Jesus Christ On Trial In Italy

'The Incredulity of St.Thomas' by Caravaggio ca.1601, at the Neues Palais, Potsdam

Atheist Luigi Cascioli alleges Jesus never existed in his book, 'The Fable of Christ'

A small Italian town is expected to be the epicenter of worldwide focus this week as legal proceedings begin in a lawsuit over the existence of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Viterbo, Italy, north of Rome, is the venue where Rev. Enrico Righi is being sued by his childhood friend, atheist Luigi Cascioli, for deceiving people into thinking Jesus was an actual historical figure.

"This complaint does not wish to contest the freedom of Christians to profess their faith, sanctioned by [article] 19 of the Italian Constitution," says Cascioli, "but wishes 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."

The author of "The Fable of Christ" claims the priest violated local laws against deception when he stated in a 2002 parish gazette "that the historic figure of Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary (two totally imaginary characters and therefore historically non existing); of having the same Jesus been born in the village of Bethlehem and of having grown up in Nazareth."

Lawyers for Righi are slated to appear in court Friday to discuss preliminary motions on evidence proving the historicity of the man who is now worshipped as God by millions of Christians across the globe.

On his website, Cascioli alleges the person as Jesus is "for the most part based on the figure of John of Gamala, son of Judas, downright descendant of the Asmoneian stock."

Rev. Righi says the existence of Jesus is "unmistakable" due to a wealth of both pagan and Christian evidence pointing to his reality.

"Cascioli maintains that Christ never existed. If he doesn't see the sun at midday, he can't denounce me just because I do. He should denounce all believers!" Righi told the London Times recently.

Among his examples are the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, thought by scholars to be the most important non-Christian source on the issue. In one of his passages of "Jewish Antiquities," a work completed in A.D. 93, mentions the execution in A.D. 62 of "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, James by name."

Cascioli declares he is not intent on having the matter be decided by a court of law, saying, "I wrote to [Righi] an open letter, stating that I would withdraw the lawsuit if he were capable of supplying proof, just one proof, of the historical existence of Jesus."

Cascioli has since turned to Archbishop Giacomo Biffi of Bologna, Italy, to avoid the appearance of picking on a poor, local cleric.

In an open letter to the archbishop, Cascioli writes: "In the certainty that you are fully aware of how much more damaging any further silence, the silence of a bishop would be for the Church, than that of a lowly country parish priest, I have nothing else to do, but wait for your proof of the existence of Jesus, called The Christ. Proof that, besides satisfying your two diocesan followers and relieving don Enrico Righi of his legal obligations, would spare the Church a probable catastrophe."

Ed Morrissey: "Had this been an American court, I don't doubt that Cascioli would have had about ten minutes in front of a judge before being reminded that (a) no one forces him to believe in Jesus, either as a historical figure or as the Son of God, and (b) unless Cascioli could prove that he was personally damaged by the supposed fraud, he had no standing to bring legal action. Unfortunately, the Italian court did not choose to exercise a little common sense; for that matter, the Italian legislature should have understood the "abuse of popular belief" law would generate this kind of mischief from the beginning.

What is it about atheists that drive them to sue to eliminate all mention of God and faith in public? It demonstrates that everyone has a need to revere and worship something. In the case of atheist activists (a small but annoying percentage of atheists), apparently they have simply decided that courtrooms have replaced churches and judges have replaced priests. The worship of penal codes and case law instead of a higher power inevitably leads them to drag religious churches onto their own altars for a strange kind of sacrifice to their little demigods."

From Cascioli's website:

ATHEISM attacks CHRISTIANITY in a lawsuit against JESUS CHRIST and the Catholic Church.
Luigi Cascioli, by bringing a lawsuit with a formal denunciation-action filed at a civil court so that the non-existence of one of the three people of the Trinity, i.e., Jesus Christ is acknowledged, carries out the first lawsuit against God. He does not resort to purely theoretical reasoning as was done in the past, but shows evidence, which taken from history, is evident and therefore irrefutable.
The book, THE FABLE OF CHRIST, after having carefully demonstrated the NON-existence of Jesus Christ, ends with a denunciation against the ministers of the Church so that, following a court sentence, the great fraud of Christianity will be banned from society.
The absurdity of the Trinity, which theology had managed up until now to support by evading reason and good sense with that subterfuge called mystery, is confirmed in all its utopia and eccentricity by the book, THE FABLE OF CHRIST, through incontrovertible historical documentation showing the non-existence of its second person: Jesus.

