I think a deeper look at this statement actually answers the OP:
These shows are entertainment, not news, and they have no reason to challenge the beliefs of the larger numbers of the audience.
However, I would also cast doubt on the claims of the OP. I really have not seen hordes of mainstream media types rushing out to challenge Cameron and Jacobovici. Most of the news reports have been along the lines of “here is something interesting.”
The same thing happened with The Da Vinci Code. There was a fair amount of news reporting about groups that (foolishly) challenged (the overwrought potboiler) novel and movie, but I did not see a lot of news reports that seriously debunked Brown’s raher absurd claims for scholarship.
Most news outlets that I encounter, (TV, radio, and internet), play these stories in exactly the way they play stories about the Virgin Mary on water towers or pancakes, (or serious economic bills in Congress): they play up the hoopla that surrounds the stories and ignore the substance (or lack thereof) that underlies the hoopla.
How should secular history be treated differently from religious history? Does this means that religious historical claims need only be consistent with the Bible and not reality? How would that be different from studying the history of Middle Earth?
Of course it’s impossible, if you’re not God. Christians don’t obsess about that time Jesus had a bruise that faded in about a week, they fixate about the time he came back from the dead, because such an act could not have happened without intervention by an omnipotent being. It’s rarity and seeming impossibility is the very reason it’s so central to the religion.
I think this is partially correct, but I have seen most of the commentary shows about these stories bringing out critics and skeptics (some better than others).
I actually think part of the problem, aside from the desire to sensationalize, is a lack of knowledge on the part of the commentators and interviewers. One example of this which struck me was the coverage surrounding the publication of the recently translated “Gospel of Judas,” which was presented as a “newly discovered Gospel” (untrue) which “might shed new light on the apostle, Judas.” It was usually discussed free of any Gnostic context and I saw more than one commentator expressing dismay or anger at the translators and publishers who they accused of trying to undermine the canonical Gospels. The scholars who worked on translating and publishing the book never made any claim that the GoJ should be read as historically authentic or that it shed any particular light on anything except perhaps the particular Gnostic group which produced it. I saw NT scholars like Bart ehrman (who was on the translation team) getting bashed not for anything he’d actually claimed but for how media headlines misrepresented the significance of the book.
Another more recent example of journalists lacking scholarship was Ted Koppel’s embarrassing performance after the Jesus Tomb special. He was dominated by Jacobovici, not because Jacobovici was making especially impressive points but because Koppel just lacked enough grasp of the scholarship to critique him.
Circular argument. The claim that miracles are possible for God posits one impossible phenomenon to explain another impossible phenomenon. Semantically it boils down to a defense that the impossible is not impossible if it’s performed by an entity who can do the impossible. It is just as logically impossible for an entity to exist who can do the impossible as it is for the impossible to occur in any other way.
Seriously? (Aside from O’Reilly and his ilk?) What commentators actually made those assertions on what sort of shows? I am not doubting that you saw it, but having seen nothing like it, myself, I am curious where these people are.
(As to general ignorance of newscasters: look at any discussion of economics or science. Pretty hair does not an informed presenter make.)
Is it news that Christians believe all the things they do? The Cameron thing is a story because Cameron promoted it as such. The claims look kind of thin and easy to be skeptical of, so they get treated that way.
This just in: “Christians believe a bunch of saints burst out of their tombs and ran around” is not exactly a breaking story. Are their beliefs easy to be skeptical of too? Yeah. But not exactly a pressing, breaking issue.
I don’t remember every instance anymore, but some of it was on the radio (I know, but I heard it on local morning radio as well as the usual shout shows), I also have a vivid memory of Bill Donohue ranting about on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show (Scarborough had a dismissive but less apopleptic attitude about it), and there were the usual Fox News idiots. I confess that I’ve probably conflated some of what I remember with blog commentaries at the ame time. I tend to consume so much media that it all bends together for me sometimes.
OK. But Donohue is a partisan crackpot. He got an interview because he is a partisan crackpot, just as Wildmon would get an interview for The Last Temptation of Christ. I guess I just tend to dismiss the kooks that are brought on for their “watch the nutcase rage” value.
I realize that, but the interviewers like Scarborough never seem to have the knowledge to correct them on their false assumptions either (like that Donohue was reacting more to misleading, sensationalist headlines than to what any of the scholars on the GoJ team were actually claiming).
