Atheist student dresses as Jesus for "Fictional Character Day!"

That was creative but troublesome.

He knew there would be a problem... anybody would know. I think there's always a "smirk" contest amongst teens this time of year.

thanks for sharing.

I agree Carol.

I would have found it offensive.....and I would have found it offensive if he had dressed as budda or Mohammad too. You just don't mock someone else's religion and call it fiction.

As is usually the case, atheists find a perverse sense of pleasure to mock and ridicule those of faith.

I don't know why you think it was so creative. Hell, it's all some of them have on their minds at all. "Jesus isn't real. I think I'll dress as Jesus." Wow! That's clever!

That's almost as stupid as the atheists who were offering cookies for people to trade their souls. I don't think I'll ever get over thinking about the idiocy of that whenever an atheist tries to tell me he's so much more clever than any Christian.

Amen. Sacred is sacred and mockery is mockery. This is a blatant case of mockery...Anyone who fails to recognize that poses serious questions in my mind about their faith...or lack of...

I didn't think it was that clever either.

Rosa, I wasn't saying it was a case of mockery, though it was, of course. Certainly, I think people are entitled to mock whatever or whomever they want to mock, though. Part of being a Christian is knowing and accepting that you are going to be mocked.

My only point was that I don't think it's creative or ingenious in any way that the student thought of this because it's part of their normal thought process. It isn't for all non-believers, but it is for some, and the ones who would do this think they're making some kind of statement. Jesus stands taller every time they do it, and that displays the futility of their attempts.

That cookie trade-off escapade was out of the realim of reality to the most grossly absurd nonsense to be imagined, and yet there are some who thought it was a clever way to make believers think about the foolishness of the idea of having a soul. It conjures visions of slapstick with cookies beating the souls out of people. Some of their notions are so flippin' stupid, you'd think they'd be more embarrassed than proud, but then they'd be smart enough to realize it too. It's just all too incredible and makes you feel all the better that you have faith that what's here isn't what's important.

the kid should have re-dressed in a suit and come back as an intelligent school administrator.

Now that's what I call creative!

I have to admit that made me laugh, though I do know several good school administrators. Unfortunately, they tend to arrive after a series of empty suits just when your child is ready to graduate. :)

if he dressed up as Mohammed, the Muslims would call for his death

But Christians would have praised him.

(Some Muslims; some Christians. Some atheists would have praised him, too.)

But, would the school staff have made him remove his outfit?

This is similar to the city park in Illinois which had a sign saying "Jesus died for your sins" That sign has been in the park for five years. When an atheist group put up a temporary banner saying "Nobody died for your sins. Jusus Christ is a myth," There was a national outcry against it.

That "Jesus died for your sins" sign was just as much an attack upon my beliefs, as the atheist sign was an attack on Christian beliefs.

By forcing the boy to remove his costume, the school was showing its disrespect for his beliefs, and for the beliefs of billions of non-Christians in the world.

Now featured at Examining Our Religion.

While Europeans tend to be careful these days, Americans have dressed up as Muhammad in order to mock Islam. There was, for example, the recent "Zombie Muhammad" case that attracted quite a bit of attention (including on this site) due to a judge's problematic comments to the "creative" atheist, who had managed to wrangle the the merest semblance of a bad reaction from a Muslim man attending a Halloween parade with his wife and children and promptly and gleefully filed charges of harassment against him. (Note to provocateurs: Muslims who participate in Halloween activities with their families are not likely to be "extremists" and probably won't give you the punch in the face or the yelling of "Death to infidels" that you're going for. That scene is a waste of your time.)

Apart from meaning to offend, the "Zombie" marcher and the atheist student here have another thing in common: they're both factually wrong. There's no claim of Muhammad rising from the dead; and mainstream historians, regardless of religion, agree that Jesus (like Muhammad and the Buddha) was obviously a historical character. One might rationally argue that not everything claimed about Jesus in the documents we have is necessarily true, but that would be true for all historical characters in all ages, and especially so for antiquity. (Apocryphal anecdotes told about George Washington do not make him a "fictional character".) Not realizing this is hardly indicative of the superior rationality and understanding of the world that are often claimed by "activist" atheists.

In this case it would depend on whether the student was saying that Jesus, or Jesus Christ was a fictional character. In this case it is easy to see that the student was referring to Jesus as "the son of God" as being fictional. This is a belief that atheist share with Jews, Muslims and members of numerous other religions. So why is this student being upbraided for expressing such a common belief?

