They’re just proteins so of course they do.
I assume this would depend on a host of factors, so I can’t speak to whether any putatively left on the shroud would be detectable after so much time.
Yes, when enough of the antibodies have decayed that there is no visible clumping of the sample material when exposed to antigens.
Even if this is true, which it may not be since you are citing the Daily Mail, all you are saying is that some atheists are as gullible as you are.
This isn’t convincing.
It does absolutely nothing to even suggest there is a serious case in favour of the authenticity thesis. Instead, it suggests there is no such case, because if there was you’d be providing that case, not proffering stuff like this.
Indicating that the Shroud of Turin is not Jesus’ burial cloth:
Favouring the suggestion that the Shroud of Turin is Jesus’ burial cloth:
I can’t see where @Puck_Mendelssohn has suggested anything of the sort, though he can certainly clarify for himself.
For myself, I would say that belief in the authenticity of the “shroud” can only result from some combination of ignorance, stupidity and/or bias. I don’t believe Christians are any more or less likely than others to demonstrate these attributes, though on this particular question they are probably more likely to be influenced by bias than other people would be.
You have been doing a far better job than I could ever do of demonstrating that, by the fact that every source to which you resort is knee-slappingly, forehead-slappingly, howlingly foolish.
No, I am familiar with pseudoscience promoted by all sorts, not just by Christians. And you have certainly shown Rolfe to be such a fool by noting his support for this horribly-evidenced matter. But that someone with exceptionally poor judgment could believe in the authenticity of the “shroud” doesn’t help your case. I think what you would need, were the question not already completely settled, would be some sort of evidence. The various straws at which you have grasped have each, in their turn, been shown to be worse than useless for that purpose.
Now, while it is not a strictly logical proposition, there are some observations about the nature of gullibility that do bear on the credibility of the “shroud’s” authenticity. What one notices, when witnessing arguments on which there is some legitimate and credible dispute, is that the people on both sides tend not to call upon bad evidence and bad arguments. Having good evidence and arguments to hand, they rely on those instead. When what one sees is what you’ve been demonstrating here – that you know of no evidence worth a damn and no argument for the authenticity which is even remotely plausible – it is a fair bet that no such evidence or arguments are available, because if such evidence or arguments were available, you’d use those instead of this less-than-worthless garbage about neutron bombardments and the like. And so gullibility does feed back, in a certain sense, to the merits.
Another indicator would appear to be an unwillingness to engage the strongest evidence against their arguments, as with @Giltil’s repeated invocation of supporters of the ‘Patch’/‘Repair’ argument (such as Roger and Rolfe), but being unwilling to engage with:
The only “issue” here is that Fanti was basing his conclusions on “samples” that were nothing more than loose debris vacuumed off the shroud – meaning that their contents were far more likely to be random contaminants than anything intrinsic to the shroud.
This appears to have meant that we have gotten a great deal of flaked-off gold leaf (which would have been alloyed with a small amount of copper for strength), and some rust (whose reddish-brown colour could lead the mixture to being mistaken for blood), silica dust (from being stored in stone buildings) and chalk powder.
This renders these samples irrelevant with respect to the shroud’s origins, and any conclusions about the shroud based on these samples fallacious.
This in turn renders Fanti’s paper worthless.
And soot from centuries of candles.
I note that Jull and Freer-Waters are not as confident as you are regarding the idea that their work definitely invalidates Rogers’ conclusion that the samples subjected to the radiocarbon dating experiment differed from the main body of the shroud, as can be seen from their conclusion below:
« We assume that there will be future studies of the shroud of Turin. Any such future sampling should include another sample of the shroud away from the previous area sampled. In our opinion, such a study would be useful to confirm the previous result and should include both textile analysis and C14 measurements »
Also, you accuse me of not having engaged with Jull’s paper, but in fact I did engage with it in the sense that I noted that it didn’t engage with what appears to me as the most interesting argument in Rogers’ paper, ie., the vanillin test (see 208, 231 and 240).
