Stupidity> Lost in a lost tomb

I just watched a recent documentary by the name of The Lost Tomb of Jesus, produced by James Cameron. The initial PR around the documentary was sensation-seeking and it has succeeded in provoking criticism from both religious and secular authorities.

The documentary looked expensive but employed cheap drama and repetition and was scripted for the illiterate and innumerate. They had certainly done their research on their target audience.

Further, the reasoning was constantly flawed. Conclusions were jumped into through simple induction without bothering to deduct based on evidence at hand. Everything is sketchy, all clues are thin, the symbols shared by puzzle pieces random and lacking in pattern. The team tried to employ modern forensic technology to add to the evidence, but do so too selectively to allow for sufficient deduction.

For example, the DNA evidence does not suggest the people in the bone boxes vaguely marked 'Jesus' and 'Mariane' (especially the latter containing numerous assumptions) were married as the documentary claims - it merely tells us they weren't related. And while they were at it, why not check the DNA samples against the tomb marked 'Miriam', to make sure she really was the mother of the person whose remains bear the inscription 'Jesus'. Oh, and while we're at it, could we deduct the DNA pattern of the father, too? So that we could clone God, you know, have a bit more of that good old omnipotence around?

On a bit more serious note, the second DNA source especially if a match were to be found would finally rebuke the fable of virginal birth.

Non-withstanding the numerous historical flaws in the whole Jesus-myth, it would be interesting if we could take this further: refuting virginal birth, showing him to be a mere human (if he did indeed exist as all even as a historical person) and agreeing that he did indeed have offspring, who have now of course multiplied - and after about 100 generations, have quite few direct descendants of Jesus. Would they be Holy? Would the church refuse to recognize them, despite genetic evidence? Anything to beat more nails on the coffin of organized religion is welcome, even dramatized, high-budget documentaries.