After having read THE FABLE OF CHRIST, many people have affirmed that this book, by destroying the figure of Christ, besides determining the end of Christianity, will also cause the other two monotheist religions (Judaism and Islam) and all the other religions, based on similar irrational fairy-tales, to totter.
Only by nullifying reason can one impose a morality (false morality) based on truths that are not demonstrable (dogmas) which are to be considered purely abstract and utopian. One example out of many is the one regarding the existence of a life after death which as a result of God's judgement can mean an eternity of happiness or suffering for every man.
Who is God?
"God is the most perfect creator and lord of the heavens and the earth," believers reply, "He is the one who made everything from nothing and from which all things proceed. He is eternal, infinitely good, omniscient and omnipotent."

"These are all incoherent and contradictory affirmations," reply the atheists, who are only just confirming that a similar being can only be a construction supported by superstition and ignorance.

EPICURUS: Evil exists, therefore either God knows it exists or he doesn't know it exists.

1) God knows that evil exists, he can destroy it but he doesn't want to... such a God would be cruel and perverse, therefore inadmissible.
2) God knows that evil exists, he wants to destroy it but he can't...such a God would be impotent, therefore inadmissible.
3) God does not know that evil exists...such a God would be blind and ignorant, therefore inadmissible.

LUCRETIUS, who continued Epicurus' work, in his "De Rerum Natura" destroys every concept of divinity by writing: "The principle that we can place over all others is that nothing is born from nothing for a divine power (ex nihilo nihil). The fear that currently dominates all mortals and makes them slaves to the religions depends on the fact that they see things occur on earth that they do not understand and so they attribute them to divine power. It is only following the conviction that brings us to affirm that nothing can be created from nothing that we can discover the object of our research whose result will demonstrate how everything occurs without the intervention of God".

"God is the name which from the beginning of time man has given to his ignorance." (Max Nordeau)
"It is absurd to admit the existence of a creator since it is impossible not only to demonstrate but also to imagine that nothing transforms itself into something and that something transforms itself into nothing." (Enciclopeda Anarchica).
"Nothing is created and nothing is destroyed but everything is transformed." affirmed Lavoisier demonstrating it scientifically.

The number of religions that each support their own God whom they declare to be the only true one compared to all others whom they consider to be false, led Dr. Carret to this conclusion: "The matter can be put like this: either God wanted to let himself be known by man or he didn't want to be. If he wanted man to know him and he didn't succeed this can only demonstrate that he is impotent; an impotent God is inadmissible. If God didn't want to be known then all religions are false. If God didn't want either one, then we have to conclude that God does not exist".
To demonstrate that Christianity is a false religion it is enough just to report what St. Augustine wrote in 350 when it was considered heresy to affirm that the earth was round: "If it could be shown that the earth is round, then Catholicism would be shown to be a mistake".
The concept of a perfect God is already in itself the demonstration of the non-existence of a God creator. The word perfect, in its meaning of absolute completeness, excludes a God who had the desire and the need to give himself, through creation, something that he lacked.
For however much one tries to make God metaphysical by placing him in a transcendental world outside of matter, God, being a product of man, of his ignorance, his superstition, his interests and egoism, cannot help being, as he really is, a being composed of the worst human defects. Just read the Bible to realize how much God is an anthropomorphic being.
The God of the Bible is irascible, envious, proud, vain, authoritarian... a true criminal who encompasses the worst side of man.

