When an old thread is suddenly resurrected, it’s interesting to try to guess why. Every time Kent Hovind gets a little bit of press, his weird fans start googling his name, and presto, they stumble onto one of my old threads and start waxing indignant. The latest zombie thread is about the Shroud of Turin, and I can guess what has prompted people to start digging on the web for info: that goofy ol’ Pope Ratzi is genuflecting before the Shroud.
He said that keeping up that hope is the message of the Shroud of Turin, in which disciples see their sufferings “mirrored” in the suffering of Christ, CNA reported.
No, no, no. That’s not the message of the Shroud. It’s a much more reassuring one for the papacy: the moral is that even the cheesiest, most absurd con game can be kept going for centuries if it involves religion. That’s the message of hope the Catholic hierarchy can take from a fake relic.
Speaking of hope…look at this other entrepreneurial opportunity: for a mere 57€, there is an organization that will light a candle for you at Lourdes, that other long-running, lucrative fraud.
I remember trying to defend the Shroud in chemistry class when I was a godbotting idiot in college. How embarrassing.
So is the care and feeding of the troll on the old thread likely to nurture a full-grown troll who will rise to the quality of past years? Or have I just come to Pharyngula too late to encounter the giant troll intellects of your?
Someone needs to come up with some way that the Shroud of Turin interacts with the dozen or more Foreskins of Jesus that were floating around Europe in the 14th century…
Yore. Typing habit spelling fail.
Is that supposed to be heartwarming or something?
Huh. I should start charging $500 per 15 minutes over the phone to talk to the Virgin Mary on behalf of the faithful. I don’t know how long my business would last though, with me saying things like “Mary says you should grow a brain, loser.”
The shroud was C14 dated to about a thousand years ago.
Watch for the standard shroudie lie in 10 9 8 7…
Shroudies are like creationists. They lie. People point out their lies. They come up with another lie. It is pure religious wack-a-mole.
The pope paraphrased: The IRS is telling me to pay up or they’ll haul my ass in front of Pontius Pilate! I’m being persecuted just like Jesus! Some nasty woman even told me over the phone that I’d better pay up or they’ll have me for lunch, drink my blood, then crucify me!
Big surprise. The entire point with the Vatican is the veneration of imaginary things. Why bother fact checking them beforehand? A hoax or two won’t hurt their belivability anyway.
On lighter note… would you think it would be possible to franchise the Lourdes-thing into Islam? I would gladly make the trip (including video of me circling that big black stony thing) on the behalf of Muslims across the world for say… $ 100 bucks a head?
All I have to do is find some 1,000 takers and
voilà: free vacation, expenses included!
Have they ever tried to say that it’s not the shroud, but a miraculous appearance of Christ’s image on another, shroudlike cloth? That would be less at odds with a) the dating issue, and b) the fact the bible says he was bound in strips of linen rather than a shroud*.
It’d still be bullshit, but at least it’d be consistent. The papists should hire heddle to help them work on that sort of thing.
*No, I’m not that well-versed in the bible; I just read about it on the other thread.
PZ, you of all people should know that you can’t in good conscience belittle the shroud of Turin until you have a complete understanding of the antimacassar of Augsburg, the sleeve garter of Siena & the sportsbra of Perpignan.
What makes me laugh about that stupid shroud is that it caught on fire (or was threatened by fire) so many time, you’d think that if Jesus wanted a preserved “picture” of him, he would’ve made it fire proof!
Just a thought.
Wow, what a bargain! You can get a 70 kg candle lit for you at Lourdes for only 1100 €. Just think of all the CO2 wafting its way up to the nostrils of the Lamb in the sky.
There’s a sheep born to be shorn, every minute of every day.
Q: The Shroud of Turin is clearly fake…so why is the Pope worshipping it?
A: Because the Pope is also a fake!
Yep, no matter how many scams one encounters in the world – “Microsoft are tracking this advert and pay you $1 to click it”, “these exact vitamin concentrations will cure your cancer”, “squirt this liquid up your ass and it will make you digest food more efficiently” – it always comes back to the original as best.
Jews have been vilified for Centuries as variants of “money-grabbers”, but they really are amateurs in the field. The Catholic church is able to lift money at will from millions of people, by simply conditioning them as children to be guiltful, and then telling them as adults that the guilt can be cleansed by offering a donation to the church.
And so, as the faithful herd lives in absolute, filthy poverty (Africa, South America), those at the top fill their stomachs with beautiful, shiny gold.
The masses are fine with it: so long as they get to see a wizened old pederast genuflecting before a 16thC towel once in a while, they’ll keep paying. But it’s not their fault (IMO), because of their abusive childhood teachings.
As a former Catholic, I’m not aware of any claims that it is a separate cloth. The church doesn’t claim formally that it is authentic(which saves them from proofs against it), but the implicit belief that it is the burial shroud is always there. They do this with a lot of relics. The assumption is always for authenticity.
I was just arguing about the Church today on slashdot. My final thoughts haven’t changed:
“But don’t mind me. I’ll just be here laughing at the antics of your entire irrational Church as it hobbles from one scandal to the next, bleeding out moral authority while it tries desperately to inject it’s payload of bronze age ignorance into a new generation.”
What the hell is that supposed to be good for? It’s not like there’s anything wrong with my candles that need fixing by supernatural intercession.
@raven: Not even 1000 years – a mere 700, definitely less than 800. Then out comes the claim of ‘contamination’, which is really funny because material 2000 years old will have to be contaminated with over 67% of today’s material to yield the younger age. Then there’s the claim that the people doing the sampling were so stupid they took material from a repair job done at that time (700y.a.) – you can see the state of the art in shroud restoration from the much later repair job and it’s pretty goddamned obvious, but apparently there must have been other invisible repair jobs done by no less than god himself. Then there’s the “energy released during the resurrection converted more of the carbon to 14C” – another really pathetic attempt at geekspeak. I imagine a neutron-bombarding jesus who had no other effects on the cloth – yet another miracle – and it proves the existence of the God of Quantum Diddling!
In fairness to heddle, I’m pretty sure he would have nothing to do with such a thing.
He’s claimed often enough that the time of flashy, obvious miracles ended with Jesus’ resurrection itself, which means that he would agree that the shroud, like the purported “Real (flesh and blood) Eucharists” ™ is a fake.
(Regeneration is a putative miracle which is neither flashy nor obvious)
And, really, why would a Calvinist do anything to support the Catholics?
Why don’t you close that thread? It’s past the Beast mark.
Does the shroud tell him to rape little kids, or just to cover for people who do?
Ah, the old ‘we should feel guilty because Jesus sacrificed himself for us’ drivel.
Maybe some visiting Catholics can explain how what Jesus experienced can honestly be considered a ‘sacrifice’ when – considering the amount of suffering involved relative to an eternity in paradise – the far more accurate expression would be ‘temporary inconvenience prior to infinite pleasure’.
JohnnieCanuck:
I’ll betcha that’s why it never works – gods are notorious for preferring the scent of freshly burnt flesh. No wonder we’re out of miracles these days. Perhaps the faithful should take a hint and start sacrificing themselves.
I haven’t seen anything here about the latest finding of Noah’s Ark. It is such an obvious fraud, it makes a good case study on how to hoax Believers.
The following photo represents “Space 7 – The height and width are estimated to be 5 m and 12 m respectively.”
http://www.noahsarksearch.net/images/20100424/pr_even_20100424_16.jpg
This is alleged to be a photo of this large space. Note that it is in fact a closeup of several square inches of wood. The end grain pore structure of the wood making up the “floor” of the “large room” is clearly visible in the lower third. This is obvious on first glance.
Also notable is the fine structure of the splintered wood that makes up the rest of the photo.
Most damning are the shadows evident in the photo. It is obvious that the lighting of the scene comes from above and to the left of the camera’s point of view. If this was a large space as they claim, then the light would be offset by a large distance from the camera. Yet they claim this was taken through a “small opening above.” They are lying. A closeup photo would have the flash offset in such a way as to produce exactly the effect shown in their photo.
Other photos show fresh straw strewn about:
http://www.noahsarksearch.net/images/20100424/pr_even_20100424_10.jpg
To the True Believer that would be evidence that it is Noah’s ark, you know, leftover straw from the animals. To anyone with a functioning brain it would be more evidence of the intentional fraud being perpetrated by these True Believers.
Note also the straight & well fitted woodwork in a wooden structure allegedly buried under ice & rocks for 4800 years. One of their photos shows a space crossed by a wood beam with trunnels inserted on the top to allow the animals on the ark to be tied up.
A shameless fake perpetrated by pious liars.
Yet on the CosmicLog article there are better than 4000 suckers expressing their undying Faith in this obvious fraud.
Jesus is alleged to have had up to 18 penises. As god, he could certainly poof up as many as he wants but 18 penises seems a bit awkward. No word if he had some vaginas to keep them company.
The last foreskin was stolen a few decades ago. I’m sure it will show up on ebay someday. I absolutely positive that anyone offering a decent amount of money could buy one off ebay.
Wowbagger, OM:
Yep. And the so-called sacrifice of Jesus was hardly new or original among gods. Odin sacrificed himself to himself (the same thing Yahweh did with Jesus), hung himself on the world tree with a leaking spear wound in his side for nine days.
The RCC in the digital age.
Con (no pun intended): easy to fleece lots of people while avoiding the overhead of lots of priests as middlemen.
Pro: hard to imagine a “click on” option of “let a priest fondle your genitals.”
One hypothesis I’ve seen is that it’s a photographic negative (literally. Camera obscura, silver nitrate, special washes). Consistent with DaVinci’s knowledge and dates to the same period.
He said that keeping up that hope is the message of the Shroud of Turin, in which disciples see their sufferings “mirrored” in the suffering of Christ, CNA reported.
Why should we praise a crazy person who thought he could save humanity from death by allowing himself to be tortured. Dude needed some anti-psychotic meds, not encouragement.
Are you asking honestly VF or are you just a troll?
Jaycubed @24:
I haven’t seen anything here about the latest finding of Noah’s Ark.
Maybe because you’re too lazy to do a simple search. If you had, you would have found this article from just a few days ago:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/latest_ark_finding_is_a_fake.php
This.
I mean, he’s a grown man playing dressup and make-believe. That he might add the odd equally fanciful element to his existing stable of silly, I mean, hey, whatever. Ain’t like the guy ever had much of a grip on reality. It’s roughly as surprising as seeing a five-year-old adding feathers to his previously green ‘n scaly imaginary friend.