Right. It’s a mystery why another carbon dating haven’t been done then. It’s not like the shroud would magically stop existing if another tiny piece, or ten more for that matter, were to be subjected to carbon dating.
Though not necessary for another carbon dating, you could in principle, to really settle the matter, cut off half a centimeter of the shroud all the way around the edge and it would not affect the image at all, supposing here it’s the purported Jesus-image portion of the shroud that makes believers think the shroud is important/holy/sacred. Just so you could do 50 more carbon dates.
What is the excuse for not carbon dating it again even once?
Indeed, there would seem to be no risk. If the freak neutron flash theory that transmuted nitrogen into gold somehow ever got on the table in the first place, surely a bunch of further dates within the same 13th-14th century range wouldn’t settle the issue one way or the other.
We present a photomicrographic investigation of a sample of the Shroud of Turin, split from one used in the radiocarbon dating study of 1988 at Arizona. In contrast to other reports on less-documented material, we find no evidence to contradict the idea that the sample studied was taken from the main part of the shroud, as reported by Damon et al. (1989). We also find no evidence for either coatings or dyes, and only minor contaminants. [My emphasis]
So you “did engage with it in the sense” that you completely ignored both it, and its main area of focus, because that area of focus did not overlap the area of Roger’s paper that you were interested in discussing – his unvalidated, and thus presumptively unreliable, purported “vanillin test”. (I would also note that the post numbers you gave were pervasively inaccurate.)
So you did not engage with it at all.
“It didn’t engage with” the vanillin test, because that test has no direct relevance to the question of whether “the sample studied was taken from the main part of the shroud” and whether there is “evidence for either coatings or dyes”.
That you found this to be “the most interesting” part of Roger’s paper is likewise irrelevant.
So now I not only “accuse [you] of not having engaged with Jull’s paper”, I also accuse you of prevaricating about it afterwards.
To recap:
We have no evidence (and in fact evidence to the contrary) that the carbon dating samples were taken from a ‘patched’ or ‘repaired’ section of the shroud, or was unduely dyed or otherwise significantly contaminated.
We have no evidence that the presence of cotton fibres is problematical.
We have no evidence that the ‘vanillin test’ is a valid dating method.
We have no evidence that the illustration in the Pray Codex is a representation of the shroud.
We have no evidence that the shroud was the same artifact as the ‘Image of Edessa’ (and similar reports).
We have no evidence that the shroud and the Sudarium of Oviedo have any connection to each other.
We have no evidence that either contained blood that was of type ‘AB’, as opposed to merely lacking any (viable) antigens (either due to degradation, or simply not containing actual blood).
We have no evidence that there was a neutron radiation spike.
We have no evidence that the the vacuumed-shroud-debris samples ever contained a substance that might have been expected to contain nitrogen – so likewise no evidence that any nitrogen was ‘missing’.
(I may have missed a few, but that seems enough to go on with.)
So tell us again how accepting the shroud as authentic is “follow[ing] the evidence”.
No, they are not unequivocal in their rejection of the patch /repair hypothesis, not at all. They simply claim that they found no evidence for it. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I disagree. Rogers has presented evidences.
I disagree. Rogers has provided evidence that the vanillin test may work, although I agree that it needs confirmation by others.
I disagree on these 3 points
I didn’t investigate this issue yet, so I am neutral on it at this point.
Agree
There are plenty of evidences that the shroud is authentic, so much that I don’t have the courage to explain them all here. But for those interested in finding out more, here’s a very useful source below:
So every reason to not advance it, then.
Yes, it is.
Damn. Well, that’s too bad. Alright, looking forward to the next “issue” you’ll choose the least defensible position on. Take care.
Now you’re just playing pathetic word games. 
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence
Thus, lacking evidence (after Jull and Freer-Waters conscientious search), the ‘patch’/‘repair’ claim can be unequivocally rejected.
In the same way, I could unequivocally reject the claim that you are an alien lizard-person. 
Has he? Much of the claims he makes in his paper appears to be vague hearsay – neither substantiated by an explicitly cited source, nor by first-hand observation.
