(humorous illustrative photo) Celsus: anti-Christian philosopher, author from 177 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsus Celsus was a Greek philosopher whose work criticizing Christians was written in 177. You can view his work in English here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37696?msg=welcome_stranger https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37696/37696-h/37696-h.htm Celsus's statements are only about 1/4 of this book. If any volunteer would be willing to translate his work into Slovak or Czech, I would be very happy.
Logically, if a person has a sense of objectivity and truth, they should also listen to the other critical side of Christianity. We have already heard enough arguments that only defend Christianity from the church. Celsus is a much more trustworthy and credible person when it comes to Christianity than the church, which in the past consciously lied to believers and still does. Celsus is an objective, independent, and unbiased person who comments on the Christians of that time and describes them as a symbol of decline and misery.
A brief summary of his work: -Celsus considers Christians to be utterly wretched, primitive, uneducated, naive dregs of society, strange and psychologically insecure weirdos who are at rock bottom. He considers Christians to be fools who are capable of uncritically believing the most absurd nonsense (religious dogmas) – no educated person was found among Christians – such a person would not be able to naively believe in nonsense – Celsus speaks of exactly the same practices of the first Christians as are done in contemporary sects (such as the recently defunct Nazareth movement or the Grace Church): members of the sect are forced by the leaders of the sect to isolate themselves as much as possible and break off contact with their parents or relatives. This makes it much easier to manipulate people if you isolate them, and they will believe your absurd nonsense much more easily.
Logically, if a person has a sense of objectivity and truth, they should also listen to the other critical side of Christianity. We have already heard enough arguments that only defend Christianity from the church. Celsus is a much more trustworthy and credible person when it comes to Christianity than the church, which in the past consciously lied to believers and still does. Celsus is an objective, independent, and unbiased person who comments on the Christians of that time and describes them as a symbol of decline and misery.
A brief summary of his work: -Celsus considers Christians to be utterly wretched, primitive, uneducated, naive dregs of society, strange and psychologically insecure weirdos who are at rock bottom. He considers Christians to be fools who are capable of uncritically believing the most absurd nonsense (religious dogmas) – no educated person was found among Christians – such a person would not be able to naively believe in nonsense – Celsus speaks of exactly the same practices of the first Christians as are done in contemporary sects (such as the recently defunct Nazareth movement or the Grace Church): members of the sect are forced by the leaders of the sect to isolate themselves as much as possible and break off contact with their parents or relatives. This makes it much easier to manipulate people if you isolate them, and they will believe your absurd nonsense much more easily.
-Celsus describes Christians as decadent, unethical, and immoral weirdos. -He says that Christianity was mostly embraced by naive children and women. -He also points out the fake miracles in the Christian communities of the time: belief in church miracles was the foundation of the faith of Christians at that time. Celsus is skeptical of this, saying that these are just magic tricks that only very primitive and naive people can fall for. -He describes Christians as thieves, robbers, and grave robbers. -The Romans, the government of the Roman Emperor, were free in terms of freedom of religion at that time – Christians could freely profess their faith. However, in addition to public meetings, Christians also had secret night meetings, which was illegal under Roman law. This was also the reason for their persecution. Christians often performed religious rites in graves. -According to Celsus, Jesus was Mary's illegitimate son, conceived with a Roman soldier (by the way, in the past I read some Gnostic gospel/apocrypha where, during the interrogation before Pilate, the Pharisees also criticized Jesus for being conceived out of fornication. Unfortunately, it is time-consuming to find again exactly which apocrypha it is written in. It is interesting that two independent sources of information confirm the same thing. It is also clear that Jesus differed from others in his appearance – his hair and skin were paler than his peers because he was ethnically only half Semite/Arab). -According to Celsus, Jesus lived for a long time in Egypt, where he learned magic. And with his magical abilities, he could impress other people. -Celsus is very skeptical of the credibility of Jesus' miracles – he calls them mere fabrications of Christians and points out that there are no independent (other than Christian) sources of information that would confirm Jesus' great miracles. -Celsus says that Christians are fragmented into several sects, which have considerable conflicts among themselves as to who among them is the "true" one.