I recall at least one claim to explain the pigments on the shroud to be due to it being touched to lifesized replicas used as gifts for various nobles &c. A practise I’m sure was widespread. Of course, then why wouldn’t the one it Turin also be a replica?
To be fair, a shroud could be thought of as a very big strip of linen.
Anyone know about the supposed pollen from Mideastern plants, some of which were gone by the middleages? I think there’s some claim as to the pattern of the weave as well.
I’m afraid I enjoyed reading a lot of the pro side years ago, but I don’t recall any debunkings.
VF @ 32:
Google is your friend:
http://www.skepdic.com/shroud.html
Vincent Ferrer = Shroudie troll
And not a very interesting, smart, or entertaining one either. He hasn’t even mentioned their usual nonsense talking points. Yet.
VF do you think of Unicorns when you hear hoof beats?
Perhaps the Pope is praying to find the strength to fight all those ebol cardinals that are trying to stop him cleansing Teh Church of paedophiles. True story.
Hmmmmmmmm … It all makes sense now!
PZ, you don’t understand.
The Shroud of Turin celarly was a fake, but that was before he broke the shroud, gave it to his disciples, and said: “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my bodybag which will be given up for you.”
After that, it transubstantiated. *Poof*
Dennis Dutton did a nice critique of the Shroud in 1984: “Requiem for the Shroud of Turin”
Michigan Quarterly Review 23 (1984): 243-55.
http://denisdutton.com/requiem.htm
Image. It’s always the Image. On a shroud, on a Sunday broadcast, in response to criminal charges.
Appearance is paramount without regard to content. Just like many of the sermons I
sufferedsat through when I was younger.Like politicians, the clergy is so caught up in the image that they pretend to that the contrast between it and reality has faded in their eyes and just . . . gone away, praise god. I’d have made politicians a bit more wary and self possessed than clergy, had I created the heavens and the earth.
mikelatiolais #15
According to the Bible Jesus wasn’t buried in a shroud.
Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. John 19:40 (NIV)
Vincent Ferrer, blockquote is your friend. When you want to cite another poster, put their words between these tags:
<blockquote>example</blockquote>
which will produce this:
That way we’ll be able to understand exactly what you’re trying to say.
It makes perfect sense that the Shroud is Jesus’ shroud. After all, we know that such images are formed at the moment of resurrection from, uh, what was that again?
The confirmation bias surrounding it is stifling. The only plausible story I’ve heard that explained the “late date” was that the church deliberately switched the sample with a late bit of cloth, because (purportedly at least) the shroud indicates that Jesus was not dead when entombed — hence the resurrection occurred with a still-living body.
Not that I think that was likely, either, it’s just the only one that adequately “explains” (if the switch occurred, of course) why the evidence of the time of its origin is that it is medieval.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Sheeeeessssh! John? That’s not, like, a real gospel.
I couldn’t bear to watch the video of the sleazy old geezer. My skin crawls every time I see a picture of him.
The guy does have is act down though. By genuflecting in before a dirty old cloth, he is doing an effective job of diverting his followers attention away from the very real abuse scandal that’s been hitting the news.
Now, if we could get the nice people at Lourdes to light a candle under the Shroud…
Oh, just come out and say you believe the shroud is real already. You’re obviously not a skeptic, otherwise you would show doubts about whether the shroud is authentic rather than questioning the scientific methods used to discredit it.
Last I heard the Vinland map features TiO2 which is a thoroughly modern white pigment.
Of course! That’s why is has to be the real Jesus who’s left the mark! Otherwise it would be idolatrous to worship at the shroud! And you wouldn’t call the Pope an idolator, would you now?
VF:
Dude, read the fucking article and click on the links within. Or Wikipedia it, I don’t care.
But do not ask me to hold you fucking hand through this. I’m annoyed enough with you as it is.
(You know, I always blockquote fail if I don’t preview. Oh well.)
Sili asks, @52, “Of course! That’s why is has to be the real Jesus who’s left the mark! Otherwise it would be idolatrous to worship at the shroud! And you wouldn’t call the Pope an idolator, would you now?”
Sez I, “Why, of course I would. I strive to be as honest as I can even when I have so judge something silly.
Sorry, Sili, but it really is so silly for humanity to be still embroiled in these paper-bag conundrums.
Oh, for a world full of Heinleins and Feynmans! And you and I, of course.
They are reasonable questions which you can fucking look up yourself.
Do you have a computer? Do you have access to the internet? Do you know how Google works? Can’t you find out the answers to your questions yourself?
These are reasonable questions.
Oh, just come out and say you believe the shroud is real already. You’re obviously not a skeptic,…
So predictable. Shroudies always lie and then lie some more, standard religious kook behavior.
Vincent, we know you are a shroudie troll. It is written in miles high neon letters in the sky. The normal, honest human thing would just be to confirm the obvious. There are worse things than being a shroudie, the UFO cultists of the Catholic church.
You also aren’t even a very good troll. What is this asking questions that you think you know the answer to that no one else has even heard of and don’t care about? Need better trolls.
Jaycubed @24:
I haven’t seen anything here about the latest finding of Noah’s Ark.
Maybe because you’re too lazy to do a simple search. If you had, you would have found this article from just a few days ago:
Posted by: SteveM
In fact I scrolled back 2 pages before posting and didn’t see anything. Sorry, but I don’t spend everyday online. So feel free to call me lazy.
What I did notice while reading the comments on both the post you reference and a second on this subject on Pharyngula is that almost nobody bothered to actually look at the “evidence” provided by the “finders”. This is a sure sign of intellectual laziness.
Since most readers of Pharyngula “Know” it is a fake, they don’t bother looking further. This is little different from the actions of Believers who “Know” that it is real and don’t bother looking further.
There is learning available from studying fakery, but only when examined without preconceptions. It is hard to learn when one already knows the answers and doesn’t bother to examine the “evidence”, even when such “evidence” is faked.
I can identify just a little bit with he Asker of Answerable Questions. Sometimes it is difficult to ask the correct question; to frame it or to phrase it intelligently. The problem is compounded when there is insufficient basic knowledge at hand.
Yet there is the value of courage involved in asking. As long as it’s not setting me up for a slap upside my insight. I remember that sort of thing.
Wow. That boring clip looked like it belonged in Sea Lab 2021: The Live Action Movie.
@Jaycubed, #61 who opines,
The reason some folks “know” something is a fake is normally the result of their having already looked further.
Learn how to learn.
There was a 12th-century bishop who tracked down the artist who actually MADE the shroud. A bishop. Nine hundred years ago, they knew it was a fraud. But the Church has conveniently forgotten about this.
From the web page itself:
====
I see no answer to the reasonable question of why the shroud contradicts the bible itself.
Posted by:
Mr. Shroudie needs this comment explained, apparently.
Raven, way back in comment 6, summed it up with these wpords: Watch for the standard shroudie lie in 10 9 8 7…
Shroudies are like creationists. They lie. People point out their lies. They come up with another lie. It is pure religious wack-a-mole.
Well said. The fact is, that the whole show is nothing mare than smoke & mirrors. It’s ALL lies. Created by a couple of nomadic, Bronze age goat herders. They didn’t know any better, so perhaps it was an ‘honest’lie, but it’s still all lies and nothing more. Watching the ratty old pope in the videos above, I can’t help but think: He must be having a little inward giggle at the idiots that pay for all this. The fancy gowns, the nice buildings. And look at all the jobs it creates. The sly od bugger.
And I, too, blockquote-fail.
Vincet Ferrer wrote:
Your questions are no more intriguing than ‘what if the earth really is flat?’ or ‘what if fossils were placed there by Satan to deceive us?’.
So, we already have the answer with no seeking involved: you’re a woo-soaked clown shoe, and we don’t care what you think.
Congrats, VF. The article I linked to spells out the “controversy” from both sides and you managed to click on a link! I’m excited for you!
As far as I can tell, David Ford -the author of that lovely paper- isn’t a faculty member at UMBC, but merely a student. The paper you linked to is not peer reviewed and, in my opinion, presents sloppy academic work.
So, a history major trumps an award winning chemist, huh?
Link, please.
LTFG
Two pages ≤ 2 Pharyngudays
The pope paraphrased: The IRS is telling me to pay up or they’ll haul my ass in front of Pontius Pilate!
Actually, according to the Bible, Jesus was pro-taxes. That’s what the whole render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s comes from. Makes a mockery of tea-bagger claims that they are followers of Christ.
I should have said “was.” I’m pretty sure Mr. Ford has either left or graduated by now.
The truth of the shroud was known shortly after it appeared. During the medieval period, there was a huge industry in fake relics. I already posted the 18 jesus penis foreskins puzzle. The RCC itself has always been dubious about it from the beginning.
The truth of the shroud was confirmed by carbon 14 dating. A fact which you know and I posted in comment 6, and you ignored.
Religious fanatics such as yourself never, ever give one damn about the truth.
Interestingly enough, the CNN.com article actually points out some useful information that is usually left out of these puff piece stories about the Shroud of Turin:
At the time the Shroud showed up the consensus among the elites was that it was a fake. The Church itself has never officially taken a firm stance one way or the other – probably at least partially for this very reason. The Church’s stance has always been if it’s real that’s great but if it’s fake it’s no less important than one of the crucifixes that hang in every church as far as the symbolism goes. No one expects every crucifix to be the True Cross after all, so even if the Shroud isn’t the “True Shroud” it’s still a representation worthy of reverence.
Pretty much what you’d expect from a death cult obsessed with immortality I’d think. Venerating a burial shroud, turning a device of torture and death into a cult object for worship – they’re about the same (heck, the veneration of the Shroud is slightly less disturbing than the crucifix IMO).
Nope, essentially asking leading questions, when Google is your friend. Which you refuse to make use of. Classic godbot behavior…
I have my answer. Carbon 14 dating saying a fraud. Prove otherwise with real scientific data, not inane questions. That is what a scientist would do. Godbots never get past the inane questions and realize they must produce the hard physical and scientific evidence to change our minds. Questions won’t do it.
FWIW, I recall telling one of my nun teachers in high school that it would be cool to have a piece of jesus’ fingernails (ok, I was 14 – cut me some slack). She told me in a real slap-down sort of tone of voice that this was idolatry and that Jesus was everywhere as a result of the crucifixion. Whether that’s true is another question, and obviously I think the answer is no, but it’s worth pointing out that at least some catholics seem to think that the whole relic of jesus thing is stupid. Too bad one of them isn’t pope.
Still no answers or scientific evidence from VF, so he has nothing. Why not just give us the scientific journal citations and save time…
Nope, not interesting. Do your own research like any scientist would. Try Google Scholar. Actually I’ve read about the shroud for 20+ years in Skeptical Inquirer. Bored of it.
