In honour of those who blaspheme...

[The Emperor of Mankind]

I know International Blasphemy Rights Day was yesterday but in my not so humble opinion this is too good an idea to pass up. I know I said yesterday was about honouring those who dissented from the religious orthodoxies of their day but, frankly, a quick mention in a single post in a thread isn't enough. I'd like to do more.

In that spirit, I've got a project I'd like to lay before you all. From the list of blasphemers I made in my original thread, I'd like each user to pick one from the list and do some research on them. Tell us about their beliefs; their personal life if there are records of it; how they lived; how they faced the challenges and trials they were subject to; how much support their beliefs gained in their lifetimes and after their deaths. Y'know, things like that.

The rules are as follows:

1. Picking someone from your own tradition is the easy, lazy option. So don't do it. I'm being pretty broad with this; Christians can't pick Christians - no matter if they're different denominations - same goes for all other religious groups. Atheists can't pick an atheist or an agnostic blasphemer either.
2. No copy-and-pasting. I don't want anyone lifting sections right out of Wikipedia or plagiarising paragraphs from books or whatever. Use your own words.
3. No debating. I put this in the Interfaith Discussions section for a reason.
4. No irrelevant chat. I mean it; I don't want to see any **** about Israel, or Zionism, or how bad Islam is, how circumcisions or indoctrination are child abuse, how atheists are immoral because they won't accept Christ into their hearts or whatever in this thread. There are plenty of other places you can be doing that so please keep this thread clean.
5. Reserving a name is okay. In fact I encourage it.
6. I recognise there's not a damn thing I can do to make any of you follow these rules - I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping you'll observe rules of netiquette.

Okay, sorry for the arguably excessive rules. Here's my list of blasphemers. I've added a few names:

• Galileo;
• Raif Badawi;
• Salman Rushdie;
• Socrates;
• Asia Bibi;
• the staff at Charlie Hebdo & Jyllands-Posten;
• 'John Salvesen' (Dane who was convicted of blasphemy earlier this year for burning a Quran);
• Basuki Tjahaja Purnama;
• Maryam Namazie;
• Zarathustra;
• Gautama Buddha;
• Arius;
• Muhammad;
• Theo Van Gogh;
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali;
• Jesus;
• Baha'u'llah;
• The Bab;
• Brihaspati;
• Martin Luther;
• Mirza Ghulam Ahmad;
• Baruch Spinoza

I'm reserving Arius. I've often wondered what exactly he preached that was regarded as so heretical so this seems like as good an excuse as any to learn.

Oh and obviously if you can think of a name that I haven't then by all means do that. As long as its within the rules

 

[Flame]

Voltaire? He had a mixed bag of opinions against Abrahamic faiths but I believe he was a deist.

 

[syo]

Julian the Apostate is one.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Julian the Apostate is one.

Okay, go for it

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Arius was a Christian priest who lived from the mid 3rd Century to the mid 4th Century, lived to at least the age of 80 and served Christendom as an ascetic and as a priest; not necessarily in that order. He espoused a brand of theology which, originally called "Homoousian" Christianity, would eventually come to bear his name which is strange considering Arius was mostly using arguments which had been thought up before he became a theologian. Maybe it's just because he became a particularly prominent example in the eyes of his rival churchmen.

So. Arius espoused the belief that God and Jesus (aka the Word aka the Logos) were not coequal, co-eternal, etc. He espoused the notion that Jesus was a created being and a conduit through whom creation was made by the Father (who was not considered the Father until he created Jesus; his first son). This notion that Jesus was created either 'before' time was initiated by God implies that Jesus was not fully divine - maybe not even partly divine at all - which stood in stark contrast to Trinitarianism.

Surprisingly, as easy as we find it to imagine a Christian world where Trinitarians held power and sway stretching back to the earliest Christian communities, Arianism was very, very influential. Arianism was the first form of Christianity which gained access to the Roman imperial family. Eusebius of Nicomedia, a man who shared the same teacher as Arius, was a distant relative of Constantine, whom he would later baptise on his deathbed, and of Julian whom he would ultimately fail in attempting to convince of sincerely professing a Christian faith. After Julian's premature death, Emperor Valens was the next Christian emperor and was himself an Arian. Though he continued the Arian struggle against orthodoxy, it was a fight Arianism was destined to lose; Valen's successor Theodosius I succeeded in purging Arianism as a potent doctrinal force (Arius was obviously dead by this point) from Christendom.

Arius' only known work, the Thalia, unsurprisingly, did not survive long after his death and the defeat of Arianism by the forces of Orthodoxy. Like Julian the Apostate's work Against the Galileans, the Thalia was likely burned due to its 'blasphemous' content and only survives in excerpts referenced by later churchmen for the purpose of refuting them.

Arius himself died a very peculiar death if the stories are true. Apparently on a visit to the Emperor Constantine, Arius was walking out from the Imperial Palace and had to make a quick 'pit stop'. Apparently he died while 'sitting down'; having squeezed out part of his intestinal tract and haemorrhaging copious amounts of blood. His doctrinal rivals of the day, I believe, attributed this death to divine punishment for his heresy.

Arianism wasn't just limited in scope to the Roman ruling class; various barbarian tribes such as the Goths, the Vandals and the Lombards adopted Arian Christianity and continued to practice it for hundreds of years after Arius' death. The last Arian king in Europe was a Lombardi ruler called Garibald who seemingly only ruled for a short time in 671 AD.

Arius' doctrines are interesting; had they prevailed, his belief in Jesus being a non-divine (and thus mortal) creation of God would have been in line with later Islamic doctrine. Had Arianism prevailed and become the new Christian orthodoxy, perhaps syncretism with Islam might have been much easier in the Byzantine world and history might have been different

 

[syo]

taken from wikipedia:

Julian (Latin: Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus[a]; Greek: Φλάβιος Κλαύδιος Ἰουλιανὸς Αὔγουστος; 331/332[1] – 26 June 363), also known as Julian the Apostate, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek.[2]

A member of the Constantinian dynasty, Julian became Caesar over the western provinces by order of Constantius II in 355 and in this role campaigned successfully against the Alamanni and Franks. Most notable was his crushing victory over the Alamanni in 357 at the Battle of Argentoratum (Strasbourg), leading his 13,000 men against a Germanic army three times larger. In 360 in Lutetia (Paris) he was proclaimed Augustus by his soldiers, sparking a civil war between Julian and Constantius. Before the two could face each other in battle, however, Constantius died, after naming Julian as his rightful successor. In 363, Julian embarked on an ambitious campaign against the Sassanid Empire. Though initially successful, Julian was mortally wounded in battle and died shortly thereafter.

Julian was a man of unusually complex character: he was "the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters".[3] He was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, and it was his desire to bring the Empire back to its ancient Roman values in order to, as he saw it, save it from dissolution.[4] He purged the top-heavy state bureaucracy and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the expense of Christianity. His anti-Christian sentiment and promotion of Neoplatonic paganism caused him to be remembered as Julian the Apostate by the church.[5] Ironically, he was the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty, which was the empire's first Christian dynasty.