There is an absolutely fascinating religious debate going on in this comment thread, prompted by Titanic Director James Cameron's claim that the body of Jesus Christ has been found and identified:

It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.

Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.

There was also this little inconvenience that a few miles away, in the old city of Jerusalem, Christians for centuries had been worshipping the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Christ's resurrection, after all, is the main foundation of the faith, proof that a boy born to a carpenter's wife in a manger is the Son of God.

But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.

I'm about as far from being a fundamentalist as it is possible to get without being an atheist. But I think Cameron's claim is grandstanding nonsense.

For starters, DNA tests?

On what DNA? Jesus? Mary? Joseph? Mary Magdalene? Did any of them leave a sample somewhere unbeknownst to anyone until now? There has to be some known relative of the people found in that burial group for comparison purposes; otherwise all that can be shown IF any DNA material remains in the bones is that maybe the people in the burial group were all related to each other. (Hardly surprising in a family tomb.) The names were all common names, and according to the Bible the family was poor. Stone ossuaries characterized the moneyed classes.

I suppose Cameron might be claiming that his experts exhumed some members of the Merovingian dynasty (rumored to have been descended from Jesus) and found a 99% match, but I doubt it. Besides, the Merovingian DNA that was already tested "showed no traces of Semitic DNA at all, making it doubtful they descended from someone from the Middle East."

Interestingly, the film is being called blasphemous, although I'm not sure that any serious examination (even a flawed one) of historical facts would be blasphemous in and of itself. Perhaps the resultant claim that Jesus was never the son of God and was never crucified would be -- but only in the Christian religious sense of Biblical accounts of the resurrection, and possibly the crucifixion.

To a Muslim, discussing this find would not be blasphemy. But asserting that the crucifixion and the resurrection happened is blasphemy, because this denies the Koran, which clearly and emphatically states that Jesus, while a prophet, was neither crucified nor resurrected. Muslims believe he simply died like the other prophets. Many Westerners fail to understand that the reason Christian crosses are forbidden in countries with Islamic law is that they are seen as blasphemous -- i.e. they deny the Koran.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about blasphemy laws, and James Cameron is as free to make stuff up (or deny the central tenets of Christianity) as anyone else.

While I can't prove it, I have a feeling that he'd be less likely to make a similar film claiming to debunk the central tenets of Islam, but that's because he'd be afraid -- legitimately afraid -- of fatwas and of getting killed.

Sure, some Christians will denounce Cameron as a blasphemer. But the days of Torquemada are long gone.

I think it speaks rather well of Christianity as a whole that it's as "blasphemy tolerant" as it is.

MORE: I can't think of a better example of intolerance for blasphemy than what is being done to Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman, who received a four year sentence for "contempt for religion" and "insulting the president". As Roger L. Simon (via Glenn Reynolds) reminds us,

He could easily be killed in jail by a religious fanatic, according to the Sandmonkey, if he doesn't go crazy in solitary first.

It's frustrating to read stories like this. You want to do something, but you don't know how.

I am reminded of another Egyptian blogger, Alaa Abd El-Fatah. I wrote a blog post and a couple of letters, and I didn't think I was doing much.

In the overall context, I wasn't. But eventually (last June) Alaa was freed in response to public pressure, so I don't think it is unreasonable to say that every little bit helps.

I think those of us who are free to commit "blasphemy" from our armchairs and laptops might have an occasional moral duty to those who are imprisoned for doing exactly the same thing.

What really galls me is that Egypt is supposed to be moderate. What's happening is a disgrace. Shame on Egypt!

And free Kareem!

Read more about it here. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Anyone who watches James Cameron's silly film and imagines that he's being cool ought to stop and think about the freedom we take for granted.

(Hell, you don't even have to be an armchair blasphemer to appreciate such freedom.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: While this post was about armchair blasphemy and not "insulting the president," aren't there Americans who also engage in the latter pastime? I certainly hope they're getting behind this cause 100%.

Tag: abdel kareem soliman

UPDATE (02/25/07): According to at least two knowledgeable scholars, Kareem's imprisonment is illegal even by Egypt's standards:

We find it shocking that a university [Al-Azhar] would turn a student over to the authorities to be prosecuted for voicing his views. The future of learning and science is at risk when dissenting views are punished rather than debated. Jointly, we have contacted Egyptian authorities to ask that they correct a clear mistake and release Soliman.

Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media." The exceptions allowed are narrowly drawn and require proof of "necessity" before restrictions can be imposed. The posting of opinions on a student's personal blog hardly qualifies as a threat to national security, to the reputation of the president or to public order.

Soliman is not a threat to Egypt, but this prosecution is.

Whether or not we agree with the opinions that Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman expressed is not the issue. What matters is a principle: People should be free to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned or killed. Blogging should not be a crime.

UPDATE (02/27/07): Regarding the buried remains, it now seems that there is no cellular DNA:

....the panel was asked if there was enough DNA remaining in the ossuary to clone Jesus. "Some experiments shouldn't be done," one of the film team responded.

Then Tabor said conclusively that there was "no intact cellular DNA" and so no possibility of cloning.