No, they don’t need answering. But if you are interested, do your own research.
VF:
I have learned that Googling “shroud of Turin” is a badbad thing. My brain hurts from the rampant stupidity. Hey, here’s an idea: why don’t you just go hang out on one of the pro-shroud websites? There’s enough of them out there.
Or hey, actually look something up and provide me with a link in exchange for the one I gave you.
“He said that keeping up that hope is the message of the Shroud of Turin”
What message does a forgery have? Let alone a forgery whose only purpose is to perpetuate superstition.
They are much less interesting if the possible supernatural provenance of the object isn’t in question. In other words, if you agree the carbon dating is right (which I note you adroitly sidestepped in your response), then figuring out how the image came to be isn’t all that pressing or all that important.
So, do you accept the carbon dating results, and thus admit that the object could not be the burial shroud of someone from 33 CE?
VF: “Because I’m not arguing the carbon dating is wrong. Even if I think it is wrong, I’m not arguing that.”
No, of course you’re not. Who would suggest such a thing?
I would.
I am not alone.
Again, learn to learn; it is a survival skill.
Okay, I can’t stop the Googling:
From Wikipedia:
Some yes. The information is there if you wish to look for it. I don’t. A boring subject that has C-14 data conclusively showing that it is a forgery. Makes everything else including your questions irrelevant and moot.
The real objective and concern of the Shroudies isn’t whether the shroud is fake or not or how it was made.
They hope it is real because that proves jesus lived and xianity is the One True Religion and they are all going to heaven and we are all going to hell as scientists and skeptics.***At the heart of the relic is another proof that god exists and his name is yahweh/jesus.
Vincent is being misleading and dishonest because, well who knows what goes on in the heads of religious fanatics. At least he doesn’t seem to have an unhealthy interest in planes colliding with skyscrapers like some of them.
***Of course even if it was a 2,000 year old burial shroud, it proves no such thing. It could be anyone. Or jesus could have died and ended up permanently dead as just another human. Or the writers of the NT could have just made up a bunch of stuff that jesus never said and wouldn’t have agreed with.
1. I know how to find out the answers. In fact, in my post #58 I even told a good way to find out the answers.
2. In my post #44 I gave a reason why the shroud is a fake that even a godbotherer should be able to understand.
3. Considering the shroud have been carbon dated to medieval times then it couldn’t be real. So why should I look for more data to show it’s a fake? I’ve got more important things to do, like groom my nose hair.
3.
And of course no one in the Medieval period had access to real blood.
I saw that site and dismissed it. Caps lock and poor design tend to be a bit of a turn off. Especially when you’re trying to make a serious claim.
Besides, your “facts” are wrong.
So the claim that Dr. McCrone only used an “optical technique” isn’t true.
Read the various (conflicting) accounts of Jesus’ burial in the canonical gospels and compare their descriptions with the Turin shroud. Clearly nowhere near a match. As I recall, the “high point” on foreskins was 14. And when the shroud was first put on display, at the height of the cottage industry in sacred “relics,” the bishop in charge told his cardinal he was personally acquainted with the “artist.”
More pragmatically, simple experiments with a clothing store dummy, some finger paint & a bed sheet will quickly prove no readily recognizable image will be produced, much less one photogenically Anglo/Nordic in its features.
VF, long before you can address the question of the role of iron oxide in justifying the authenticity of the shroud, there are several other issues to address. Not the least of which is the authenticity of Jesus. That issue alone is dependent upon multiple factors that are, like the actuality of Jesus, undetermined except in terms of faith. Faith is not science, and for that I am truly sorry. Life would be so much more . . . manageable if it were so.
When I exhort you to learn how to learn I mean that evidence is always subject to interpretation. The hardest part of learning, more keenly felt as time passes, is the lesson that teaches you that your longings and convictions are not regarded by reality.
Like we care about your opinion. It has been done several times with varying degrees of success. But trying the duplicate the damage the shroud has sustained over the years makes it almost impossible to totally duplicate. The evidence for duplication is good enough for me.
Nope, rock solid dating. Three labs with overlapping dates that correspond to the first appearance of the shroud. There are those who disagree for religious reasons, and try to create doubt where there isn’t any in the scientific community outside of the true believers. Makes it boring.
Is this for real? That old, stained, musty, fraudulent, long-discredited relic? But enough about the pope…what did he want with the shroud?
I don’t get this, even if it was not fake, isn’t worshiping graven images a no no in catholicism?
BINGO!!! BINGO !!! BINGO !!!
Well, the Shroudies are predictable in their lying. Called it at #6. This is the standard shroud cult lie.
When the carbon 14 dating came back as 700-800 years old, the religious fanatics of which Raymond Rogers was one, just started lying. By now there is a huge web of fantasy consisting of nothing but lies piled on top of lies.
Proof below.
God: “What are you doing now?”
Arthur: “I’m averting my eyes, Lord.”
God: “Well, Stop it. Arthur, I have created a shroud to be a shining example in these sorry time.”
Arthur: “Good Idea, Lord.”
God: “Of course it’s a good idea!”
And that is why the Shroud of Turin is authentic.
VF, the shroud has been dated to the fourteenth century. That is and will remain the fact until something as reliable and consistent as the carbon 14 data can show it is actually from the first century CE. Essentially the RCC would have to allow redating of the shroud. In order to change our scientific minds, the burden of proof is upon you to show that new conclusive dating data, which doesn’t exist at this moment. Until then, the 14th century dating stands. Welcome to real science, where the evidence, not inane questions, rules. Your questions are for True Believers™ who lack scientific understanding. Those of us who understand the science, see you as a pesky fraud, just like the shroud.
When the C-14 dates came out, the Shroudies did what any religious kook would do. Lie. The claim is that the area dated was actually part of a later repair of the fabric. It is false and the people who made it up had no way to determine that. It gets repeated as fact constantly.
The Shroudies are classic creationist class Presuppositionalists. No proof will ever be able to prove that the Shroud isn’t that of god/jesus. They will just make up lies to explain anything and everything.
Done for now. It is impossible to turn a True Believer Crackpot but they can be amusing for a few minutes here and there.
PS. McCrone was one of the few real scientists and an honest one on the Shroud project. When his results didn’t come out like the cultists wanted, they kicked him out and ostracized him. If he had lived a few hundred years ago, he would have been tortured to recant or burnt at the stake. Religionists are so predictable.
Nerdofredhead: sorry babe, but I call you a troll. By the definition of “one who comments on a website solely to disagree with people, while offering no cogent opinions of their own, and in doing so discourages “lurkers” from daring to comment”, I think you qualify.
In spades.
Go back to your tiny research lab, darling, and cease blocking argument within these pages.
Still no conclusive evidence from VF. Just looking more and more like a loser with every post. Casting doubt isn’t science. Doing the conclusive experiment is. The carbon 14 dating was conclusive. Period, end of story. Get that new conclusive date VF, and then get back to us. Until then, you have nothing but hot air, which I have already read, including your BS in your #105 post. Your case is not substantial or scientifically conclusive. I know science, since I have practiced it for 30+ years. You have nothing conclusive. Which makes your statements hot air and conclusions nothing but hot air…
Oh, SS, sorry, you are the one trolling and you know it. I’m not upsetting the others on purpose like the liberturd trolls, or yourself. I am teaching VF on how science works. Which you don’t understand either.
“FACT: The bloodstains were applied to the cloth prior to the formation of the image.”
Why should an image associated with bloodstains necessarily be formed after the staining? Why should various portions of the image not remotely associated with blood loss (how much blood does a corpse loose?) show identical/comparable “densities” of image? The image on the shroud does not present voids; there are no lateral representations, quite noticeably, only frontal & dorsal, despite the shroud’s supposed 360° enrapture. There are so many elements which simply do not accord with ordinary geometry or human physiology that only the most credulous would regard the shroud as anything but an excellent and unfortunately enduring example of the sacred relic industry.
I like how SS thinks that you’re a lady, Nerd, and belittles you for it.
Misogyny will truly get you far, SS.
The same way I know you are.
The endless lies piled on lies. It is so diagnostic that I predicted it at the start of the thread in comment #6. Successfully.
Raymond Rogers was a scientist who was absolutely convinced the shroud was real. When the results came back negative, he just started looking around for excuses and the web of fantasy and lies grew from there.
Scientists are human and not at all perfect. Some end up in alcohol and drug rehab programs and some end up in mental hospitals, just like any other segment of the population.
109: “. . . blocking argument within these pages . . . ?”
WTF? Over . . .
Ask elsewhere. Your questions are inane, and don’t change the science, and the fourteenth century date. Which makes your questions moot. That means debatable and irrelevant.
No, skepticism is doubting, then checking claims against the facts. Which you could do on your own. You are just being a pest since you lack the smoking gun of good scientific dating to change our minds.
Sorry, the three labs that ran the test will beg to differ, and you must be the one show better evidence, not with questions, but with real data. Where is your data? Time to put up or shut up.
Bullshit. You are trying to make a point that has been totally disproved by making us run around and gather evidence for you. You are the worst kind of troll, the one who won’t admit what he really is.
Please, VF, get over yourself and get the hell away from us.
Religion is fucking pathetic.
Please define the word “wrap,” then. Have you ever seen a burrito?
Yeah, you wouldn’t believe some of the dumb saps who have believed all this Catholic b******t. Guys with names like Mendel, Copernicus, Descartes, and Lavoisier. I’m talking total idiots — not REAL men of rationality and science like PZ Myers and the other geniuses who post comments on this blog! Keep up the great work guys!
Oh Cthulhu, stop lying. We know.
You are asking leading and rhetorical questions that you think you know the answer to. To avoid looking like what you are, a Shroudie cultist.
We knew that after your first post. Really, being a pathological liar isn’t a good thing.
Shroudies are a cross between religious fanatics and UFO cultists. All they have are lies and that is all anyone will get out of Vincent.
ODS @ 121
Of course he hasn’t! He’s imagining his lord in a sandwich.
That is totally going to be the name of my jam band.
VF, this is how big a loser your argument is. We have heard everything you have presented to date several times before. This isn’t the first time the shroud has come up. Nobody (and this will include you) has shown the proper smoking gun to convince us that the shroud is from the first century CE, since that scientific evidence doesn’t exist. They just keep repeating the same evidence you do, and try to create some wiggle room. Which is never given, because the science is conclusive as a forgery. So you have nothing, and are just wasting your time. For me, it is time for bed.