Since the Christian belief you're referring to is that a man who lived 2000 years ago and went by the name of Jesus of Nazareth was "the son of God", we only have one character here, not two. That character is Jesus of Nazareth. Now, people believe different things about this character. Some believe he was God Incarnate, the Word become Flesh. Others believe he was a higher being and "the son of God", but not God himself. Yet others believe he was a mortal man who reached enlightenment or apotheosis, that he was a great moral teacher like the Buddha, or that he was just one of the many wandering prophets in 1st century Israel. And yes, some people believe that no such character ever existed--so I don't know that it's "easy to see" that this was not what this kid meant. My point is that the existence of a range of beliefs about a real person does not make that person a "fictional character". If someone on Gather starts claiming you are a reincarnation of Voltaire, Voltaire will still be a historical character and you will still be a real living person.

(I don't think people should be "upbraided" for expressing beliefs, whether common or uncommon. As pointed out by others, schools have an interest in avoiding situations that are likely to lead to conflict, and telling kids they can't wear specific things considered problematic is pretty common. (See recent case of a prom dress that looked like the Confederate flag.))

Those who believe that Jesus was a mortal man, or that Jesus did not exist at all are not the ones who were offended by what the student did.

It is primarily those who support placing nativity scenes and crosses on public property, inserting "under God" in the pledge, and placing "In God We Trust" on our money who feel offended.

Obviously, people in the former category would not be offended and some in the latter might, but that has nothing to do with my point. I wasn't speaking about who would or wouldn't be offended. I simply said calling Jesus of Nazareth a "fictional character" is factually wrong, according to the view of the majority of the world's historians.

Mark Twain's book, The Prince and the Pauper is about two boys. One of the boys is said to be Edward VI, who was the son of Henry VIII. There actually was an Edward VI, who was the son of Henry VIII, but the book is fictional. The fact that the character in the book may be based upon a real life person does not make the character real. He is still a fictional character.

You know that this is not about a possible historical character named Jesus. This is about a fictional character called Jesus, or Jesus Christ, who is found in a collection of myths and fairy tales called The Bible. The fact that this character may be based upon a real life person, does not make the character real.

Even the world's historians would agree on that.

I think I covered your first paragraph above, Richard. If a kid turned up for Fictional Character Day and said he was Edward VI, there is no way a whole bunch of people--pretty much all those who knew who Edward VI was--wouldn't be fast pointing out he was a real (albeit short-lived) English king, and I think you realize this. What happens to Edward VI in The Prince and the Pauper is not exactly unusual, either. It will be hard to find a reasonably well-known historical character that has not been used in fiction. So let's not pick on English child kings--let's dress up as Paul Revere, George Washington, or Martin Luther King Jr. for Fictional Character Day! And if we extend "fiction" to mean any potentially apocryphal account of a real person's life--say, that totally untrue story about you that your brother keeps entertaining people with at parties--then, by your reckoning, we're all fictional characters, and "Dress as a Fictional Character Day" is really "Wear Anything Day". It seems more rational to define "fictional character" as a person that's made up entirely by a storyteller. (It's also better to have a "Dress as a Character from a Book Day", and have kids bring the book along, as I've seen it done.)

Regarding your second paragraph, no, the world's historians would not agree with you there. From a completely agnostic point of view, the Bible doesn't contain merely "myths and fables". The earliest stories are classified, in a literary sense, as myth (a genre, not a synonym of "not true"), and can be compared to similar stories told in other cultures. They are followed by narratives that are increasingly historical in nature, and are no different in their historical claims from the early "chronicles" of other nations. All of what we know about ancient history from anywhere comes from similar writings. This doesn't mean, again, from an agnostic point of view, that everything told in these chronicles happened exactly like the way it's presented. It means that what is written does reflect real events. There was no real "history writing" in the sense that we understand it today until after the Renaissance. But the documents we do have are prime material for historians--they are historical sources. That's true for a good part of the Old Testament, starting around the time of the United Monarchy, and it's certainly true for the gospel accounts, Acts, and the Pauline epistles. You can have your doubts about various accounts and descriptions given as you would doubt miraculous developments in other documents of ancient history, but saying that they have no historical value is not understanding what a historical document within the context of the age is.

First, it would depend upon the student's intent. If the student dressed in rags as the fictional Edward VI did in The Prince and The Pauper, then he would be dressed as a fictional character, not as the historical Edward. In this case we all know that the student was dressing as the fictional Jesus found in the Bible.

The fact that some of the stories in the Bible may have a historical basis does not in any way make the biblical character of Jesus, or Jesus Christ, real. In the eyes of most of the world, the biblical Jesus is fictional.

