It is a story that should be required reading in all schools that teach religion. And those who demand the teaching of creationism in science classes. Required reading in fact for anyone who thinks religion and science are equally valid approaches to the real world. It was the item (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6527105.stm) about the scientific testing of the 'remains of Joan of Arc' - did you see it?
Well, Joan of Arc was convicted of heresy and witchcraft and burned at the stake in 1431. She heard voices you see, and not knowing about mental illness, assumed it was god, speaking through some saints, as you do.
But after her death she became a French hero, and a religious icon, having died both for her country (at the hands of the English) and her beliefs, and being a virgin. The Bishop of Orleans began in the mid-nineteenth century to work towards her beatification and eventual sainthood. Astonishingly, just after the good bishop set to work, a jar was found in 1867 in a Paris pharmacy. You will be as amazed as I am at the coincidence in timing, but the label on the jar said "Remains found under the stake of Joan of Arc, virgin of Orleans". And in the jar, just as you might expect were a charred-looking human rib, chunks of black wood, a 15-centimetre fragment of linen, and a cat thigh bone. The cat bone was a particularly nice touch, since black cats were thrown on to witches' pyres in the fifteenth century.
Now you and I, dear reader, might have picked up such a jar, and said 'Yes, right, pull the other leg'. But the church authorities accepted them as genuine, and kept them as sacred relics in a religious museum in Chinon. The process of beatification proceeded, and eventually we had a Saint Joan.
But those horrible scientists cannot leave well enough alone, and accept such obviously genuine relics at face value. And lo and behold, turns out they were bits of rubbish derived from mummified Egyptian remains dating to some 2500 years ago. It is a deliberately created fake. And that, in a sense, is that, but it does raise wider issues about religion. Scientists see labels as a challenge, as the starting point of enquiry, the point at which you start asking questions, doing tests. 'Can we disprove what this label says?', they ask, and proceed to ask how and what and where and who. A label is so yesterday's news.
But religious people believe labels. If a label tells them something they already believe to be true then they simply accept it at face value. 'Fragment of the true cross', 'Shroud of Turin', coffin of 'James brother of Jesus', 'Remains of Joan of Arc', for the religious believer, the label ends the enquiry. For a scientist the label is merely the starting point for enquiry.
I see the Creation Museum, being built in Kentucky, will be opening soon. It will have displays showing dinosaurs coexisting with humans, a model of the Grand Canyon, explaining how it was created by Noah's Flood, and much other such nonsense, in a 'museum' built to look like the genuine thing (just as Intelligent Design pretends to look like scientific theory). It will have labels on displays confirming the account of 'creation' in Genesis, and the faithful will read them and believe. No matter that they contain nonsense about the age of the Grand Canyon, or all-vegetarian dinosaurs ('before the sin of Adam, the world was perfect. All creatures were vegetarian.'), they will confirm the beliefs of the visitors, and will in turn be believed without question.
And such faith in labels, for such people, extends into the political sphere. Remember Colin Powell with a tube of powder labelled 'Anthrax' (as fake as a cat bone in a jar), a truck labelled as being for poisonous gas production, aluminum tubes labelled as centrifuge tubes? And later, the labelling for 'Mission Accomplished, and of the fall of the Hussein statue, and of Jessica Lynch, and Pat Tillman. All fake labels, but written by true believers for true believers, and believed.
Ultimately of course, the whole bible is a label of the world. A label written, just as the Joan of Arc label, by humans with motives of their own, but accepted as coming from 'god'.
Many labels on dangerous products these days come with warnings about how to handle them, or what to do if swallowed and so on. The bible certainly needs a label to warn people about swallowing. Perhaps something along the lines of 'the stories you're liable to read in the bible, ain't necessarily so'.