There was an interesting program on the shroud recently. Not sure what network… nat geo maybe. But the point was that shroud is not a fraud. Wait!!! In order for the shroud to be a fraud it would have to be made to trick people but that is not why it was made. When it was made its purpose was to show the suffering that Jesus went through. People who saw it knew that it wasn’t real. It was designed to be hung over a rod like a towel and viewed in a cathedral. It was not the only one that was made but it was the only one that survived.
There was a person in the show (I forget his name) who made a shroud. I don’t recall exactly how he made it but it did involve hanging the cloth in sunlight for an extended period of time. There was also a graduate who had his own method. Both methods passed the testing that was done.
buster k @ 122
Well, a lot of commenters here are women. Where do we appear on your hierarchy of rationality?
BTW, nice touch with the asterisks, kiddo.
Newton believed in alchemy, devoted most of his writings to religion – yet what’s left of his ideas? It’s the maths and science which is why we hold Newton so highly.
If someone believes in alchemy today, do we mention that Newton believed in alchemy and that somehow made it okay? The fact that smart people have believed in things where there was no evidence or evidence against doesn’t mean that it was a smart thing for them to believe – or that believing in those ideas is smart. Historical evidence including a confession of the forger, an analysis of material, carbon dating, reproducing the image using middle ages techniques – all these attest that the shroud of turin was not the burial cloth of Jesus. Any intellectually honest person should recognise that. Smart people believed it therefore I should to is nothing more than an appeal to authority.
I love watching VF ignore all the cite-filled comments that just spank his butt — like this one:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/the_shroud_of_turin_is_clearly.php#comment-2485864
@113, OurDeadSelves: Yes, I did think that someone with “redhead” within their username was female. I have only your word that they aren’t, but either way: I bet that most people would guess the same as me.
Regarding misogyny: just go ahead and replace the offensive words with “buddy”, “guy” or “big fella” if you wish. I don’t give a shit, my point is still more relevant than yours.
What happened to SmoggyBatzrubble? That Vincent Ferrer reminds me of a smoggy who doesn’t even try to rhyme.
Ah, I just love the claims that the shroud of Turin has human blood on it – what, the nuns who did the half-ass patchwork on the burnt bits pricked themselves constantly? Besides, wouldn’t it be expected to be GOD blood? Jesus Christ! (hehehe) SO – if the claims are true that the image has blood (it does not), then we should sequence the stain – I for one would like to see the god genome and how it differs from us humans. Now, if we were to imagine that there was human blood on the shroud, I’d like to know how many humans it came from and if there are any unique sets of markers which identify the source as being from any particular community of the era which the blood dates back to. Not all that much blood needs to be scraped off for a 14C analysis so we can even see how old the (imaginary) blood is.
re 61:
“do a simple search” means type “noah” into that little box in the upper left corner labeled “Search”. Learn to use the tools available to you.
Oh for fuck’s sake. A shroudie? Really? Really? That’s just kindergarten-level stupidity. VF, you’re “asking questions” in precisely the same manner that birthers “ask questions” about Obama’s nationality. You know it, everyone here knows it.
Hey, fuck you, SS.
Using diminutive language when referring to a woman is still really fucking offensive, no matter how you try to justify it.
I will admit, I got sidetracked by your baseless attack. The truth of the matter is, I like Nerd, so I got distracted from my original point. Since I apparently have to spell it out for you, my argument was that the shroud of Turin is a fake. I apologize if I offended your delicate sensibilities, even though I was actually participating in the original fucking argument.
I’m sorry we can’t all live up to your shining example. I’ll have to work at being such a nice guy like you.
Even if the SoT dated to 28 CE*…so what? It is no evidence of something as miraculous as a resurrection. Or maybe it is…
Let me tell you a story. I few days ago, I formed a gollum from some mud. Then I waved my hat at the mud-gollum, and he sprung to life, sang “If I Were a Rich Man”, and cured my dog of syphilis. Don’t believe me? The evidence from my veterinarian indicates that my dog is free of STDs, and I have a relic to prove that the event happened: my hat. If you don’t believe that it’s mine, please feel free to sample hairs, skin cells, flecks of spittle, or whatever evidence you have. You will then have evidence that the hat was on my head and therefore that I am a magical genie-type mufuka who can breathe life into mud as the savior of philandering canines.
Praise me. Maranatha!
Pardon the sarcasm, but I think that we can all agree on one thing. However the body fluids might found their way onto to the linen in dispute, and whichever biofilm forming prokaryote took up residence there, the Shroud of Turin is gross. It is an ancient hankie.
*And it doesn’t.
Buster K wrote:
Can you produce any of what these ‘REAL men of rationality and science’ cited as the reasons for believing what they believed?
Because, without them, what you’re doing is falling victim to the fallacy known as the argument from authority. What they believed is completely irrelevant; what they could demonstrate – i.e. provide evidence or compelling argument for – on the other hand, is very relevant.
Oh, don’t worry – we will.
The thing that I find most irritating about VF is the fucking coyness. He/she never actually asserts any affirmative claim that can be addressed. It’s a chicken-shit way to argue, and borders on GlenBeckian levels of disingenuousness.
Um, the RCC has known from the start that the shroud is a fake. IIRC, the bloke who made it confessed to the local bishop in France or wherever, and the bishop reported back to the pope of the day that it was bullshit.
More recently, the RCC has taken a more populist “no position” position on the shroud’s authenticity.
But for the Ratzinger to now be pretending that the shroud is real seems like a desperate and somewhat risky attempt to distract from the child rape scandal.
Perhaps they’ve run out of hategoats* to blame the child-fucking on. Let’s see, whe’ve had homosexuals, the sexual revolution, the secularisation of society, the Jews, demons sent from hell specifically to give the Vatican bad press. Have I left anyone out?
* I think I just made that up, but I like it! Hategoating is making a scapegoat of someone you hate.
re 131:
natural mistake since there are no male redheads.
SlantedScience wrote:
Actually, over the nearly two years I’ve been coming here I’ve observed that admitting to assuming NoR is a woman is been a pretty good predictor of how much of a bigoted asshole the person making the assumption is.
Since on previous posts you’ve revealed you’re homophobic it’s not really coming as that much of a shock. Bigot is as bigot does.
Srsly, what the hell is that? Must be sort of like how a woman is referred to as “that blonde over there,” though no one would refer that way to a guy with blond hair. Women, see, they’re just bipedal vehicles for a coif.
έλαβον ουν το σώμα του Ιησού και έδησαν αυτό εν οθονίοις
οθονίοις : small pieces of cloth.
The root word refers to cloth, it is modified with a diminutive, and is in plural form.
It’s not a single large sheet.
Hence, the shroud contradicts the bible.
The Pope worshipping the Shroud of Turin reminds me of the israelites worshipping the golden calf contrary to Yahweh’s wishes in the Old Testament.
Convenient how you only list scientists who lived before Darwin. If you can manage to name an revolutionary scientist after Darwin explained why design isn’t necessary, then…
…you’ll still have all your work ahead of you, for reasons explained by Kel @129. By the way, you misspelled ‘bullshit.’
VF,
Seriously, fuck off. You’re calling sound science into question without presenting, much less defending, an alternate explanation. You are no different than fundamentalist whackjobs (or are you one of those as well?).
Ha!
SS,
And here I thought that someone with “Science” in their name would have a scientific mindset. I’m a redhead, and I’m pretty confident I’m a male.
Believers have the burden of proof, they go first. Saying it’s real is a positive. So what is their proof? nothing more than, ‘just look at the darn thing, very impressive and old.’ What other so-called evidence do they have? None.
Skeptics offered rebuttal of the weak case ‘look at it.’ What evidence did skeptics offer against ‘look at it?’ Lots, what others have said above. See for repeat.
Here’s where the rub comes. Believers then want to be tricky, a form of fraud, and pretend that the burden is on the skeptics to prove the shroud is not real. Done by questions. But that was never the case, the believers always, and still, have the burden of proving the shroud is real, which they can’t do, so…
So believers then have a fallback position, which is: if you, skeptic, can’t prove it’s fake, TO MY SATISFACTION, then I’m going to believe it’s real. Whoa, where did that ‘satisfaction’ part come from? Turns out it’s been there all along. Believer thinks–church ladies bless believer’s achy heart — that somehow things are turned around, the burden has switched, and that it’s up to the skeptic to prove the shroud a fake. Switch done by questions.
What the questions asked are and whether they are scientific as claimed does not shift believer’s burden of proof. Believer, say it’s real, prove it. They can’t of course. Obstacles are numerous to believer’s search for evidence, and not even one is surmounted.
For example, what is the chain of custody of this shroud from time of death to Turin? Unknown. Not proven, just look at it. Inadmissible as evidence therefore, look at it or not.
So if the shroud were supposedly 2M years old, what would be the proof that the image is of Jesus and not say Joe Blow of Rome? There is no such evidence, just look at the image, the wounds.
But the obstacle foremost is the lack of credibility of believers claiming without evidence that the shroud is the shroud of Jesus. Are they worthy of belief? Do they have centuries of church lies and deceit behind them? Would they burn you at the stake or guillotine you for heresy (about the shroud too) if they could? Do they have a piece of the “True Cross” so called in the altar of every Catholic church in the world, enough to build a battleship? Was not the true cross a crusade forgery, a cause for suckers to fight? We have Jeff Chaucer’s direct word on forgers of relics.
The most persuasive argument against the authenticity of the shroud is not scientific at all, science is backup, but that the believers are not worthy of belief themselves. We observe them each modern day exist in fantasy and deceit.
And then, Mattir, the nun had the right doctrinal sentiments to say that Jesus is already here. Flannery O’Connor would have liked her, I feel. Too bad her religion is bloated with stupid pope and clerics, with millenial Baptists, looking for a calf to take to Jerusalem, expecting the rapture, wanting a battle between Islam and Christianity, with worshiping the shroud.
Addressing snide Vincent F, your lack of credibility makes me not trust you to pour hot coffee, nor present evidence by questions you arrogate as scientific.
I find that people often lose track of what the shroud (and items like it) really are, and thus, often miss some interesting stuff. First, the church has recognized for some time that the SoT is not an 2Kya Polaroid of god. Yet, a lot of Christians think it is, apparently because the church has not worked very hard to disabuse them of the notion. Of course, this can be used to advantage (which is one of the things people often miss). My daughter had a sort of debate thing (different format) in HS a couple of days ago, in which her job was to pose questions challenging someone else’s point, and the point she got put onto is that the Shroud of Turin is a 2000 year old snap shot of Jesus Christ caused by some kind of spritual inner flashbulb.
