But...it's nonsense

As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, the Discovery Channel will be airing a documentary on the fourth of March called "The Lost Tomb of Jesus". The makers of the documentary claim a tomb uncovered in 1980 is the tomb of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, complete with the bones of Jesus and his son. I am not here going to enumerate the details of this claim, or the reasons given for or against, as that is already being taken care of in great earnest by many other parties. I will however include a small quote from Professor Amos Kloner, who was responsible for the excavation of the tomb in 1980.

"It makes a great story for TV, but ... it's nonsense. There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a Galilee family with no Jerusalem ties. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE [Christian Era]."

However, this talk of the tomb of Jesus got me thinking. Hypothetically speaking, if researchers were to all agree that this tomb is in fact the tomb of Jesus' family, and somehow they also all agreed the bones were in fact the bones of Jesus of Nazareth (I don't know how they would do this, but we're pretending, so the how is unimportant right now), would this fundamentally change my beliefs about the world?

I like to think I'm a fairly rational person. I like to think I have somewhat well thought out reasons for the things I believe, and even rationale for things which must by necessity fall into the category of "faith" (a category which every person must have, for we do not at this time have indisputable answers to all questions), which brings me to this hypothetical proposition regarding the supposed bones of Jesus.

I believe though that in answer to the question, it would not change my beliefs to a great degree. Some would say this is an intellectual cop out, that to deny such obvious evidence would be proof that religious belief is blind to the facts. I would of course disagree, and my disagreement stems from my understanding that our current wisdom is not necessarily any greater for being current. In other words, I don't think we as a collective human race are by default wiser than the people who came before us simply because we happen to be the most recent. For example, our current level of understanding regarding the workings of the human body is more advanced than at any known time in human history, but it's debatable whether we are any better at healing disease than the ancient Chinese were. What we currently consider advanced thinking in a great many areas will undoubtedly be labeled as foolish in the future, and this is simply the human condition.

In this particular case, were I to take the eye witness accounts in the New Testament, couple those with the fact that the same eye witnesses later died for their testimonies, and weigh that against expert testimony two thousand years later, I believe I would find the New Testament account more compelling.

Now I can sleep, knowing I've answered a question which was never asked.