Why is there a Christian bias in the public debate on the new James Cameron film on Jesus? Much of the media expects Cameron (and others associated with the film and book) to present evidence for their postion. But none of the media expects Christians to present evidence that support their beliefs. Is there a pro-Chirstianity bias in the media? Why are Christians (and other religions, too) not ever required to pesent evidence for their beliefs in public debate?
Now, Cameron may be full of shit (probably is), but even valid scholars come forward with evidence that parts of the Christian belief system are highly suspect (like Bart Ehrman), they are held to standard that is impossible to meet while at the same time Christians are not expected to bring forth any evidence for their beliefs other than Christian belief (which just begs the questions.)
Because the United States population is overwhelmingly Christian and at the current time being pro-Christian can earn a lot of ratings and hence more advertising revenue.
This is a question that is more difficult to answer. If one makes up BS about politics, sports, or history then you’ll be called on it. Yet in the arena of religious dogma it’s different. This bubble has been totally broken thanks to the internet…not so much in public debate. Maybe someday we’ll get over the hump there, too.
I do think it’s ironic that al the criticism and skepticism that’s being leveled at the Jesus Tomb special could be levelled four-fold at any number of pseudo-historical shows which advocate for (or at least don’t question) Biblical claims which are far more outlandish in nature than the Jesus Tomb thing.
Not to mention religious beliefs occupy a special sacred ground in our society, it’s considered extremely impolite to question someone’s religious beliefs, even when we don’t share those beliefs and where if the belief were non-religious we would challenge them.
If I were a journalist covering this story, I would point out that it is far far far more likely that James Cameron has discovered the body of Jesus, than it is that Jesus was the son of God and rose to life three days after his death by crucifixion and then sometime later rose bodily into heaven.
Ofcourse, that doesn’t mean I believe James Cameron.
Look at the coverage of The Passion of the Christ. Christians complained that the media was biased against this movie. But the only questioning I saw of its historical accuracy was how closely it followed the New Testament. No questioning of the accuracy of the New Testament.
And to question of whether it was Anti-Semitic nobody talked about how Anti-Semitic the New Testament is. Look at how Jews who want to follow the law are treated. Pharisees are so unfairly treated that the word Pharisee came to mean hypocrite. The only Jews that get off in the New Testament are Christian Jews who are not really following the law.
But a Cameron does a movie that comes to the conclusion that here is something that is interesting and needs more research and he is attacked.
Depends on the Christian and the claim, doesn’t it? I think many Christians would claim the story about Herod and the killing of the male babies happened. They’d be wrong.
True. Change my original phrase to “secular history” and it’ll work.
But it’s also nearly not falsifiable. All Christians state that the resurrection was a miracle, that is a supernatural event that’s not repeatable by mortal hands. It shouldn’t surprise us that such things are rare to the point of non-existance in human history, that was kind of the point of the thing.
So, you can’t prove it happened and you can’t prove it didn’t happen, unless you actually have Christ’s body. But that in itself is a claim that can easily be examined and disproven or verified.
Hence why Christianity is given a pass while the specific, scientific claim of Cameron is held in skepticism.
I guess I don’t consider “Jesus rose from the dead” a historical claim, but a statement of faith. It’s too vague to be scientific. Testable (and thus scientific) claims would be more like “this is the spot where Jesus was buried” or “this is the cloth he was wrapped” or “this is the rind of the watermelon he ate”.
While some Christians may make such claims, for most (eh, I should admit I’m referring to mainstream American Protestants) such details are secondary to the main focus of their faith.
Because everybody knows their beliefs – at least, the most important of them – are unsupported by evidence and held as matters of faith. Cameron, OTOH, is claiming to have actual proof of something, therefore it is not unreasonable to demand he present it.
He did (that was the whole point of the documentary and book, and future article). All he is claiming is that more research is needed. Do you not think he met this burden?
By the way, there are a lot of Biblical claims that are demonstrably ahistorical. We can PROVE there was no special creation (meaning we can prove that species were not “created” sperately and simultaneously but evolved from a common ancestor). We can prove there was no global flood. We can prove there was no Israelite conquest of Cannan. We can prove that the Biblical account of Israelites being enslaved in Egypt then embarking in a prolonged “exodus” across the Sinai peninsula never occurred.
The Bible is also rife with contradictory claims, which means that some of those claims MUST be false.
A lot of other stuff is just extremely implausible and uncorrobrated by external sources (and I’m not just talking about miracles).
The mass media never subjects the historical claims of the Bible to even the most tepid journalistic critique.
Cameron is not claiming to have proof (and his involvement is only as a producer of the special. He’s not the filmmaker or the leader on the investigation). The filmmakers are only claiming that they think they’ve got a hypothesis worth examining, they’re not claiming they’ve got absolute proof or that their hypothesis can’t be falsified.
I also think that plenty of theists in the media present their beliefs as absoute fact without ever getting questioned about it.
Miracles are certainly falsifiable. First of all, no historical event is repeatable. We might not be able to explain why or how something happened, but the fact that it did happen is not related to it being a miracle. If someone claimed all the water in Lake Michigan vanished 200 years ago for a year, we might tell from the lack of historical evidence that the claim is false. That Joshua made the sun stand still might not be falsifiable from science, being a miracle, but it certainly is because no one else in the world noticed it happened.
The claims of earthquakes and walking dead saints at the time of the resurrection are claims of miracles, but we can dismiss them because nobody noticed.