So she can challenge this on the basis of art historical evidence, contextual evidence (when it was first revealed, and the context of the time … the SoT, True Cross, etc. etc. were all of about the same era, and there’s a reason for that). She can challenge on the basis of radiocarbon dating.
And when the pro-shroud kid is done complaining about C14 dating, she can note that the church does not recognize the SoT as anything other than a very cool early medieval fake relic. Officially.
That does not really answer why the pope praes to it/at it. But knowing the details of the shroud makes it into a very useful foil.
Oh, I did forget at least one other hategoat. The children themselves, who have been seducing/preying upon innocent priests. How the hell did that slip my mind?
re 142:
Srsly, what the hell is that?
A sign your sarcasm detector is broken?
Hey, Vincent, I’ve got a few questions for you if you’re still around:
1. During which calendar year did the Jews escape their slavery in Egypt?
2. How would you tell the difference between a fake resurrection and a real resurrection?
3. What historical, non-biblical evidence is there for the existence of Jesus?
These are all just intriguing questions I ask in the name of science and historical accuracy. If you don’t feel like answering them, or if it seems to you that these questions should get a pass – then why do they get special treatment? Why do you not feel compelled to explore their answers with the same obsessive attention to detail that save for the science behind the Shroud of Turin?
#151 –
Oh, no, Steve. . sorry I wasn’t clear. I was agreeing with you about SS’s stupid comment on redheads.
re 153:
I was afraid of that. My agreement detector is apparently on the fritz…
There’s a term for what VF is doing: JAQ-ing off.
Namely:
Since the JAQoff knows he’s among a hostile audience, we see less of the leading question approach here than the appeal to faux-reasonableness (about a completely unreasonable subject). Meanwhile, he has shown up out of the ether and is “reasonably” demanding, in a spectacularly entitled fashion, that the Pharynguloids do his homework for him.
Next step, some variation on whining that we’re being mean to him, followed by a deke flounce, followed by several more aggrieved comments about why we’re so unreasonable because we don’t want to walk him through hours’ worth of useless apologetics when we could be talking amongst ourselves about more pleasant and entertaining things.
The “message of the ‘shroud’ of Turin”, if there’s such a thing, is that, with good craftsmanship and a sense of marketing, you can create something that will last for centuries, generate mountains of cashflow and rivers of ink.
Well, he’s not actually worshipping the Shroud.
He’s just praying before it.
Actually, reporters say B VI commented: “Hey, what’s this? Is this a shroud of some description? What is it? Another silly prank by the College of Cardinals? Oh never mind, I’ll pray first then see what this blanket is.”
Followed by: “Dear father in heaven some help would be nice ok thanks bye”, followed by “Why, it is the Shroud of Turin! An object whose origins are… shrouded in mystery.” And then he put on his shades and smiled.
According to a Vatican spokesman: “The Holy See does not at the moment wish to comment on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and His Holiness’s prayer certainly did not indicate such a commitment. But think, of all the places in the world, where did His Holiness just by accident happen to kneel? Was it a supermarket? A library? A public toilet maybe? Nay, it was close to a relic of the Christian faith. Just by accident. Coincidence? His Holiness thinks not.”
some days ago, in the spanish version of History channel was aired a TV pseudo documental of the “digital recontruction of Jesus”
It was about the shroud of turin, and the supossed “misterius” 3D data, that was used to recontruct the body of Jesus.. up to the eyes color… !!!!
We have an intereresting discusion in my forum:
http://mundo.paralax.com.mx/index.php/foro/topic.html?id=1101&p=10827#p10827
Of course all the thing is ridiculous.. Even if the image in the shroud were a real depth map, you can not recontruct color and texture, etc… all those were really an artistical recontruction.
But all this was spice with “High Technology” and pseudo science, and barelly mentioned the evidence of fraude.. they prefered to mention only to the believers..
After that i began to review the “scientific work” on the sudary..
I learned that there is a “new” science… “sindonology”… the study of the holy shroud… and all the “scientist” working on it are nos Sindonologist… and of course they did not accept evidence that contradict their beliefes.
Years ago it was created a comite to study the Shroud: STURP.. it was integrated by a strange mixture of scientists..
nuclear physicist Tom D’Muhala, who headed STURP. There’s Joe Jackson, thermal chemist Raymond N. Rogers(dec), Roy London and Roger Morris, all from Los Alamos National Laboratory; Don Lynn of Jet Propulsion Lab/ Pasadena, biophysicist John Heller, optical physicist Sam Pellicori and electric power experts John D. German, Rudy Dichtl, and forensic pathologist Robert Bucklin
but curiosly… none of them specialist in medioeval art, textiles history, or with esperiencie in archeology…
The unbelievers like Dr McCrone soon had disagrements… his work was not published as part of the STURP reports… and because of a cluase of confidenciality he was not able to publish his onw analysis until a decade later..
McCrone, found medioeval pigments, and no blood, but the STURP started a campaing to discredit him… which unfortunatelly work for the press… and presented their own speciallist who claimed there was blood..
The Lider of those specialist was Barry Schwortz, aclaimed… none less ahtn…by his outstanding work as editor of the DVD of “Rocky and bullwinkle”…
And of course for the STURP was the problematic C14 datation… and they need to downplay it.
Since it was taken by three independiente laboratoties, and all agree, is was not easy to refute…
But the suddenly there was the claim that the sample was a medioeval repair… so well done that the specialist:
Prof. Testore (Turin University professor of textile technology), Prof. Vial (Director of the Lyon Ancient Textiles Museum), Profs. Hall and Hedges (heads of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory) and Prof. Tite (head of the British Museum research laboratory).
who took a month to select the place.. could not detect it..:
And who was the expert who detect, what those specialist could not…
M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino,
whose speciality is:
Sue Benford, registered nurse, with knowlegde in homeopahty and faith healing who, “has contributed to the understanding of human energy fields and how they may relate to promotion of health and enlightenment of the spirit. ”
And Joseph G. Marino, was a benedictine monk with a B.A. in Theological Studies..
http://newvistas.homestead.com/
so… guess whose claims are accepted by the STURP…
by the way, there is an interesting video of the ways to create a your own shroud…
(i have been debating there with a believer..)
Now i am alarmed…
in the Sue Benford (who died by cancer).. there is a comentary
“Further recognition for Benford’s research and theories has come through the Discover Magazine awards program which annually scours the scientific literature and other forums for new and interesting products and ideas.”
Does the Discover Magazine really included in their awards an study on the ” subtle energies responsible for the alternative healing effects” ????
MATTIR, back when I was still going to church (mostly to keep the parental units happy), one time we had a guest priest who gave a sermon about the shroud. He was very dismissive, and talked a good bit about “the Shroud Belt”. I think he mostly said people should worship God and be nice to each other, and not pay attention to ridiculous gimmicks. I don’t have any problem with most of that.
Vincent Ferrer @ 90…
About those reports…
Mccrone showed that the data of the study, were completely compatible with the use of tempera pigments…
Of course.. the STURP remove Mccrone comments from the study…
The diferencies is that McCrone was the world’s leading chemical microscopist, an expert in forensic chemistry, and he published the refutation of those claims… which of course, are not found in the sturp web page…
“The most notorious case of the incompetent misuse and nonuse of scientific instruments by STURP remains their examination and explanation of the Shroud image. STURP used energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDS) to analyze the Shroud surface, and found calcium, iron, and protein in the Shroud “blood,” thus “confirming” in their minds the presence of blood. Unfortunately for STURP, as McCrone points out, blood also contain potassium and chlorine in high amounts, and their absence means that this was not blood. ”
Steven D. Schafersman
Science Consultant and Administrator
The Skeptical Shroud of Turin Website
Sili @ #73:
It was Bishop Pierre d’Arcis reporting to Pope Clement VII.
Tests Show Shroud of Turin To Be Fraud, Scientist Hints
or here
Pope Nearly Endorses the Shroud of Turin, But Is It Real?
I hope that helps!
There is one point I think is missing in the discussion… Well, let me start: Recently I went to Turin for vacation, and was a surprised when I learned that the shroud was on display. It was a Tuesday morning, there was almost no crowd, so I lined up to see it. (Although it always feels odd with all the devoted believers around).
One of the key points in christianity is the sacrifice of Jesus, and believers try to get an idea of Jesus’ suffering.
And there are many great pieces of artwork that try to create an understanding of this.
And in this regard the Shroud is a great piece of art, because it creates really a “direct” impression of the suffering, whith all the whip-marks and so on.It is really impressive when you stand in front of it. And truely that is why believers want to see it. And for this it does not matter how well that fact that it is fake is proven.
Dear M. Myers,
Clearly, you are wrong and I think you did not read the peer-reviewed articles of the last ten years ! To date, science can not explain how the image of this man was formed (Giulio Fanti, “Can a Corona Discharge Explain the Body Image of the Turin Shroud ?”, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, march 2010)
Raymond Rogers proved the radiocarbon samples were not representative of the whole shroud (Thermochimica Acta, 2005). In 2010, three professors of statistics and a professor of mechanical and thermic measurements (M. Riani, A.C. Atkinson, F. Crosilla, G. Fanti) wrote in a scientific paper that the statistical analysis of the raw dates obtained from the three laboratories suggests “the presence of an important contamination in the 1988 TS samples” (“Statistica robusta e radiodatazione della Sindone”, March 31, 2010, Socièta Italiana di Statistica Magazine)
Golden rule : First, you check your facts, and only after you write your paper.
And remember, science by press release (Garlaschelli…) is not science.
One of the key points in christianity is the sacrifice of Jesus, and believers try to get an idea of Jesus’ suffering.
A crazy person thought he could conquer death if he allowed people to torture him. Why on earth is that praiseworthy? And what have you done that’s so terrible you consider the murder of another human a good “exchange?”
Why is this holy relic of God sent to confirm mankind’s faith now fading, almost like a natural artifact? Why did God allow it to get fucking scorched to shit in a cathedral fire, if it was sent to prove his divinity to man? What am I having for lunch?
Those are all reasonable questions. I’m just asking questions, and now the burden of proof is on you guys to answer them! Open your minds!
@ t:
You are wrong.
Wrong. Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin
Please note that this was already addressed earlier in the thread.
Also wrong as was again noted earlier up-thread
Claims of Invalid “Shroud” Radiocarbon Date Cut from Whole Cloth
Good advice perhaps you should follow it. Of course it’s not just “science by press release” when some one like Garlaschelli can demonstrate the results, you seem to have left that little detail out. Oddly though, Raymond Rogers’ results are a text book example of “science by press release”.
