Tales From The Crapt

The idea that James Cameron has found Jesus' ossuary, while perhaps an interesting idea, instantly triggers the whiff of hype and bullshit. Naturally, as a godless heathen atheist, I just figured, "oh well, another publicity stunt". Nothing to see there. I forget sometimes how seriously religious (as opposed to merely spiritual) people will take even the smallest challenges to their dogma; the catechists waste no time in getting up in arms.

English theologian Justin Thacker puts it simply:

This is not a story that casts doubt on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ - there are simply too many problems with the evidence presented - but it is a story about the nature of theological truth claims.

These truths are self-involving narratives. In contrast to most archaeological or historical discoveries, whether Jesus actually rose from the dead or not is an event that one cannot take a dispassionate view on. If he did not rise bodily then, to paraphrase St Paul, the Christian faith is utterly pointless. If he did rise bodily, then this vindicates all that he said, and demands that we acknowledge his Lordship over us.

A neutral stance over the bodily resurrection of Christ is not a fair-minded, rational approach; it is a mark of intellectual and personal cowardice. It is for precisely this reason that Richard Dawkins gets so irate. Even he realises that orthodox Christianity is not something one can be anodyne about.

I couldn't agree more, and that is the main reason why I have such impatience with people and politicians who try to straddle the ontological fence; either you believe it or you don't. And while there's certainly plenty of room for people to respectfully disagree -- and even room for agnostics and atheists to have respect for certain aspects of the traditions, cultures, histories, etc. -- there's not much point in trying to reconcile the two primary positions. So if Cameron's mission is to either debunk or confirm, then he had better pack a lunch, because millions of people have archived the names and dates for thousands of years. One Discovery Channel doc isn't going to change anyone's mind.