The Atheist Blogger

Two weeks ago I wrote about the epic failure that was the new BBC archaeology drama “Bonekickers“. It attempted to combine CSI and Indiana Jones which is a fair combination if you get it right. Unfortunately, the first episode concerned religion and went about it in a very bizarre way. The second episode was much better, focusing on an American Presidential election which included a black candidate (foreshadowing anyone?), and a conspiracy to prevent black people from becoming the leader of the USA. I found this episode to be very watchable and entertaining.

The third episode aired a few days ago and was concerned with the Roman Baths at Bath, which was great and brought back fond memories of visits to the city. The episode was centred around a Roman inventor Marcus Quintanus (fictional) and Boudicca, the English warrior queen. Quintanus invented what were essentially hand grenades, a simple small clay pot that separated two volatile liquids inside. Once the pot is thrown and broken, the two liquids mixed and exploded. The story went that Quintanus was enlisted to help find Queen Boudicca who was in hiding after losing a battle. He was so upset that his weapons had caused so much death and destruction all for finding one woman that when he eventually found her in Bath, he hid her under the Celtic springs that would eventually become the Roman Baths. They fell in love, etc. etc.

It was a fun story to follow and the episode was great, but I have one tiny complaint concerning the character of Quintanus. The character was an atheist as revealed by a member of the archaeology team, and when the details of his life were discovered, including his disgust at the massacre he had a hand in, one of the team, Professor Gregory Parton remarked

No wonder he was an atheist. Who would want to be judged by god after that?

This seems to me like a very poor description of atheist attitudes and a common misconception among non-atheists. The concept that we don’t believe in gods because we don’t want to be judged is the most idiotic argument ever. Its the same as not believing in cars because you don’t want to be hit by one. At the end of the day, if cars exist (which they do) then you will get hit by one if you cross the road without looking, nomatter your beliefs.

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I watched a clip of the new BBC Drama series “Bonekickers” on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross last week, and the first thing that crossed my mind was how unscientific it was for an archaeology show. They had a scene where the team was gathered around a piece of wood, the analysis said it was from 32AD and it had human blood seeped in it. One of the lead characters said “I’m just giving you the facts. 2000 years ago, someone was lacerated to this piece of wood”. They all gather round a picture of Jesus on the cross.

I was sat there thinking “What? You got that from a piece of blood soaked wood?”. It was a massive assumption, but I decided to watch the episode anyway. The scene in question was put in a slightly better context when it mentioned the finding of Templar Knight skeletons, and went around the basis that they were being hunted and wanted to preserve Christian artifacts. Of course it’s still a big leap of faith for an archaeologist.

The story went on, introduced a Christian Evangelist who was getting in trouble for hate crimes against Muslims, and two characters who turned out to be modern Templar Knights (swords and all). The characters were under the command of the Evangelist, who bought the dig site and ordered the Knights to go about killing Muslims. Only one is executed in the episode, and it was a pretty useless scene that was probably included to be politically correct.

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