Also, keep in mind that attempting to discredit evidence contrary to the shrouds authenticity does nothing to actually prove the shroud’s validity. Only the credible evidence supporting it’s age and origin, which is oddly lacking) can do that. Again, this was also already covered up-thread.
BTW I find it rather amusing how you just cut and pasted the exact same nonsense from the comments here…
Peter Popham: Shrouded in the faith of centuries
No wonder you are making claims that were already dealt with earlier.
Tell us “t” are you the poster “cazab” in that thread? Or did you just copy the poster, and claim it as your own? Or are you two people following the same script?
One of the key points in christianity is the sacrifice of Jesus, and believers try to get an idea of Jesus’ suffering.
#166, I have not stated that this is my belief.
But the fact is that for some reasons people do believe this. Whether or not it is reasonable to follow a christian belief is not the topic of this tread.
More abstract: If the purpose of the work was to allow peaple a better understanding of Jesus suffering, the the Shroud suits this purpose quite well.
This is why people go there and watch it, not mainly because they think it is the true shroud.
The discussion of whether or not it is a fake simply does not account for this reason to worship it.
I am not a religious, but I do acknowledge that if some medieval or renesaince artist wanted to create a piece of atrwork that transmits the meaning of the suffering of Jesus, then he did a pretty good job.
severus99, what did Jesus suffer that uncounted others did not?
Just for example, 6,000 people were crucified on the Appian Way after Spartacus was beaten.
Bah.
severus99, what did Jesus suffer that uncounted others did not?
Just for example, 6,000 people were crucified on the Appian Way after Spartacus was beaten.
mental illness?
MAJeff, hm. I wonder if anyone’s applied the criteria of the DSM-IV to the story-Jesus… :)
I don’t have much scientific or textile experience. But I have read the NT:
I don’t need to point out the obvious. Then again, one could always argue that John was late. But if you did that and implied it was in error, you have killed inerrancy (which is dead anyway, but is, at most, a doctrinal zombie).
Other Gospels for contrast:
Note that there must be more than one.
Note that Matthew mentions the cloth (singular) before the resurrection only. So does Mark, which Matthew uses as a basis for an expanded narrative:
Owlmirror #143
Hardcore scholarship, right there. I’m snipping that post for reference in case I need to use it in future (hope you don’t mind?).
Slanted Science, I based my moniker on the Bride of Shrek. I am married to a redhead, and I am the science/electronics nerd. Your ignorance and bigotry shine through your posts. All you are doing is making yourself look stoopid. That can be cured by not saying anything.
@Zetetic, I’m Cazab, a little mistake during login.
Garlaschelli claimed that he reproduced the Turin Shroud, but he did not, sorry, just facts, just science. Prof. Fanti, a specialist on the shroud of Turin, who wrote several peer-reviewed articles on the object (Garlaschelli = 0 peer-reviewed article on the Turin Shroud, just fact), wrote that : “Starting from the available data and photographs, we will show that the image in discussion does not match the main fundamental properties of the Shroud image [2], in particular at thread and fiber level but also at macroscopic level. The problem of the blood stains will also be discussed.
In conclusion, thanks to Garlaschelli, it is possible to show why and how, because of fundamental “details”, the image of the Turin Shroud is up to now not reproducible and still remains an unexplainable Object. ”
About Ray Rogers : Joe Nickell’s claims, a Ph D. in English (!!!), are = 0. It is not peer-reviewed, it is not science. Raymond Rogers 2005 paper was never challenged in peer-reviewed journals. Fact.
John L. Brown (Georgia Tech), Robert Villareal (LANL), studied with other techniques the samples and agree with his conclusions.
It’s a weird from of presuppositional arguments. Assume that it is true, then knock down any evidence to the contrary. It never gets one to the time and place of its alleged origins, but it does help stop people arguing to the contrary.
The fact that someone was able in the 14th century to track down the artist who made it, which corresponds with it’s arrival in the records, which corresponds with the materials used, which corresponds with the carbon dating – that should all be enough to say that in all likelihood that the shroud was not the burial cloth of Jesus. The only reason that it’s suggested otherwise is not the evidence but the belief in it.
The fact that people use that presupposional line of apologetics shows more about the nature of desire to believe than it does about the artefact in question.
No, it was just ignored as the garbage it is. That is what happens to borderline science that nobody thinks is worth the time and effort to refute. Most scientists consider the shroud to be conclusively shown to be a 14th century fraud by the carbon 14 dating, and the case is closed. Let the fool publish his little paper to shut him up, then ignore it.
This is a hard-core believer (in forgery) !
I prefer scientists, like Ray Rogers, John L. Brown, Robert Villarreal, Giulio Fanti, Marco Riani, and peer-reviewed articles.
t:
Citations, please.
t, why don’t you start at the beginning, showing your imaginary deity exists with conclusive physical evidence. Then show, again with conclusive physical evidence, that the babble isn’t a book of mythology and fiction for the most part. Then show the conclusive physical evidence that Jebus actually existed and was crucified. Then, and only then, can the shroud even be remotely considered anything other a fake. That is real science. Get cracking…
@ John Morales :
Google Scholar is your friend.
the dozen or more Foreskins of Jesus that were floating around Europe in the 14th century…
Clearly, stem cell technology is older than we thought!
One thing that I’ve not seen here, and maybe I missed it in this thread or the previous one: in Barbet’s book he mentions that the cloth used to be on open display, was washed in various liquids (water, oil). Could that have effected the image to make it more visible over the years back then, similarly to how underarm stains appear after washing a white shirt often over time?
Yeah, I’ve read Barbet’s book – actually own it; from a medical point of view it’s a fascinating look at how a person dies from crucifixion.
One interesting point Barbet brings out is how FAST JC supposedly died. Barbet blames it on the stresses of the night – the fasting, prayer, sweating of blood, lashing, carrying the cross. Most people (men and women)crucified lasted a lot longer than the 3 hours JC supposedly did. And we don’t know for sure the “usual” routine carried out before a crucifixion – whether whipping was usual, making someone carry the cross piece (even Barbet admits it’s highly unlikely he carried the full cross, unlike many depictions) any distance, etc.
The Romans were big on crucifixion, but I remember reading that other cultures used it also. What I have not been able to find (a lot of sites are blocked here at work) is a date for the last time crucifixion was used as a death sentance. Did they occur during the middle ages and renaissance? I would assume a forger would have seen one, and maybe even gotten a body from one, which, if it was a criminal, probably wasn’t too hard to do.
t @181: A Scientific Comparison between the Turin Shroud and the First Handmade Whole Copy
Is it a peer-reviewed article?
If so, in what scientific peer-reviewed publication was this paper published?
Google scholar only shows it as being from the “Frascati Acheiropoietos Workshop”.
Was the last time the shroud was dated using radiocarbon dating the time that everyone claims was done on a part of the cloth that may have been added at a later date?
Why has it not been done since?
Seems like a fairly easy way to settle the issue.
Vincent Ferrer was, once again, the obsessed lunatic Piltdown Man. Kooktrail cleaned up now.
That’s just…wow. Pathetic.
The RCC is not allowing further testing at this time…
The thing I find funny about the SoT is that it’s clearly a European male.
Jesus – had he existed – would have been a Jewish male, with decidedly Jewish features, and who apparently was very plain in appearance, not a glorious example of godhood. You wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a crowd (the Roman soldiers needed Judas to tell them who Jesus was before they arrested him.)
So yeah – clearly European male != plain Jewish male.
triskelethecat,
cf. Crucifixion in the Ancient World by Dr. Richard P. Bucher
In the early Meiji period (circa 1865-8), the 25 year-old servant Sokichi was executed by crucifixion for the murder of the son of his employer, a store-owner, during the course of a robbery.
(warning: graphic image)
There was a TV documentary that supported the view of a camera obscura being used for projecting the image of a model -the legs are longer than normal, which would be an inherent side effect of projecting an image on a large flat surface -the image gets twisted. In the program, it was suggested that a duke had purchased an earlier shoroud that was so obviously faked that the duke chose to commission a better fake from Da Vinci.
Briefly, in regard to “Vinland” that was mentioned earlier; the only Vinland items that are genuine are the archaeological items found at Newfoundland. These included some nut shells from species that grow further south, confirming the existence of a more southerly site, but not enough far south to find grapes.
-“Vin” is simply an old regional Norse word for “pasture” (or so I am told). The more southerly viking site was probably somewhere in Nova Scotia/New Brunswick.
Noah’s myth: Once again; the linguistics of the story of Noah suggests a younger origin than the rest of the Old Testament, approx. at the time of the Babylonian exile. The Babylonians of course provided the Mesopotamian flood myth.
Yeah I know, that was my point. ;)
We’ve already heard the standard shroudie lie a few times on this thread. Dealt with in comment 92 among other places. Rogers was a shroudie fanatic and when then C-14 dates didn’t line up with his beliefs, he and everyone else starting lying.
Told you also in #6, they play religious kook wack-a-mole. They lie, then more lies, and then circle around to their first lie. Exactly like the creationists.
#92 http://www.skeptic.ws/shroud/
Detailed photographs of the area from which the sample was removed clearly reveal that there was no patch there. (How could Benford and Marino’s unnamed “textile experts” observe the correct proportions of 1st century and 16th century threads from the “patch” using photographs, while the legitimate experts named above–using both photographs and personal examination of the actual Shroud!–miss…..
*facepalm*
*headdesk*
I thought the inane questions and lack of evidence felt familiar.
A shroudie lying some more. Calling a lie a fact doesn’t make it a fact.
Rogers 2005 paper was a shoddy piece of work done towards the end of his life and his peers, chemists, have pointed it out many times in great detail.
Shroudies just make up lies and call them facts. When you call them on it, they lie some more. Then they eventually circle around to the beginning and repeat them lies. It is religious kook wack-a-mole. They can also lie longer than normal people can stay interested.
The Shroudies are called that because they have formed their own cult complete with their own magic books of lies. It is idolatry and a good example of how religions do not have to have any intersection with the real world. It’s a lot like Scientology in that way.
Hmmm.. I think there are some coincidences at the end of James Blish’s “A Case of Conscience” which are really hard to explain without accepting the existence of God.
Therefore, I’m inclined to think the Shroud must be completely genuine.
(…wha? That was fiction? oops)
Well, that explains the total lack of engagement with the world and imperviousness to reason and logic.
Probably a high correlation between being crazy and being a shroudie.
IIRC, at one time Piltdown was threatening to become a priest. Which demonstrates a horrible and ominous trend. The pool of people who want to become RCC priests is highly enriched for socially dysfunctional and very warped men. Not looking good for the church in the future.