In order to construct a perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient God, man has transferred onto God everything that really belongs to mankind. The result of this is that Heaven has become rich with the goods of an earth so sacked and impoverished that man is forced to resort to the supernatural (God). This God will give man what he needs through revelations that he grants only, by sheer coincidence, to his ministers such as priests, witch doctors, fortune tellers, etc. who by declaring themselves intermediaries, subjugate mankind which has been rendered foolish by brainwashing.
All men, intellectually alienated by these self-proclaimed mediators who put themselves between matter and transcendence under the threat of divine punishment, owe everything to God and the occult forces in absolute obedience. The coercion to blindly obey laws that come from a metaphysical world, an abstract and utopian world, by requiring the abdication of reason and human justice, the denial of liberty, evolution, and social emancipation, can have no other purpose but that of reducing man to a theoretical and practical slavery. This leads us to conclude without fear of being proven wrong, that where God exists, man is a slave and where man is free God cannot exist.

The American bishop Brown (condemned by the Church twice for heresy), by denying any creationist concept and therefore a transcendental God, wrote: "My God is a trinity where matter is the Father, the force that moves it the Son and the law which regulates it the Holy Spirit. God is the union of Nature with mankind which works to build the happiest possible society". Prosper Alfaric, former professor of theology in great French seminaries, converting to atheism, concluded at the Sorbonne in a conference intended to demonstrate the absurdity of a creator and legislator God: "If atheists repudiate traditional faith it is not only because this faith is in contrast with the affirmations of believers themselves, with reason that denies the idea of God, but because they have understood that false dogmas go against true morality, against the social demands of the world we live in. The belief in God is not only a simple illusion, a purely theoretical error. It misrepresents the practical direction of life by orienting it in a chimerical direction. It goes against the social realty, against the essential needs of mankind which are the primary motor and the ultimate goal of every morality".

Ed of course tells it like it is: "Mr. Cascioli and the rest of these secular Pharisees should take a cold shower and learn to live with diversity. It's not possible to kill God on the altar of the municipal courtroom." Amen

Comments

[Curious]

I was looking forward to the Italian Jesus trial. I want to learn the handful of facts that support the contention that Jesus existed. Since Jesus is the central figure in Christianity, I am baffled why the Catholic Church has not taught those facts to its followers to the same extent it taught the 'Our Father' prayer. Shouldn't all believers know those facts cold? I don't know anybody who knows them, and I suspect that only a tiny minority of christians do. Now is an good time for the church to share those facts with all of us. With the topic at center stage, this is an excellent opportunity for the church to firm-up its followers' belief that Jesus existed, and narrow their leap-of-faith to the notion that he was a diety. If the church does not take this opportunity we have to wonder why.

[Stefan]

Red,
Your argument is a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Religion is not a great “atrocity that has plagued the world for much too long” (by the “world” I assume you mean human civilization), but rather religion is the very reason we even have something called human civilization. Your very concepts of human freedom and liberation (which I suspect you believe religion suppresses) are only known to you because of the genius of the religious traditions which preceded you. Any realistic and fair grasp history (not agenda driven Leftist revisionism, mind you,) clearly reveals the immense and irreplaceable action of religiously informed human communities on creating and sustaining our civilizations from the earliest to the present. Was there violence that had religion as its root cause? Of course, but if you'd care to compare track records I’m all for it. The Twentieth Century was the historical apex of atheistic humanism and purely secular thought. Is it a coincidence that the body count of the last 100 years or so surpasses that of the entire previous history of the world? This should, at the very least, give a thoughtful atheist pause don’t you think? As for following someone you have never met...most Leftists have never met Marx, Chomsky, Lenin, Mao, or, come to think of it, any or those whom they follow. I smell a Red Herring. Remember, Faith is not blind but rather it is deeply informed. You’ve just rejected the information.

[Prof. Helen McCaffrey]

Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of Western Civilization and a bottom line value that anyone wishing to interact with that culture or to be accepted by it MUST accept including Muslims.
It's a hill worth fighting on.

Prof.McCaffrey

[Darrell]

You should have spent a little more time studying science, Red. The only thing we can prove definitively is that Socialism and Communism doesn't work. You know nothing so stop pretending that you do. No one takes from you by Believing.

[Red]

After reading the articles, I concur that the charges being brought are reasonable as such to reveal a great atroicty that has plauged the world for much too long, religion. Is it not reasonable to think that just like how the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians made up Zeus, Rah, Caesar that the Jews made up the notion of a singular God and Jesus as a means of conveying the message? The Jews were on the outskirts of thier time and they appealed to the masses of Romans who needed a crutch to lean on. Why is this idea so far fetched? It baffles me how people can so blindly follow someone they have never met. Someone who has little historical background and someone who is nothing more than a pipedream. I hope in my heart of hearts that science proves that Christ is false because I would love to see the crippling social collapse that would occur.

