No one’s denying any of the paltry evidence you don’t focus on. Your refusal to focus on the evidence is a tacit admission that it hasn’t even convinced you.
The papers are ludicrous.
You’ve made your intent to deceive perfectly clear. For some reason (I hypothesize weak faith), you desperately want to see this particular graven image as genuine.
There may be differences between Canada and the US, but I’m pretty sure that he is a Doctor of Medicine who specializes in psychiatry.
Do you claim that you didn’t try to falsely claim that Fanti was a credible authority on the shroud:
Your claim made Fanti’s expertise and credibility a legitimate point of contention. In legal parlance you ‘opened the door’ to the issue.
It was only after I demolished any pretensions Fanti had to expertise or credibility that you started whining about the fact. I will note that you carefully avoid addressing the evidence against him. Know any bridal boutiques that are also publishers of serious science Bill?
I would note that I did that after I had already demolished the contents of Fanti’s incompetent, inexpert, dishonest ‘Missing Nitrogen’ paper – the blatant flaws of which Bill has failed to address or acknowledge.
The problem with this claim is that, with the possible exception of Gil, everybody on this threadknows you are a liar Bill. At this stage, and after your long, long, long history of dishonesty on this forum, it is not so much an “accusation” as a blatantly self-evident fact.
You have only yourself to blame for your own lack of credibility on this forum, and for the fact that the ubiquitously-defective sources you cite are dismissed (not infrequently preemptively).
How were these two samples for vanillin testing taken? Were they taken by the same method? Were they taken from intrinsic shroud material or loose debris?
All of those factors could significantly alter results in a manner unrelated to the age of carbon dating sample and the rest of the shroud.
Meacham, with his BA in Theological Studies, and working in “Serials/Electronic Resources/Rights Management”, would seem to be lacking the ability to authoritatively summarise the comparative anatomy literature.
It seems likely that in the last 120 years the field of comparative anatomy has become considerably more rigorous. In fact I note that even the most recent paper Meacham lists dates back to 1981, more than forty years ago, and well before the availability of computing power, and ease of access to electronic databases, would have allowed rigorous statistical, rather than mere eyeball/subjective, analysis of the shroud’s image, in the context of known human variation.
In this context, I would see an expert (and peer-reviewed) review article or, better yet, a wholesale re-examination using modern techniques and data, as being far more compelling than Meacham’s inexpert summary of outdated findings.
Please tell me how dignified, intellectually serious, honest Christians who professed that
Jesus « descended from heaven; By the Holy Spirit, he took flesh from the Virgin Mary, and became man. Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, he suffered his passion and was buried. He rose again on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven; he is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory, to judge the living and the dead; and his reign will have no end » could be frustrated with the idea that the shroud may well be authentic ?
So you are suggesting that I am dishonest! You realize that regarding the issue discussed here, I cannot be both credulous and dishonest, right? So what do you really think. Am I credulous ? Am I dishonest ? If I am credulous, why are you suggesting that I am dishonest ? If I am dishonest, why you accused me of being credulous ? Isn’t it bad faith to accuse the same person of two contradictory charges?
Ultimately this is best replied to by those who are both. However, this is exactly the sort of disservice Puck was talking about you doing. Instead of recognizing and respecting that the Shroud issue is a you-issue, you are trying to draw dividing all dignified, intellectually serious, and honest Christians from the rest of us, even though on the matter of the Shroud, you are just as opposed to them as you are to the rest of us. In fact, were it not for the handful occasions someone would mention their Christianity or lack thereof, you couldn’t tell the difference on the basis of the things they say regarding the Shroud. This is because the authenticity of that specific medieval cloth is not a doctrinal issue.
And yet, the brush you paint with makes it so people who otherwise share your faith come to need to distance themselves from the foolishness that is your insistence that a cloth that is demonstrably a dozen centuries too young “may well be” authentic. Your challenge is to explain how reasonable people wouldn’t want to have an unreasonable position assigned to them. You are saying, in essence, that a complete abandonment of critical faculties or intellectual honesty is or should be considered a necessary part of being a Christian of any description (to which the creed applies, at any rate), and that one is somehow a lesser Christian (if one at all) for being more discerning than not at all. And in the same breath you say something so insulting both to Christianity as a religion, and to its adherents, you wonder why an adherent might take issue with it.
That’s a bit of a stretch - Meacham says the body has no observable defects, not the image.
I think it more likely that Meacham meant there were no defects apart from those caused by crucifixion - which he wouldn’t have been able to confirm. It smacks of circular reasoning - the shroud is an image of Jesus, who would have no defects, therefore the shroud shows no defects, therefore it’s an image of Jesus. But if Jesus could be scarred by torture and crucifixion, he could equally well have been scarred earlier in life.[1]
Yes - among other problems, the facial features are displaced, the eyes being far too high compared to the top of the head.
@Giltil (like Meacham) has ignored this, and responded only to the more trivial issues…
Circumcision? If the shroud didn’t have the hands (in)conventiently placed, the shroudies would be checking. ↩︎
Since there’s less reason to study the shroud if you think it’s a fake, most medical experts and anatomists that have studied the shroud would already think it was genuine.
So you’re just saying that people who think the shroud is real, conclude that the shroud is real.
That’s true. Most of today’s experts wouldn’t have placed the eyes that close to the top of the head.
I am surprised you are joining the herd mentality here to discredit those who disagree with you.
I think your problem John is you are an ideologue who pretends that evidence is important. I have rarely seen you support your claims to any depth that I would expect from a research scientist.
I can attack all the herd skeptics here as they are very vulnerable to attack or we can have some real discussions as @Art Hunt has initiated with the Vanillin test that Ray Rogers has offered.
Yes. It’s similar to how most of the writings about Bigfoot, Atlantis, Elvis’s post-mortem sightings, etc. are by people who are convinced these things are real. Some real scientists did take the “shroud” seriously enough to carbon date it, and in so doing settled, once and for all, the issue of its supposed authenticity. That leaves only unqualified, incapable, and/or hopelessly biased crackpots among the people still inclined to take is seriously (other than a few who have decided to take the time to debunk their claims e.g. Hugh Farey.)
I am not surprised that you would engage in further deceit with comments like that.
I am a scientist who knows that evidence is the foundation of science.
Bill, you have utterly failed to follow any evidence to the minimum depth required to understand it. Whether that failure is a product of stubborn refusal or intellectual ability (not mutually exclusive) doesn’t really matter.
For example, how many variants of human MYH7 have been shown to exist? How does your ID hypothesis explain that number? You have claimed that it made you think. What is the product of that thought?
You rarely see depth because you stubbornly remain in the shallow end of the knowledge pool.
