Channel 4 crucifies human corpse

[moggie]

Channel 4, a UK TV channel, is to broadcast a documentary in which Gunther von Hagens will use a plasticised human body to show how crucifixion worked, and this seems to have upset the usual suspects:

Steve Jenkins, spokesman for the Church of England, said: "This will upset and offend a lot of Christians as it seems he is using the Crucifixion simply to grab attention."

Christian Voice, which led the protest against broadcasting Jerry Springer The Opera, has announced it may prosecute on grounds of disrespect to Christ.

Director Stephen Green said: "This sounds gratuitously offensive and blasphemous. It could well be we would want to take some action against it."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=406284&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=picbox&ct=5

(Warning: that link is to the Daily Mail, one of our most unpleasant right-wing newspapers)

It's long past time for us to repeal the blasphemy laws. When a Christian group can plausibly threaten to prosecute a broadcaster simply for making a science documentary, one has to ask: what century is it, again?

[Sequoia]

1. Disrespect to Christ?

What about all the other people the Romans crucified like Spartacus?

[okasha]

7. What about disrespect for the person

whose body he's planning to use like a department store dummy? In many if not most places in the US, this would be illegal--not because of "blasphemy" but because it falls under the rubric of "abuse of a corpse."

[dave420]

2. It's not science -

It's a TV show. We KNOW how crucifixion works. You nail someone to wood through their wrists. Through the hands doesn't work - the nails simply rip right through the flesh. That's been known for ages. He's either pandering to people's lack of desire to learn, or simply trying to play the "ooh look how sensational I'm being!" card. Gunther von Hagens's whole recent career has been simply through appealing to the lowest common denominator, claiming "science! science!" at every opportunity. He hasn't taught anyone anything they couldn't have learnt in 2 minutes in a library, yet he charges them ridiculous amounts of money for the pleasure.

I'm all for learning. I don't believe in anything mystical, or even anything without any evidence behind it. Science is the only way for mankind to progress. This guy's work is as much science as P. T. Barnum's was. He's hurting science, not helping it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Actually, the first experiments with corpses were done in the 19th

century, and that was when it was discovered that the cause of death (as had been commonly believed) was not bleeding but heart failure and asphyxiation.

[greyl]

9. Not so.

It makes more sense to me that the first experiments took place hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The results didn't end up part of our medical knowledge today, but I'd bet they happened. And what of the evolution of embalming methods?
Also, according to Joe Zias, it was in the Middle Ages that the Roman Catholic church did experiments on cadavers to find out how the crucifixion was probably done.

[PinkUnicorn]

11. Experiments

I'm vaguely curious about the RC experiments claim, as Christianity had an almost paranoid fear of any sort of "medical experiment" during that period. If someone was caught dissecting or experimenting on a corpse they would be up on charges of necromancy or the like in a nanosecond - hence the grave robbing trade for was a booming business even until the late 18th century. Not to say it couldn't have been done secretly, but it is very unlikely to have been written down.

As for the actual method, it probably varied depending on how many people the Romans they had to get through, what materials was available, and how long they wanted the victim to live. While nails seem a bit wasteful, I could see the possibility in some instances of people slipping through ropes (lubricated by blood and sweat and assisted by gravity), even then why bother with the whole fancy 'gap in the wrist' when you can just bang it through the radius and ulna (forearm bones) much more easily. The whole 'cross thing' seems silly as well - countries with capital punishment done build a new noose beam or order a new chair for every exeuctee. More likely it was a sort of scaffold they stuck people on, waited till they rotted and fell off making space for the next ones.

But in the end its not much more than a curiosity, as the end effect was the same - the subject died.

[greyl]

13. Interesting links:

I haven't found any additional info related directly to what was attributed to Zias.

Maybe it had to do with investigating stigmata? Since no dissection was necessary, they may have rationalized it.

This page includes a quote I think you'll appreciate ;):

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade doctors from treating any patient without calling in theological experts from the church. They also forbade priests, deacons and sub deacons from performing surgical operations. In 1243, the Dominican order forbade all works on medicine to be brought into their monasteries.

Of course the practice of dissecting cadavers to learn about human anatomy and physiology was extremely repulsive to the early Christians. Again the theological basis of this abhorrence is easy to understand: the doctrine of the bodily resurrection made them worried that these mutilated bodies would have some problems with being reanimated during the final general resurrection. Thus the Church Father Tertullian (c160-c225) labeled Herophilus, the great doctor of the School of Alexandria, a "butcher". St. Augustine used similar phrases to describe all doctors who performed dissection on the human body.

The science of medicine, then, became so strongly associated with ungodliness that there arose the Latin proverb, Ubi sunt tres medici ibi sunt duo athei (Where there are three doctors there are two atheists.)

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/religious_criticism.htm

http://joezias.com/CrucifixionAntiquity.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Oh, okay, well the nineteenth century one was the first I'd heard of

:-)

[moggie]

6. There's a lot of huckster in him

Whether he's hurting science is debatable. I'm sure his shows have attracted a lot of people who would never have picked up a textbook, and if they've learnt something in the process, that can't be a bad thing. I won't be watching this show myself: from the description, it sounds like another example of the dumbing-down and tarting-up of TV science, and, as you say, is unlikely to offer any new insights. But I want to be able to make that choice! If Christian Voice (fortunately, a small band of nutters with less power than they'd like people to think) had said "we believe the justification for this show is bogus, and it will be upsetting to some people, so we recommend not watching it", I'd have no problem with that. But they prefer censorship over choice, and I can't support that.

[dave420]

8. It's not the Christian perspective that's the problem

Though they are doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The show shouldn't be on TV, as it doesn't serve a real purpose. The body in question is not an actual living human body, so the experiment is absolutely pointless. It IS just a "ooh look at the scary body" show, and serves no scientific purpose, except to find out what happens when Gunther nails a plasticised body to a cross. It's a symptom of sensationalism for ratings, which is the name of the commerical TV game.

TV stations have a mandate to help the people they broadcast to (at least in the UK :-P), and this is not helping anyone in the slightest. Except Channel 4, Gunther and their wallets.

[moggie]

10. There's a lot of TV which doesn't "help" anyone

I pretty much gave up watching TV 2-3 years ago, because there's so little which appeals to me. Currently, I average around 1-2 hours of viewing per week. So you'll get no argument from me if you're critical of a TV station's output. However, you seem to take a very narrow view of what TV is for, and hint at an authoritarian streak. We've left the Reithian "inform, educate and entertain" ideal long behind, with modern TV having shifted the emphasis heavily onto the "entertain", and while I may lament this state of affairs, I don't see that as sufficient justification to ban this particular show.

Do you believe Channel 4 should be prevented from broadcasting this show? If so, by whom? What other purposeless shows would you prevent people from seeing, or is there something uniquely reprehensible about this one?

[davidinalameda]

4. science documentary?

oh please

[Wilber_Stool]

5. Notice he calls it "the" crucifiction.

As if Christ was the only one ever crucified.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

12. Crucifiction?

LOL

Was that mispelling intentional? If so, good one.

Not that I think it was fiction. DO YOU HEAR THAT, GOD?

(don't want any black marks after my name or anything)