All too often, the veneer of secular rationality is cracked by the spontaneous eruption of the most implausible beliefs. We have seen this phenomenon in the conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination and the moon landings, in Erich Von Daniken’s “ancient astronauts” and other extraterrestrial legends, and in less grandiose manifestations, such as Elvis sightings, psychics, Ouija boards, and horoscopes.
In each of these modern myths, there can be found a form of wish-fulfillment, whether by depicting a noble, democratic people opposed by an evil establishment, or by fabricating a sense of purpose in a secular cosmos, often by radically reinterpreting the traditional legends of human culture. The myths pretend to empower the people, by freeing them from the establishment’s supposed lies, and in some cases by offering them some control over the preternatural world.
Most recently, the religious establishment has been the target of such mythmaking, as shown by the commercial success of The Da Vinci Code and its derivative works. As the popularity of such works greatly exceeds their scholarly plausibility (which is nil), we must acknowledge that they appeal to a popular desire, in particular the desire to “outsmart” the religious establishment. At the same time, this modern legend would validate contemporary fascination with feminine sexuality by reinventing Christianity with a narrative that reflects 21st-century mores.
Such reinvention is obviously ahistorical, but we must understand that “critical thinking” in common parlance often means skepticism towards the establishment, rather than cold, impartial analysis. The desire to prove the establishment wrong trumps the usual rules of evidence, resulting in pseudoscientific claims. Biblical archaeology is replete with implausible claims and outright hoaxes, motivated by a desire to prove a preferred interpretation of Scripture. Those who advocate a radical reinterpretation of the Bible are no different in this regard.
An especially clumsy attempt at special pleading can be found in today’s amateur claim to have found the tomb of Jesus’ family. As the highly esteemed Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner has noted, the claim is devoid of scientific merit, since only well-to-do families had such crypts, and the names Jeshua, Joseph, and Maryam were exceedingly common. We may further add that Jesus would have been denied burial altogether had it not been for the intercession of Joseph of Arimathea, who offered his tomb. We could also remark that the fact of the empty tomb was acknowledged even by the unbelieving Jews, as evidenced in their own writings.
This sort of argument would fall on many deaf ears, since, in the “skeptical” mentality, authority is not to be trusted, whether that authority is in the Gospels or in professional archaeologists. It is therefore of no concern that even non-Christians should refute this revisionism. The incoherence of an anti-authoritative epistemology is evident to any careful thinker, but our immediate concern is the fact that the experiment of secularism has failed in an important task. It has failed to produce a populace that values critical thinking, so that instead they synthesize new myths, revealing in this need the failure of secular philosophy to provide any sense of purpose to human destiny.