Tonight, I spoke on the telephone with a friend of mine. She's a Christian, and had been talking to a male friend of hers who isn't -- call him Steve -- and was rather angry about the whole thing. They were discussing The DaVinci Code.

He was telling her that in the 1980s (if I recall correctly) he'd seen a broadcast of Good Morning America where they said they'd found papers which were apparently, at least in his memory, absolute proof that the Romans had paid Jesus to die on the cross -- or fake his death, or something like that. According to him the Catholic church had bought it and hidden or destroyed it. He was angry about that too, and saying they had a lot to pay for, hiding the truth like that.

This is the problem with lies: they justify all kinds of hatred.

Let's look at this rationally: First, how could a document "prove" anything? The most you could prove, given all charitable assumptions, was that you had an old document saying Jesus was paid for something. You couldn't prove it was true, just that the document said that.

And, gee, if an old document could prove Jesus was paid off, couldn't another old document possibly prove Jesus was raised from the dead? As it is, Christians don't just point to one document: they have a whole book of them, and many extant manuscripts which indicate these stories actually do date back to the time period in question.

And, since that's not enough, they also point out there are external accounts of the lives and deaths of the disciples, who behaved ethically, and clearly believed Jesus was raised -- enough to die for it. (Con men don't die to claim their deceptions are true -- it defeats the whole profit-motive thing.) And, of course, there's the fact the movement itself exists: it's hard to change major points of theology without the members of the religion noticing. (That suggests theological continuity on major points.) And there's the fact that the documents seem to know things, archeologically, that we didn't discover until recently. And then there are fulfilled prophecies, a number of which are quite detailed. And then there are the many, many subjective stories and experiences.

Okay, okay: I understand: that's still not good enough for some. Fine.

But what just freaks me out is the difference between the burden of proof put on sceptics versus on "believers". My friend's friend, Steve, has a barely-remembered interview, from twenty or so years ago, which maybe said something critical -- on a TV talk show not normally noted for it's peer-reviewed standards of evidence (more often focused on snack foods and fashion) -- coupled with a story that the Vatican deep-sixed the document and... ?

That's proof, I tell ya!

(Never mind that every atheist, Jewish, and Muslim organization in the world would be glad to announce it on their website if such proof existed.)

This is, sadly, common: many people will jump on nearly anything which seems to cast doubt on the "traditional" understanding of Christianity or Jesus, but then are hard-boiled sceptics when it comes anything in favor of said narrative. This MRC article, contrasting the treatment of Passion with DaVinci, details many such examples.

(I found it while trying to find evidence of Steve's theory, so he could finally get to the bottom of this tale which apparently dictates his entire religious outlook.)

It mentions something named The Jesus Papers, which sound a bit like Steve's alleged document. Supposedly they prove Jesus survived the resurrection -- one was supposedly written by Jesus himself.

I about burst out laughing when I heard what the evidence for this story was. Michael Baigent -- a guy who came up with the whole theory on which The DaVinci Code was based -- tells us about the evidence he has regarding these papers:

James: Were you allowed to copy the papers?

Baigent: Nothing.

James: Were you allowed to photograph them?

Baigent: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

James: Did anybody else see them with you?

Baigent: No one else was there. Just me.

James: So you were in a room looking at papers you couldn’t read that were in Aramaic?

Baigent: Yes.

LOL! Well, at least he's honest. But still: this is apparently all it takes to get you on "Dateline NBC" -- a supposed news show! -- if you have a half-baked anti-Christian theory. For all Baigent knows (assuming it happened it all) he could have been looking a page of the Tulsa yellow pages translated into Aramaic. (Or Coptic, probably -- I expect he wouldn't know the difference.)

Shai Bartura, an investigator with the Israeli Antiquities Authority says the chance these papers are real is about one in a million... He points to a revealing clue in the Baigent’s own description— that the documents are on papyrus.

Bartura: "The chance of a document written on papyrus being preserved in the ground, underneath a home in the city of Jerusalem is as slim as it gets...."

So Baigent’s story hangs on a guy we’ve never met on papers we’ve never seen, and on claims that are impossible to verify. But Baigent has an explanation for that too. He says that the reason we can’t see the Jesus Papers is because that Israeli businessman made a secret deal with the Vatican.

Baigent: "The Vatican asked him to destroy them. But he refused. But he did promise that he would keep them under wraps for 25 years. Now when I met with him, he had long passed the 25 year mark."

Well, that's still more evidence than Steve has for his theory.

And he's staked his life upon it.