[Guest]

I couldn't concur with you more heartily, Kenny. Mark Steyn, Dhimmi Watch, Brussels Journal, and others have been keeping a close eye on European willful blindness and bizarre attempts to warp their own culture in order not to "offend" Islamic values -e.g. an English local library not allowed to even advertise for a Christmas event, in order not to "offend" the Muslims, whereas Ramadan parties and lectures were freely and prominently indulged in at the same library. Perhaps the most eggregious example of this propitiation mentality toward Islam is the proposed English "anti-blasphemy" law. Now, it is verifiable, empirical fact that when people were going around blaspheming against Christianity or Judaism (think along the lines of "Piss Christ" or the Madonna of the Excrement, funded by the tax-payer, of course), Parliament cared not a whit (I guess because Jews and Christians didn't blow anything or anyone up in their "rage" at the "offense"); it was only in response to Muslim pressure and threats, and their reactions at anything that could in any way be interpreted as critical of Islam (e.g., pointing out that the Qur'anic command in Surat al-Nisa' to "beat your wives" contravenes English law, or that Muhammad's marriage to a seven-year old, and his consummation of that marriage when 'Aisha was 9, is by English standards paedophilic)that the English government suddenly became oh-so-concerned with "disrespect toward religion."
Anyone who has not been following the Danish freedom of speech case really should start doing so. One of the large Danish newspapers, the conservative Jylland-Posten, decided to test how and if the Muslim presence in Denmark has affected freedom of speech. They accordingly published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (and, believe me, these were fairly mild- nothing on the order of what one sees in the European press on a daily basis against Israel or- before he started making swathes of the world Judenrein- Ariel Sharon). The result was, alas, what one would expect: death threats to the newspaper editor; threats to blow up the Jyllands-Posten building, which is now under 24-hour guard; condemnation by the Islamic Conference nations; riots in Pakistan; demands that the Danish government issue an apology; condemnation from some U.N. Commission (I believe it was the one on "Religious Freedom", which apparently does not recognize the right to dissent), and so forth.
But, as you so picturesquely pointed out, the Europeans have the true cowardly mentality: pick on little old Catholic priests, or little old Jewish ladies, but don't mess with anyone who is liable to blow you up without warning if you "offend" him.
"The best are lacking all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"- I think we are seeing Yeats's prophetic words on a large, cultural scale.
Guest

[liquid]

the Italian version seems to be, "Speech is free as long as it doesn't offend us anti-religious intellectuals, or as long as the offensive person comes from a group that we're afraid to pester for fear they'll rise up and kick our wimpy Italian asses"...not terribly compelling.

In short, the Italian courts' standards for whose speech is free seems to me to be an awful lot like the animal-rights movement's standards for which people are allowed to wear animal hides: you can persecute little old defenseless mink-wearin' Jewish ladies all you want, but when the Hell's Angels ride by in their fifty pounds of leather per capita, you should be careful to be otherwise occupied.

SPOT ON KENNY!!!

[Kenny Pierce]

Guest,

It's particularly worrisome when it's combined with a growing persecution of those who would criticize Islam. When the Italian courts will allow a priest to be sued for saying that Jesus was an actual historical figure, and also will allow an atheist to be sued for pointing out that pretty much anywhere in the world you go (barring Ireland) where evil people are killing others over religion, you'll find Muslims on one or both sides...that's a court system that no longer makes a pretence to respecting freedom of speech and opinion, nor even of intellectual consistency in the choice of which views will be subject to court-driven censorship. I use the term censorship loosely but not unthinkingly. After all, even if the courts in the end find for the defendants, the mere fact that the defendants have been put through the stress and expense of defending themselves, will have a chilling effect on others' willingness to speak freely. This does not in itself rule out any particular restriction on free speech, but it does increase the prima facie burden that any proposed restriction should have to overcome. And since the Italian version seems to be, "Speech is free as long as it doesn't offend us anti-religious intellectuals, or as long as the offensive person comes from a group that we're afraid to pester for fear they'll rise up and kick our wimpy Italian asses"...not terribly compelling.