Wikipedia has a section on recent uses, some as recently as 2002, but it’s less-than-clear if the sentences have been carried out. Some of the examples cited are not executions. (Elsewhere, it also points out that there was an execution as recently as the 1860’s in Japan.)
What I was looking to verify I couldn’t find: I have a recollection that there were some people executed in Turkey(?) c.1900, and the observations of how the torture eventually killed them formed the basis (or at least provided confirmation) for the idea an eventual cause of death is asphyxiation. (That hypothesis has since been challenged by non-lethal experiments done on volunteers.)
t @ 90
Raymond Rogers was the editor of Thermochimica Acta, son unfortunately there was a lot of articles there that probably no other else would have published…
Roger paper was based in two flawed things…
a) He had samples of Shroud that had been discarded as no representative of the shroud.
b) he took seriousley the “scientific paper” writen by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino, an homeopatic nurse and a theologan… who claimed.. but did not prove… that the samples were taken from a repaired section…
So far no one has demostraded that in medioeval times there was such level of expterise… to rewove textiles at the fiber level…
meanwhile the oficial status from those who made the analysis is:
“It is important to realise, however, that only if some enriched contaminant can be identified does it become credible that the date is wrong by 1000 years. As yet there is no direct evidence for this – or indeed any direct evidence to suggest the original radiocarbon dates are not accurate.
Christopher Ramsey (March 2008)
The Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit “
Damn… I missed a Pilty infiltration. I really need to stop sleeping, apparently…
I honestly can’t believe there are people like “t” out there that still subscribe to this crap. The mental gymnastics and blind ignorance needed to accept that this thing has the face of Jesus on it is simply mind-boggling.
Let’s even remove the multiple scientific proofs that it’s not what it claims to be from the picture…
So, we’ll even accept the premise that this is a piece of cloth of unknown age (even if you dismiss RC dating, you still haven’t established that it’s the right age in any other way), that has somehow managed to transfer the image of a person onto it.
Fine… even working with that, admittedly far-fetched, premise, you still have the following issues to overcome:
1. The image is of a person of the wrong physical characteristics to possibly be a jew from the area where Jesus is to have hailed.
2. The shroud does not remotely match any description of any burial garb used to bury Jesus.
3. There is no mention of this shroud anywhere in biblical text… the bible is overflowing with descriptions of miraculous events and occurrences… surely such a miracle would have been mentioned.
So, even if you accept that the shroud is a transfer of a human image onto cloth, based on all historical evidence, it is not possible that it is the face of Jesus.
Now, add the scientific evidence of age and forgery, and you simply can not accept that the shroud is an image of Jesus unless you are the type who also believes that the “spider woman” you pay 50 cents to see at the carnival is also authentic.
And I really can’t believe that people are still willing to be taken in by this scam. Believing in god is bad enough, but at least “god”, conceptually, gets to dodge actual scientific testing. The shroud can’t, and doesn’t pass muster. You really have to be a first class rube to be taken in by it…
*waves at Pilty
t @ 147
the paper “To date, science can not explain how the image of this man was formed (Giulio Fanti, “Can a Corona Discharge Explain the Body Image of the Turin Shroud ?”, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology,
was presented for the THE THIRD DALLAS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN: DALLAS, TEXAS, SEPTEMBER 8-11, 2005
http://www.dim.unipd.it/fanti/corona.pdf
By STURP people… So far they have not acknolowed any of the reproduction done so far.
One thing is that STURP reject any work they do not like, other is that is true.
They insist that “color resides only on the topmost fibers at the highest parts of the weave”
yet McCrone reported and published photos where pigments are obvious.
cite “McCrone’s acclaimed work with the Shroud of Turin received world-wide attention in 1978 when he concluded that the Turin Shroud is a medieval painting. This observation was vindicated by radioactive carbon-14 dating techniques in 1988. In 2000, McCrone received the American Chemical Society National Award in Analytical Chemistry for his work on the Turin Shroud and for this enduring patience for the defense of his work for nearly 20 years.”
t,
The Thermochemica Acta scam has already been dealt with: there was no legitimate way in which the alleged samples from the shroud could have been obtained; hence, their provenance simply cannot be trusted; hence, the paper is worthless as evidence.
It’s probably been said before (and it’s really off-topic), but given Christianity’s long stint as a state religion, ya kinda have to figure that whether or not their canon started with the phrase ‘Render unto Caesar’ in it, sooner or later, someone would have got ’round to penciling it in somewhere…
Par for the course (still off the topic, sure, tho’ coming back to the comment at least) really, seein’ as if you’re a mass society shopping for a state religion to keep yer serfs serfs and cheerily plowing the fields for the local aristocracy and for those further up the food chain, Christianity really does make a pretty good case fer itself. ‘Blessed are the poor… No really… So just keep on keepin’ on with that hoe, pal… Yer reward’s in heaven, trust us on this one…’ Not to mention the whole notion that some invisible king you can’t even properly find to hang is allegedly in charge of the whole deal, ultimately…
But then, that’s a near universal, state-religion-wise… Anyway, all ya gotta do is downplay or reinterpret actually problematic stuff ’bout wrestling angels ‘n overcoming the same, or the fact that actually screaming at the god when he’s really being a dick sometimes gets you somewhere (a la Job), and you’ve got yourself a winner. God’s in his heaven. So shut up and plow.
Anyway, all said: despite such strange little contradictions, honestly, there’s like zero surprise the teabaggers ‘ll wrap themselves in scripture as quickly as the flag, in that larger context. The larger context being: that’s what Christianity has been in large swaths of the US, too, despite the founding fathers’ apparent feeling some centuries back it was time to move away from such direct manipulation via popular superstitions…
So serve the empire, serve the gods; it’s long been of a piece. The only mildly complicating factor here is these loons don’t see the current ’emperor’ as legitimate, for various reasons.
(/The main one being, probably: they do not perceive him as being quite sufficiently aggressive for their tastes about screwing over the poor and swearing on the holy book their god wants it that way, too.)
Adding just a teensy coda to what Celtic_Evolution just said, I’ve also always been amused (in that “yes I’m 12” sort of way) that Jesus carefully covered his private parts even in death, in much the same way as the Cardiff Giant.
Hey, does anyone want to participate in the making of The Cardiff Jesus? What a great way to show off the suffering that Christ went through to save us all.
@John Morales and BLF: Thanks for the info/links. Blocked here but I’ll look at them when I get home from work!
@BLF (again)…I seem to remember some experiments done…not trying to Godwin, but didn’t the Nazis do something with putting persons in the crucifixion position with ropes or something, and documented that the main cause of death was asphyxiation? Tried to google info, but work decided to block google today…we have random site blockings and today it seems to be google.
Nothing illustrates the gullibility of relic-believers beter than the shroud of Cadouin.
@John Morales
I did never say that he suffered something that uncounted others did not.
But you make like it or not, there are simply people who believe in his sacrifice.
And there have always been artists with the ambition to transport religious meaning. And for that purpose the shroud does its job quite well.
Once again, this is not my belief, but I do appreciate the shroud as piece of artwork that does this job quite well. And for that it does not matter if it is fake or not.
As has been mention in this thread, the shroud was a work of art. It was not meant to trick anyone. It was not made to be a fraud. It was no more a fraud than the crucifix hanging in the front of a church. It was meant to help the believer see the suffering Jesus went through. At the time the shroud was made, crucifixions were not used as a form of execution (probably because it would be considered sacrilegious).
Someone in the thread questioned the existence of Jesus. There is little doubt that Jesus actually existed. Although the copies of the gospels (including the more recently found gospels) we have today are not as old, the originals were undoubtedly written within a generation of Jesus’ death and the Pauline letters (or at least 7 of them) were written by someone who knew people who knew Jesus. To be a little clearer, we have more proof of the existence of Jesus then we do of the existence of Socrates.
Perhaps, but the copies of the gospels that we have from before Christianity was a state religion include the phrase. My guess is that whether Jesus said it or not, it was included in hopes that the Romans would not see Christianity as a threat to the state.
I find it hard to understand how it’s much of a sacrifice. He’s the all powerful “son of god” so who knows what powers he could use during the event, he knew that he’d be taken to heaven soon after his “death” (that’s not really a death) and if you believe all the nonsense he had a significant reason to market this event to gather converts and make it as fantastic as possible (people love a good show).
If you believe all the bullshit this comes off like some big staged marketing event to gather followers.
meh
That is if you go so far as to believe that the events happened as they supposedly did.
I’ve never heard of that, but all that means is I have never heard of that. I know some horrific “experiments” were done about survival in freezing water, and vastly worse things, so I suppose it’s possible, but nope, sorry, don’t know a thing about any crucifixion-like tortures.
No we don’t. This has been gone over I don’t know how many times in how many posts in how many past threads. The documents pertaining to Jesus’ existence are all self-referencing to one another in an endless evidentiary loop. There is no independent external corroboration for any of it, and there are several known contemporary documents that should have been expect to at least mention Jesus of Nazareth or someone even remotely resembling that description, but do not. While this isn’t proof of the non-existence of a historical Jesus-equivalent as the historical record is naturally incomplete, it is telling.
Wonderful. That is not how it is being presented, nor has that got anything to do with the reason for this thread nor the reason for the prior thread. Let’s not pretend that this whole “shroud as actual relic of Jesus” is something we just invented here.
Factually incorrect.
Undoubtedly? Not so much. I doubt. Many experts doubt. Please provide the citation to the evidence that this is in fact the case. And do you have any idea how silly it is to present, as authoritative claim, anything that itself claims to be at best a tertiary source (Pauline letters)?
Stop using words like “undoubtedly” and “little doubt”. There is doubt aplenty… what there lacks is direct, corroborative, substantiated evidence outside of (heavily revised and re-written) scripture.
I’m not saying Jesus undoubtedly did not exist… I’m saying that there is doubt, and that there is little if any corroborating historical evidence outside of scripture.
Whew… I guess it’s a good thing we haven’t decided to establish a world religion around his existence then…
I know, this has been my little hobby-horse lately… but it keeps coming up!
I am convinced that the standard reading here (that Jesus is intended by the author of Mark [the origin of the story] to be advocating paying taxes to Rome) is a gross misinterpretation. This is one of the so-called controversy stories in Mark, in which Jesus is challenged by his ideological opponents with an attempted “gotcha!” and Jesus fires back with “uh-uh! double-gotcha!”
