Public opinion in Russia is divided over the case of a man who could spend a year behind bars for insulting the feelings of religious believers when in an online debate he said the Bible is “complete bulls**t” and “there is no God.” Viktor Krasnov, from Stavropol in southern Russia, opened up a Pandora's box in 2014 when he decided to share his atheist views on the Vkontakte social network, doing so in quite harsh terms. “If I say that the collection of Jewish fairytales entitled the Bible is complete bulls**t, that is that. At least for me,” Krasnov wrote, adding fuel to the fire by saying “there is no God.” One of the people taking part in the online dispute lodged a complaint against Krasnov, accusing him of “offending the sentiments of Orthodox believers.” A criminal case was opened in 2015, and Krasnov even spent one month in a psychiatric ward last year, undergoing examinations before he was finally deemed to be sane. He is currently being prosecuted under a 2013 law introduced after members of the punk group Pussy Riot were jailed for their controversial performance in Moscow’s main cathedral. Krasnov’s lawyer told AFP that his client was “simply an atheist” and had taken aim at both “Halloween and Yiddish holidays” in the same exchange. “Blasphemy laws – the laws designed to protect religions from offense – are not uncommon worldwide or in Europe,” Ben Ryan, an expert from Theos, a thinktank working in the area of religion, politics and society, told RT.