inherit to it.

At any rate, I agree that atheists, and any other religion for that matter, not be generalized. A few non-Christian CAA members come to mind - I'm really glad they're here to give us a little reality check once in a while, because not everyone is "against us". ^^

[Android raptor]

As all of you know, I am an aetheist. But I do not like what this guy is doing. I don't like for ANYONE to push their religion (or lack of) on another person. Plus, I think Jesus was a real person, but I won't get into the details. And plus, there are different levels of Christianity, some more liberal, some more conservitive. I have a friend who is pretty Catholic, but she strongly believes in seperation of church and state and is a liberal.

[Peanut]

it is because of how they act to other religions .

"It's quite mind boggling how a skeptic can say "What religion are you? Christianity? Bah! you close-minded Jesus Freak!" and also go to someone else and say "What religion are you? Oh you are wiccan? Sweet! I'm actually an atheist, but tell me about your religion, it sounds very interesting"

well skeptics think all religions are just as mythical as the other.


also why do christians have to have a persucution complex?

It is true that most skeptics believe that all religions are mythical. But those are the Atheistic skeptics. You can be skeptic of Chrstianinty and be a devout Muslim. As for the suppossed persecution complex, this is a reaction that pretty much everyone (non-christian or not) has to some degree. Obviously, if someone is going to oppress you because of your religious beliefs you would probably protest quite loudly.

[Shepherdmoon]

It is true that most skeptics believe that all religions are mythical. But those are the Atheistic skeptics. You can be skeptic of Chrstianinty and be a devout Muslim. As for the suppossed persecution complex, this is a reaction that pretty much everyone (non-christian or not) has to some degree. Obviously, if someone is going to oppress you because of your religious beliefs you would probably protest quite loudly.

"As for the suppossed persecution complex, this is a reaction that pretty much everyone (non-christian or not) has to some degree" yes but what i mean is some christians go over board.[you see i make differences like ignorant fundies and smart sophisticated christians]

" Obviously, if someone is going to oppress you because of your religious beliefs you would probably protest quite loudly" well as i said just above maybe fundies are being told how ignorant they are but sophisticated christians are not oppressed.

[shooraijin]

"As for the suppossed persecution complex, this is a reaction that pretty much everyone (non-christian or not) has to some degree" yes but what i mean is some christians go over board.[you see i make differences like ignorant fundies and smart sophisticated christians]

" Obviously, if someone is going to oppress you because of your religious beliefs you would probably protest quite loudly" well as i said just above maybe fundies are being told how ignorant they are but sophisticated christians are not oppressed.

There is the slight implication here that fundamental Christians are not sophisticated. Whether you think this is true or not, that does cross our interdenominational line and is not to be explored further in this thread.

[Nate]

sophisticated christians are not oppressed.

I disagree. I witnessed at another internet forum someone sign up and say in their intro post, "I am a Christian." That's it. Nothing more about their specific beliefs, nothing about their thoughts on morals, just mentioned in passing that they were a Christian, and most of the replies were flaming this person, calling them names, and generally insulting them. Just for saying, "I'm a Christian." No, it doesn't matter what your political leanings are, simply bearing the name of Christ causes persecution. And we shouldn't be surprised, the Bible flat out tells us the world will hate us for following Him.

[Puritan]

Very true, kaemmerite. There are many knowledgeable, well learned, and sophisticated Christians in the world (I have been blessed to know some of them) and I haven't seen that they escape persecution any more than anyone else. While presenting one's faith in a polite and appropriate manner does make it less likely that you will be persecuted by some people, the Christian faith is by its very nature exclusionary of opposing faiths and absolutist in our beliefs. That doesn't mean we hate other religions or that we try to force our views on others, but that does mean that Christians believe that the teachings of Christ are true, and we believe that anything that goes against his teachings is false. There are many ideas in Christian circles as to exactly what the teachings of Christ entail, but even at the most basic level what He taught conflicted with the religious leaders of his day, and we can expect no different today. To be Christian in the most basic sense is to be opposed to much that goes on in our world and that means that we will be persecuted. Why should we be surprised? Christ Himself died for what He preached, should we expect to escape persecution ourselves?