So, ‘rabbi,’ should we pay our taxes? Jesus asks a coin to be produced (note, not carrying money) and confirms that the image on it is that of Caesar. His response can be construed as unreserved advocacy of paying the Roman tax only if you believe that Jesus goes along with the idea that a man can make something his, and pointedly not God’s, by stamping his image on it. The answer is barbed: sure, go ahead and render everything to Caesar that you consider “his.” (And note the ambiguity: Jesus never says he considers the coin “Caesar’s”.) The existence of a cult of the emperor and the strong Jewish emphasis on aniconic worship are in the background of this little dialoge as well, making it very unlikely that the intention of the author was to have Jesus interpreted in the way he most commonly is.
“Undoubtedly” eh? The dating of the gospels is nowhere near so secure, but even going with the most often agreed upon dating, Mark might be that early. The rest, you’re talking at least two generations, and let me point out: like everyone who takes this line, you’re assuming historicity up front. If Jesus was not historical, there was no death from which to measure from.
Again, you’re assuming there was someone to know. Yes, Paul talks quite a bit about this chap from Jerusalem he calls Cephas, but if you had no knowledge of the gospel tradition, you’d be hard pressed to gather from Paul any indication that this person’s understanding of the Christ was founded on any other basis than his own (mystical visions). Certainly, Paul never uses the term “disciple” or lets on that this Cephas knew a living person, Jesus of Nazareth. And how does a Galilean fisherman end up leading the cult of a crucified criminal in the very city where an implacable imperial power put him to death? Are there no questions about what happened to the body, or whether this dangerous felon might actually be at large? Are there any examples of the followers of an insurrectionist being allowed to operate freely in the name of their dead leader? Putting all this stuff together really doesn’t add up.
To be perfectly clear, we have no “proof” whatsoever for either one.
Yeah me too. Total Christian wankfest, morelike.
And it’s not even as if it did any good – how many other men and women have died in agony since that day, many at the hands of the church?
And anyway, he would have been dead by now, surely.
Xtians – he’s gone, get over it.
As has been mention in this thread, the shroud was a work of art. It was not meant to trick anyone. It was not made to be a fraud.
That does not matter because people have used the piece of clothe to attempt to prove that JC existed. Let me give you a counter example. Gone With The Wind was made as a work of popular art. It was not meant to trick anyone. It was not made to be a fraud. Yet there are people who’s perception of the Antebellum South is colored by that movie, that life was idyllic, that the servants were happy to be there and that the war caused undo suffering.
It hardly matters what the intent was. What matters is what people are now using it for.
I do quite like Arvo Pärt piece about it though
@Crudely Wrott #99: Nerd is blocking argument by aggressively frightening the more timid dumbasses away from pooping on the blog. Or perhaps it’s just Nerd’s good looks leaving us speechless.
It was reported in the news recently that Noah’s Ark may finally have been found somewhere on the slopes of Mount Ararat. To hear someone like Pat Robertson or TBN or other religious news media confidently make such an outlandish claim would not be surprising –it’s par for the course. But this was CNN.
Is a universal flood, a few thousand years ago, even plausible? Does the geological evidence support such a notion? Is it believable that an inhabitant of the Middle East managed to round up representatives of all the species of the earth and house them in his ark (Australian kangaroos and koalas, ring-tailed lemurs from Madagascar, Arctic polar bears, South American sloths, etc.)?
I’m afraid the attempt to recover Noah’s Ark atop Mount Ararat is analogous to embarking on an expedition to the North Pole to search for Santa, his sleigh and his eight tiny reindeer –an exercise in futility. (Incidentally, the Mormon church has been similarly engaged in its own exercise in futility, namely a decades-old archaeological dig in Mesoamerica, where it hopes to unearth evidence that would verify certain statements made in The Book of Mormon).
thomas.paul:
from Zetetic’s NYT link (above:)
“As early as 1389, however, Bishop Pierre D’Arcis reported to Pope Clement VII that the shroud was a fraud, the perpetrator of which had confessed”
We covered this a week or so ago here. It’s a fake.
No.
Not remotely.
I know… just writing that as if it were plausible was difficult, wasn’t it? It’s absurd…
An additional note on the camera obscura:
The two images are out of proportion to one another.
Thank god for the NY Times. Except that we have no clear records of the existence of the shroud prior to the 16th century. The shroud the Bishop was writing about was probably from France but it isn’t clear if that is the shroud of Turin.
Yes, it does matter. If evidence can show that shrouds such as this were commonly made and used in churches then that would be further evidence that this shroud is simply a work of art.
Thanks!
Always glad to be informed of real evidence.
Yes, it does matter. If evidence can show that shrouds such as this were commonly made and used in churches then that would be further evidence that this shroud is simply a work of art.
Good news everybody! It it alright to ignore how people threat the piece of clothe. The only thing that matters is that thomas.paul knows it was made as a work of art.
Please, never let how people are actually acting get in the ways of your ideal view of this.
If evidence can show that shrouds such as this were commonly made and used in churches then that would be further evidence that this shroud is simply a work of art.
The evidence shows that such supposed burial cloths of Jesus were but a small subset of faked relics in which there was a brisk trade throughout Europe during the medieval period.
Wasn’t there another documentary (maybe on NatGeo’s “Is It Real” series) examioning the question of whether DaVinci was the real creator of the Shroud? I think it discussed him possibly using a camera obscura to form a photographic image and why he might have needed two “exposures”; one for the face and one for the body, etc. but I think it also discussed how a photographic image would not have produced an image with apparent 3D information the way the shroud does. And wrapping cloth around a living face or a statue would introduce other distortions not seen in the Shroud. But, by making a shallow bas-relief face in pottery, baking it and then draping the cloth over it and applying gentle pressure, the scorching would produce a 3D like effect when the image is interpreted as heights.
@ Sili:
No problem.
:-)
————————————————————————-
@ t:
Thanks for clearing up the posting question.
As to Rogers’ “proof”, just about everyone else already dealt with that (I did tell you that it had already been addressed up-thread) so I’ll just make a few observations.
First, Rogers’ entire argument boils down to… “well they could have made a mistake”. He then jumps to the unwarranted conclusion that a mistake was made without offering any actual proof that they had made an error. The articles I linked to were merely to save time since they already explained what was wrong with Rogers’ conclusion (and made some supporting citations).
Second, as I (and many others here have already pointed out) even if the radiometric test was invalid it still has no bearing on the shroud’s authenticity. Nor does it have any bearing on the rest of the evidence against the shroud being authentic.
—————
The facts of the matter “t”, are that both the pigments used and the type of cloth are consistent with the 1300’s Europe, at a time when there was a veritable plague of fake shrouds (among other forged holy relics). This is also around the time that the shroud is believed to have first appeared.
Additionally the description in the Bible contradicts the shroud’s design, as was earlier noted by Owlmirror.
Finally, even if the baseless claim that it can’t be duplicated was true, it’s still irrelevant because you’re committing the fallacy of an argument from ignorance. That is why credible evidence linking it to both the time and person of Jesus ‘Haploid’ Christ is the only way to show it’s authenticity.
Good luck with that.
Kel @ #158:
True it is a form of presuppositional argument, and it’s a very common type of argument. We see the same style of arguments from YEC’s, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, etc. It seems to be something inherent in psychological defense mechanisms of those defending irrational beliefs from science.
The point that Mark and Matthew contradict Luke and John on the matter is notable.
If Shroud-ists want to insist that that Mark and Matthew should be held as definitive, I think one possible counter is to point out that in those two, Jesus’ last words on the cross certainly sound like he’s not the same as God.
There’s a reason that many (most? all?) churches prefer John as the definitive, and see the other gospels as “supporting” that work. John is also the only one that includes Jesus saying something even vaguely like a claim to being the same as God. Which then gets us back to the whole homoousia/homoiousia kerfluffle that the Church “won” by basically sitting on everyone that wasn’t on their side of the argument.
Theology: Like Calvinball with words.
Sure, no problem. I was just paraphrasing an online lexical reference, anyway.
===========
I’m not the first, of course.
And don’t forget libertarians ;)
It’s really an odd phenomenon from a critical thinking perspective. Instead of looking for something to be true, just assume it is and then fend off all criticism. Therefore it’s true.
I’ve got to wonder why there’s so much talking about the carbon dating being on the redone pieces (if so, does it still count as Jesus’ burial cloth?) but where’s the carbon dating showing a date from the 1st century CE? There isn’t that, all they are doing is casting doubt on the doubt and failing to recognise they need to build a positive case to begin with. All evidences we know of point to a ~13th century origin, an a priori assumption of truth is completely unjustified.
just something interesting I found…
The proof that was offer that the C14 sample from the Shroud is a medioeval repair.. is the paper:
“EVIDENCE FOR THE SKEWING OF THE C-14 DATING OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN DUE TO REPAIRS
BY JOSEPH G. MARINO AND M. SUE BENFORD”
Acording to this paper,the evidence came from a new imaging device:
“However, we have recently discovered compelling empirical evidence regarding an
image-formation process, named “QuantaGraphy®,” which reproduces many, if not all, of
the key characteristics of the Shroud, including reproduction of spatially-encoded 3-D
images. This new evidence, which involves an area of research that STURP member, the
late Dr. John Heller, gave credence to (“Radio Waves Found to Affect Cell Behaviour”,
1959 and “Effects of Radio Waves gets Wider Laboratory Study”, 1959), as did Dr. Alan
Adler (Adler, 1999), strongly suggests that a non-ionizing radiation was involved in the
image-formation process and did not affect the C-14 content.”
What the hell is “QuantaGraphy®,”…
Well fasten your seatbelts:
The effectiveness of radionic techniques (QuantaGraphy®)is attributed to the creation of an energetic/informational instrumental bridge between operator and target, which presumably facilitates the “tuning” (amplification? LS) of the operator’s perceptive abilities. It is suggested that the basis for such healing and similar distant interactions is a universal field (like the quantum potential) to which individual Brain-Mind-Consciousness complexes are connected, which have the ability to resonate with target information (become entangled with the target) either via sensory contact or an icon sufficiently representing the target (coordinate? LS). The prerequisite need for human intention/anticipation as part of this model makes it imperative that future research focus on designing new methods to calibrate and control such “intangible” mental inputs.
ouch…. such abuse of words hurts…
http://www.emergentmind.org/paper_reviews.htm
And this mumbo jumbo science… is the science of the church of sindonology…
@ 216,
unfortunately for the religious folks, even “shroud of Turin being dated to 33AD and DNA on shroud confirmed to be from Jesus”, does not mean “therefore judeo-christian god and all other gods are rubbish, so take that muslims and atheists”.
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