Category: Hoaxes

A “miracle” baby has brought a kind of mystical hope to people in Russia’s mostly Muslim southern fringe who are increasingly desperate in the face of Islamist violence.

From hunchbacked grandmas to schoolboys, hundreds of pilgrims lined up this week in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Koran appear and fade every few days.

From the old Procter & Gamble Satanism libel to tales of more recent vintage about President Obama’s faith and citizenship, Internet-fueled rumors seem to run rampant. And, frighteningly, Christians seem at the very least to be as susceptible as the population at large to spread false stories.

So, why are Christians so willing to believe unsubstantiated rumors? And more troubling, why are Christians, who should hold the highest standards of truth-telling, so eager to spread rumors — and even downright libels?

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows.

Just as freshly sprouted daffodils indicate the imminent arrival of spring, so the pop culture’s yearly discovery (and exploitation) of Jesus Christ heralds the upcoming celebration of the Easter holiday.

In a surreal moment on “Larry King Live” earlier this week, the film’s producer, James Cameron (of “Titanic” fame), told us with a straight face that we should all be thankful that we now have tangible evidence that Jesus existed. Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus.

Claims that the burial site of Jesus, his wife and son have been found in an ancient family cemetery in Jerusalem have been criticised by researchers as fanciful.

The film has also sent shockwaves throughout the Christian world, shaking the foundation of a religion established on the tenets that Jesus, a single man who never married, was crucified, died, and was resurrected. (That’s ABC News’ take. Christians simply see the documentary for what it is: yet another hoax based on fantasy and speculation).