Specious Skepticism?

I’m not usually one to whine about skeptical attacks on Christian faith. We worship one whom we claim died and then was raised from the grave. That’s a pretty amazing claim and I do not blame folks for skepticism. What annoys me is the recent trend of the last few years to hype “alternative theories” that are at least as far-fetched as traditional Christianity. Further, these claims are rushed to print and (increasingly) film without any serious scholarly inquiry. If you watch these “documentaries,” you see the same fringe scholars recycled in almost every one of these projects...

And I am getting very cynical about why these kinds of programs always seem to air in Lent or at Eastertide.

Serious skepticism that does its homework should be expected, even welcomed, by Christians and we should expect skeptics to challenge us very thoroughly. But these tabloid-like stories of how “the church covered up the truth about Jesus,” are insulting to the intelligence–but they seem to find a ready audience every time.

[via Levellers, emphasis mine]