In a different response I asked, "What would have happened if the Student was Jewish?" Would the school staff have found it offensive and made the student remove his outfit?

I understand that it sounds reasonable to you to call Edward VI a "fictional character" if the student "means" the character in the The Prince and the Pauper. I have asked you to examine that idea critically, though perhaps I have been too abstract with my examples. So: The Meeting is a play about a fictional visit Martin Luther King Jr. pays Malcolm X. If the student dressed up as MLK, but "meant" the MLK in the play (and, say, rolled up his sleeve to refer to the arm-wrestling match with Malcolm), do you think people would agree that he was dressed as a "fictional character" as he walked in? Or do you think they'd say, "Hey, wait a minute..."?

Now, if those two cases are different, what is the difference--why is it easy to see Edward VI as a fictional character, but not MLK? Could it be that as an American, you know Edward VI much more as the character in Mark Twain's story than you know him as a historical character, while of course the opposite is true for MLK and that play (or other works of fiction)? If so, should your personal familiarity with the fictional work vs. the historical record decide whom you call a historical character and whom you call a fictional one?

I'm suggesting no, and that the consistent and objective definition would have to be that "fictional characters" are only those that the author made up from scratch, and not historical characters the author placed in fictional situations.

That is of little relevance, though, in light of the rest of your argument. The books of the Bible that tell Jesus's story are our source about the historical Jesus. There is no separate "fiction" and "historical record" here. I went into some detail above about the nature of historical sources in antiquity, which you haven't responded to. It's true that "in the eyes of most of the world", the Christian Bible contains some things about Jesus that the people thus described do not consider accurate. It's not true that this makes Jesus fictional. There is no way to logically derive that idea.

I have no idea about your question, or even if anyone in this case actually found anything offensive (possible), or was merely indentifying a potential source of conflict because that was their job. As I said before, the "offense" angle is not what I'm responding to here.

Teen aged kids enjoy shocking people. I have to admit to having chuckled when I read the title of this piece. I realize it was done for the negative attention, but it's still funny in a sick way.

It certainly has a "Hey y'all--watch this!" sound to it. To be quite honest, I'm much more sympathetic to this kid than to the Zombie Muhammad guy. The kid is young, and he's probably as interested in challenging school authority as he is in annoying religious types. The Zombie guy was trying to provoke an incident, and he should know better.

If a Christian came to the party dressed as Buddha, nobody would have complained. For almost two-thousand years Christians have discriminated against Jews, and felt that they were better Christians for doing it. Christians freely express their hate for Islam, and are proud of it.

Atheists are not allowed to express their belief.

Richard.

I know isnt it terrible. All those people who showed up at the Atheist march in Washington DC last month, arrested, and sent to re education camp, so that they would be brainwashed into being Christians. And poor Sam Harris, not allowed to write or publish his books, why his latest is only available in mimeograph. And of course on the internet, atheists are simply non existent. Not to mention college campuses, where the faculty all must pretend to be Christians to avoid ridicule and harassment. Really, it is so terrible that atheists simply cannot express their belief. Wait... their belief??
You mean their belief that there is not God? I thought (after reading the very few comments form the tiny number of atheists who somehow manage to slip a past the anti atheist censors on Gather) that atheists simply dont believe in God, not that they have an actual, you know belief?

Oh well, whatever, I still think it is really tragic that atheism is so hard to detect due to its repression throughout the horrible Christian world. Clearly nothing had changed since the Inquisition. I mean, whenever I see a cross or a nativity scene, I see the millions of atheist martyrs strung up by the Christian fanatics of the ongoing and bloody campaign against truth and reason.

You may think that you are being funny. The sad part is that Christianity has a history of torture and murder. And they did it in the name of Jesus Christ. Not just in medieval Europe, but even in the American colonies. I prefer not to believe in any god at all than one who could inspire such behavior.

Fortunately, sensible people have stripped churches of the powers which permitted such atrocities. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about numerous Christians who believe that their religion makes them superior.

What would the reaction have been if a the student had been a Jew, and dressed up as Jesus?

Thank you so much for sharing with Sadies Points

For Halloween, did he come as himself? You know, a jackass?

People get so uptight about the silliest things. So the kid came as "Jesus" as a fictional character...so what? I'm a Catholic and I'm not offended by it. I know what I believe and definitely feel the young man has a right to express his own views.

as an athiest it was a put down for him to come dressed as Jesus.
Religion must stay out of the school period, no matter what the religion is. As a Christian I don't want to see that, but there really is no choice.