More telling than the enormous number of Christians, many of them in this very group, who accept the obvious fact that the “shroud” is a fraud? Exactly how is this guy’s opinion more telling than that?
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Straw man. Evolution is not random change.
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I’d start with RNA.
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Hi Faizal
Do you think you can defend this claim? This “fact” is no longer obvious to me given the presentation I posted above and some subsequent research that the shroud contained real blood and the carbon dating had issues.
Even in the fundamentalist Bible college I attended back in the late 70’s, the majority opinion was fraud. There was more interest in the scholastic arguments.
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That you think expertise in photography is of any relevance whatsoever in evaluating an artifact that is alleged to be 2000 years old is really amusing.
Remind us: Exactly how many STURPers had any expertise whatsoever in archaeology, ancient textiles, medieval art and/or art of the pre-Christian era? TIA!
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As expected, no evidence provided that the shroud is genuine, just demands that others prove it isn’t.
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I’ll pop my head into this conversation as a Christian who, upon first hearing of the Shroud, thought it obviously must be a forgery. I’m actually not so sure of that now. I haven’t done a deep dive into the evidence myself, but a couple years back I came across this document shared in an online apologetics group. It made me think that it might just be possible that the Shroud is authentic.
The very brief summary is that the historical evidence suggests that it may be possible to trace the origin of the Shroud to earlier than the medieval period, and some aspects of its make and composition fit more comfortably in first-century Palestine than in medieval Europe.
(The weakest part of the above document, I think, is the posited theory that the image on the Shroud was formed from some kind of radiation released from Christ’s body at the moment of resurrection, which also messed with the C14 age of the material. Possible? Sure. But why would God make it so that the image formed from miraculously-emitted radiation which also confounded the evidence for the image’s authenticity, rather than just miraculously forming the image directly on the cloth? Its weird.)
I’m on the fence, but I’ll leave it here if anyone is interested.
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Following on my earlier comment that my experience from the 70’s, even before the carbon dating took place, that the majority of fundamentalists shrugged off the shroud as fraudulent, I checked the CMI and AiG sites.
Matthew Cserhati, Robert Carter - Is the Shroud of Turin Authentic?
Due to several lines of evidence, we think that the Shroud of Turin is not the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
Mark Looy - According to the Bible, It’s not Shrouded in Mystery at All!
Thus, there really is no need for endless conferences on the Shroud that present scholarly papers year after year in an effort to defend the Shroud’s authenticity… If these theological scholars and students of the Shroud were to simply read the authoritative Word of God, they would come to the realization that the Shroud is not authentic.
Bodie Hodge - Problematic Apologetics
The Bible, read carefully in context, rules out the Shroud of Turin as Jesus’s burial cloth.
Bodie Hodge - Testing the Shroud of Turin
Without clear evidence of such an item existing in the biblical accounts, there’s no reason to accept it as authentic.
So even Bodie of AiG rejects the legitimacy of the Shroud of Turin, and this is from a guy who accepts that St. George dispatched a fire breathing dragon all in a historical day’s work. Yes, the shroud has supporters, but is widely rejected by literalist Christians. Christians more accepting of science and carbon dating almost entirely reject its authenticity.
The lack of evangelical enthusiasm for the Shroud is not really theologically surprising; after all the reformation was born of the reaction to fund raising for St. Peter’s Basilica through selling of indulgences and travelling relic shows. Christianity has always wrestled with relics and icons, by some regarded as touchstones of faith, and by others castigated as idolatry.
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Hi Bill,
Regarding the dating issue, are you aware that a new technology has recently been implemented that supports the thesis that the Shroud is 2,000 years old.
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Decades after that evidence was provided, evidence that has convinced everyone who is assessing this question with a fair and open mind. So since anyone who still believes in the “shroud” has shown themselves to be impervious to evidence, why should anyone want to provide them with even more evidence?
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Hi Ron
If you have not looked at the Vatican presentation I have posted above you will see that a specific claim of Carter is answered. It explains why the blood remained red. There also is a head cover (Sudarium) that appears to match the Shroud.
“Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself ”
The new evidence that Gil posted should also be taken into account.
Physical evidence trumps historical speculation. If the “shroud” was real, then the image on it would look like this:
And also, um, CARBON DATING, FFS!
[Mod edit to reduce image size, helping those on mobile devices]
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Ah, of course. We don’t like the results of all the testing so far, so let’s make up some completely new “technology” that we can manipulate the answer we WANT to get, and pretend that answer is real.
Sure, makes total sense.
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Hi Gil
Very interesting. How much influence has this had on the community and skeptics?
Things are not as simple as you think they are. First, there are historical evidences that the shroud predates medieval ages. Second, a new technology has recently been applied that supports the shroud being 2000 years old (see 10). And finally, an interesting and testable hypothesis exists that could solve the carbon dating problem. See below:
Hi Ron
If you have not looked at the Vatican presentation I have posted above you will see that a specific claim of Carter is answered. It explains why the blood remained red. There also is a head cover (Sudarium) that appears to match the Shroud and it resides in Spain.
Gospel of John
“Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself ”
The new evidence that Gil posted about dating should also be taken into account.
Did you read the original paper by de Caro et al. If you did you would have noticed something important (hint: it is obvious in their Figure 2). At no point in their analysis do they compare the shroud sample to a textile known to come from the 1300s. Now, why do you think that might be?
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The only “problem” with the carbon dating result is that a bunch of cranks and crackpots refuse to accept it.
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