In short, the Italian courts' standards for whose speech is free seems to me to be an awful lot like the animal-rights movement's standards for which people are allowed to wear animal hides: you can persecute little old defenseless mink-wearin' Jewish ladies all you want, but when the Hell's Angels ride by in their fifty pounds of leather per capita, you should be careful to be otherwise occupied.

[Kenny Pierce]

This is something that should worry any person of faith, not just Christians.

Absolutely, absolutely.

[Guest]

Dear Kenny,
Cascioli's screed is incoherent drivel. The best (and most entertaining, in its own way) attempt I have seen to try to assert that Jesus never existed was a book by the erstwhile great scholar, John Allegro, called "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross." Allegro, you will recall, was one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls; he was enormously learned, but unfortunately went mad and, before he was officially diagnosed (although he was clearly already deranged), composed this book. In "The Sacred Mushroom" he resorts to inventing dirty words in Sumerian (he himself admits that these words never actually existed) in order to prove that "Jesus" was a code word for a sacred psychedelic mushroom that a) does not, and never grew in Israel; b) is never mentioned in the Bible (the ultimate "proof" of the veracity of his theory, according to Allegro). According to Allegro, the whole Temple worship was some kind of weird sexual fertility cult- he actually tries to describe the High Priest as a walking phallic symbol. Anyway, I found the book too dirty to read through, but it was certainly original and clever, which is more than one can say for poor Mr. Cascioli's inchoate and unconvincing ramblings.
The real story here is the arrogance of the Italian court, and Europe's growing, frightening repression of religion, which already borders on persecution. This is something that should worry any person of faith, not just Christians.
Cum amicitia,
Guest at the Feast

[Kenny Pierce]

[sigh] I really am getting too old for apologetics. There's nary a sentence in that whole screed...practically every sentence is either transparently nonsensical or else has been repeatedly refuted. Time was I'd gleefully go to work exposing the nonsense, but these days...well, it just seems like life offers so many more enjoyable and fruitful activities that you don't want to waste any of it arguing with the kind of lunatic who would actually try to sue Jesus out of existence.

I'm curious: do any of you guys who hang out here at ATB find any particular one of those arguments troubling or compelling? 'Cause I wouldn't have much interest in arguing that stuff with Cascioli, but I wouldn't mind discussing it with you guys. Don't be offended by the "transparently nonsensical" stuff; I'm just expressing my emotional reaction to reading the same old arguments for the thousandth time, not really saying that anybody who buys 'em is childishly stupid.

I suppose a couple of quick responses wouldn't hurt...

1. The Christians are supposed to provide "proof" that Cascioli will accept only if it meets a standard that he himself could never hope to meet in all of his own "demonstrations."

2. Like most atheists, his fulminations are stuffed with question-begging, value-judging epithets ("envious," "proud," "authoritarian" -- this from a guy trying to use the power of the law to force Christians to mouth his beliefs instead of affirming their own -- "liberty," "social emancipation"); all while he is engaged in destroying any rational basis for assuming that the values implied by those epithets have an any rationally non-arbitrary basis.

3. His appeals to authority are quite hilariously absurd. To take just one example, it's been decades since I read De Rerum Natura (a lamentable time lapse the extreme duration of which is implied by the fact that the last time I read it, I could still read it in the original Latin), but I'm pretty confident that poor ol' Lucretius was spectacularly wrong in his physics. So, a guy who turns out to have been wrong in these of his propositions that are subject to empirical verification, is to be taken as infallibly authoritative in the area of theology...yeah, that's compelling.

4. Dr. Carret, Epicurus...join the club, guys, of narcissists who have said, "There is a particular way for a Deity to behave that would meet with my approval; but if any Deity exists, that Deity has not chosen to behave in such a way; and therefore it is inconceivable that Deity actually exists." Wow, that one's compelling, too. Indeed, one can hardly understand how it's possible that anyone has remained a Christian in the face of such toweringly conclusive evidence that the world is not designed in accordance with the omnisciently infallible tastes of the moralizing atheist.