Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise:
Get this, Italy has a law against making stuff up in public. Now, one vehement atheist is using the law to sue his former seminary classmate for allegedly conspiring with the Roman Catholic Church to promulgate false existential claims about a certain Jewish carpenter from Nazareth:
“I started this lawsuit because I wanted to deal the final blow against the Church, the bearer of obscurantism and regression,” [Luigi] Cascioli told Reuters.
Cascioli says Righi, and by extension the whole Church, broke two Italian laws. The first is “Abuso di Credulita Popolare” (Abuse of Popular Belief) meant to protect people against being swindled or conned. The second crime, he says, is “Sostituzione di Persona”, or impersonation. [AP]
The plaintiff will win his suit if he can convince a judge that Jesus didn’t exist.