As an example, I can remember Donohue and several others being careful to make the claim that the gospel of Judas was a “2nd Century Forgery,” which is true enough depending on how you define “forgery,” but none of the scholars involved ever said it wasn’t pseudoepigraphical or even hinted that it had any association with a historical Judas. It was presented as an “authentic” Gnostic Gospel, which it is.
It could also be pointed out to those critics that NT scholars regard several of the Canonical books of the NT as being 2nd century pseudoepigraphical works (the Pastorals, the Epistles of John and Peter), so it’s kind of a meaningless objection to “authenticity.”
“Impossible” by the abilities of man and the natural world as we understand it. Not impossible to God.
Perhaps my language is imprecise, but what I mean is that this:
Is a non-starter when debating Christians (or any faith system that has the miraculous). Christians acknowledge that resurrection is impossible, under ordinary circumstances, but that God did it anyway. You can show how dead people stay dead until you’re blue in the face, with nary a word of dissent from any Christian in the audience. But you still haven’t proved that an omnipotent being doesn’t exist, that said being couldn’t raise the dead, and that said being didn’t raise the dead in the case of Jesus.
But “God” is just an ad hoc magical agent with no more inherent “possibility” than the event he is invented to explain. It is logically impossible for any entity to exist who can do the impossible.
I agree that this argument never gets me anywhere with believers. but when it comes to historical claims made in any other ancient literature, it is never controversial to conclude that impossible claims are impossible. It’s often seen as unfair to treat Biblical claims the same way Homer or Gilgamesh get treated.
Yes, which is why religion is a matter of faith, not science, and why you’ve found logical arguments don’t work–religious beliefs are not based on logic.
Although few Christians have the necessary scolarship and though the Resurection story is a cultural meme that is hard to avoid, could Koppel’s being Jewish have hampered him, if only to leave him not trusting his BS meter?
Without knowing how observant or religiously educated he is, it’s hard to say. A lot of Jews are educated in how to respond to Christian theology but I don’t think they’re generally prepared on how to respond to something like this (which actually wouldn’t bother Jews theologically. They’ve been saying Jesus is dead all along). It’s possible he may have wanted to avoid seeming like he had a religious bias against Christianity but didn’t want to exactly endorse the resurrection either. Religiously loaded discussions are a diplomatic minefield even for pros like Koppel, I guess.
Talk about circular arguments! What you’ve said in this so far boils down to, “We know miracles didn’t happen, because they’re impossible. How do we know this? Because they’re miracles, which are by definition impossible.”
And I’m not prepared to argue dogmatically for any of the miracle stories, though it’s possible in my mind that there’s a true story underlying some of them. But you are presuming your conclusion.
As for Cameron and his researchers, let’s look at the possibilities, without assigning probability values to them:
What was discovered was in fact the tomb of Jesus called Christ, and his family, which omits six people listed in a side note in Scripture as part of his family, and adds a couple nowhere else mentioned.
Jesus called Christ never lived. He is total myth.
Jesus called Christ lived and died, and is buried somewhere else. His resurrection is a myth.
Jesus called Christ lived and died, and was buried somewhere else, but his grave has since been destroyed in the course of all the changes that have happened in the 1,975 years or so since his death.
Jesus called Christ lived, died, and was raised bodily from the dead; his body was assumed with him into heaven at the Ascension.
Jesus called Christ lived and died. Something happened that convinced his follewers he had come back to live, and it need not involve the revivification of his mortal body (see most of the above for disposal modes).
Bottom line is that one need not make assumptions about the Resurrection to dispute the claims of Cameron & Co. And typically journalists shy away from picking fights with multiple groups at once. The convinced bodily-Resurrection Christians would raise holy hell at their attempts to debunk those claims as well, and it’s not relevant to the Cameron story.
As a Christian, I can safely say that I see no reason why a non-Christian should see the statements in the Bible that he regards as false or unlikely any different than he sees Beowulf or the Odyssey. I would understand why he sees them in such a way. He believes the historical accurateness of neither. He does not believe. I have no problem with that. Why should I? Who does? However, when anyone makes a claim based on science (as opposed to faith) then the claim should be bolstered by scientific evidence (claims based on faith by their very nature require no such proof, hence the need for faith).
There are plenty of reasons to reject miracles besides the flat out assertion of impossibility, not the least of which is that supporters of miracles have never come close to meeting the major burden of proof for them. If anyone asserted that all the events in the Illiad were true, they’d have to meet the same burden. The problem with religion is not belief in the impossible, but special pleading for the allowance of impossible things without the evidence that would be required for non-religious miracles.