So there's a big brouhaha going on about James Cameron's Discovery-Channel thing-o about the bones of Jesus potentially having been found in an ossuary in Jerusalem. The filmmaker basically took a hypothesis that would be much too politically radioactive to get addressed by the academic community, and put together a docu-drama that will interest enough people that the scientific community will eventually have to address the question, and will be able to investigate it under the aegis of "debunking".
What's really important to note, however, is that even should every ounce of the hypothesis turn out to be true, it in no way invalidates Christianity. Given that the new bodies promised of the resurrection are not the flesh of this world and that nor is the resurrection only promised to those buried recently enough not to have mouldered, there's no reason to conclude that Jesus of Nazareth's actual remains being found implies that either the Resurrection or the Ascension didn't occur.
16 comments:
Yup. It's the "you're a Christian, so therefore you obviously don't believe in science" bigotry.
Just. Shoot. Me.
I'm not sure I'd go that far. I suspect the intension of the investigators is more of what really happened (with the obvious supernatural disinclination so implied)?
I might. What I heard of the advertising definitely drew the line "find Jesus, Christianity collapses" angle.
Rather than the "exploring a historical mystery" angle.
Two years ago, it was the Da Vinci Code. Last year it was the Judas Gospel. This year, it is the Tomb of Jesus. And all exactly in Lent, a couple of weeks before Easter.
Like Rufel sez: Just. Shoot. Me.
The whole thing could turn out like the Life of Brian too. We don't know how common the name Jesus was back then - for all we know they stumbled upon the tomb of a richer person named Jesus who was married to a Mary from Magdelene.
Besides - this topic/documentary will automatically rub people the wrong way because they won't see the 2nd point of your post Jim. The vocal minority will be upset that someone went and questioned their beliefs all together rather than just accept their faith as is.
Cynic that I am I think Mr. Cameron is just looking for publicity/buzz so that later on he'll have "cred" for his next motion picture he wants to pitch. I really don't believe his altruistic reasons for wanting to do this. But then again, I almost never buy into anyone's altruistic reasons for doing something unless I know them personally.
Oh, don't get me wrong: Cameron's just out to make a buck. The journalist on the other hand thinks he has the story of the century. I don't personally care if he's right or wrong; I just thought that instead of the blog-war currently being fought between the dismissive righteous on both sides, that someone should pop up and say "hey; it doesn't matter".
Russ: as an aside, even up here in the Cereal State, rather than "hey, this disproves stuff", what I heard over & over again were statements basically akin to "Hey, if they really did find the guy that means he was REAL!" Hardly the invective you're citing from down there in the Buckle.
Not invective... the advertising...
BTW in case anyone hasn't seen it, the show was fucking retarded and about as scientically interesting and revealing as Geraldo opening Al Capone's tomb.
It included such gems as:
Say 1 in 10 guys are named Ted.
Say 1 in 12 women are named Jane.
Therefore, there is a 1 in 120 chance that a guy named Ted will have a mother named Jane..
Um.. No.. Statistics don't work that way. A LOT of the show was based on this; making broad assertions about how impossible it was for there to be more than one Jesus son of Mary and Joseph, brother of IForget, etc etc.. But the thing is, their 'statistics' completely ignores that A) Rare does happen, more often than people realize.. B) Families have names that are passed down so you can't just do multiplicative probability like that.
Feh.. My babe watched it, hoping it would be really interesting (she loves that kind of stuff) and came away thinking it was idiotic.
I agree with the above: Shoot. Me. Too.
Or send in Indiana Jones and make it interesting.
Mmmmm....melting Nazi faces....
Actually, you can do such multiplicative probability without a problem. The real issues are 1) as you allude to, that low-probability events occur ALL THE TIME (we each generate one in a bazillion events every day of our lives), and two, the assumptions that go into lining up the particular things that are being multiplied together. The journo really, really wants his hypothesis to be true; it's likely to get smacked down pretty hard. In any event, a 1/600 probability being false isn't anything to hang your hat on.
Not really disagreeing with you, just defending multiplicative probabilistic calculation.
I'm not saying that multiplicative probability is inherently wrong. Such calculations are valid a lot of the time, the most common example being successive coin-flips producing the same result. Heads? 1 in 2, Heads twice? 1 in 4, Heads thrice? 1 in 8, etc.
The trouble with it in this case is that it ignores replacement (multiple parents can father multiple children outside of formalized family structures) and assumes a sort of zero-sum result (heads vs tails) that you don't have.
So yeah, that calculation is good for a lot of things, but used for the odds of someone having a certain family structure based solely on how much of the populace has those names? No.
Surprise...no argument and no wild, off-the-wall musings here.
Its ridiculous, in my mind, that such drama is placed on such a fascinating question...assuming the "tomb" is even really that old.
According to my religion professors, the name "Jesus" was actually pretty popular at about that time, same for "Mary"...who knows what family this tomb belonged to.
Supposedly 1 in 5 or 6 men was named Jesus and 1 in *FOUR* was named Mary..
This from the same show that found it so amazing a dude named Jesus would have a mother named Mary.
Thanks for writing this.
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