Add to that the “home laboratory” environment under which he conducted his experiments, and the unclear provenance of the (apparently purloined) samples he was using, and it hardly rates as “evidence”.
Emphasis on the word “may”. Unlike carbon-dating it has not been validated. Also unlike carbon dating, as it relies on chemical, rather than nuclear, reactions, it is vulnerable to environmental factors – meaning that it is inherently less reliable.
This means that the only thing it would appear to have going for it is that it gave Rogers the answer he wanted. It might be appropriate to rename it from “the vanillin test” to “Rogers’ I really really *really want to believe the shroud is authentic test”.
Addendum: on the lack of “confirmation”, the lack of interest in this ‘test’ in the 20-odd years since Rogers’ publication would appear to further indicate that it wasn’t so much a serious method of dating so much as a desperate attempt to manufacture doubt.
Given that neither you nor Bill have presented any evidence supporting this disagreement, I feel no qualms about dismissing it out of hand.
Could it be that your lack of “courage” is due to the fact that they are all so flimsy, unsubstantiated, speculative and/or based on wishful-thinking, that you expect them to be immediately demolished?
How is it “useful”? Does it present hard evidence, or simply parrot a laundry-list of authenticist claims? Who is “Joseph G. Marino” that we should put any trust in his claims? His Amazon bio doesn’t appear to suggest anything even remotely resembling expertise or objectivity:
Joseph Marino has a B.A. in Theological Studies from St. Louis University and is a long-time sindonologist (one who studies the Shroud of Turin). He has researched, written and lectured extensively on the Shroud since 1977. He currently works at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Just yet another credulous, ill-qualified authenticity-fanatic.
Addendum: I tracked Marino down at OSU – he is (or was) apparently a " Library Associate I in Serials/Electronic Resources/Rights Management" rather than an academic, and appears to be mentioned by that institution solely in connection to his shroud efforts.
So you disagree that there is no evidence, but haven’t provided any evidence.
It certainly is. On the hypothesis that a bolide impact on the parking lot outside caused the sound of an explosion coming from the parking lot, me failing to find the impact crater despite looking thoroughly for it would be evidence against the hypothesis that the explosion sound was caused by a bolide impact.
Stated more generally, if we have reason to expect evidence for hypothesis X if hypothesis X is true, then not finding this evidence is evidence against the hypothesis.
I will quote, without further comment, part of that article’s abstract, just as further evidence of the laughably low standards shroud authenticists hold for what they consider to be scholarship:
I can think of at least one skeptic who will maintain that all of the data laid out below combined is much ado about nothing, despite the fact that with three of the researchers alone cited below (Jackson, Wilson and Antonacci), they have the studied the Shroud for about a combined 135 years. Let’s put this in relatable terms. If you had a medical condition, and there were three doctors with a combined 135 years experience pertaining to your problem, and there was a single doctor with say, about 10 years of experience who had the opposite view of the three, whose opinion do you think you would tend to trust? It should also be noted that Jackson was the co-founder of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), which conducted five days of hands-on investigation. Most skeptics base their opinions just on what they have read. Jackson has probably spent about 50,000 hours in his lifetime studying the Shroud.
Hi Gil
I agree the neutron theory is not well developed at this point and Fanti’s summary below from 2024 does not highlight it. I don’t agree that the samples that show no measured nitrogen content are not blood as there is too much other evidence for the blood on the shroud being real as the paper you cited shows blood components detected such as haemoglobin. Fanti in the 2024 paper below reviews all the non destructive age testing that contradict the carbon 14 test results. I will also attach the skeptic Hugh Farey’s (person @Faizal_Ali cited) counter argument which admits Fanti’s work has increased likelihood of the shroud containing real blood.
Fanti shroud science overview.pdf (4.4 MB)
From Farey’s review of Fantis paper.
Research on the Shroud supported by scientific data and appropriate microphotographs is to be commended, and I wish more people were able to investigate it with the specificity and equipment that Fanti has been able to. I think he is to be commended for his work, and although I do not find that it supports authenticity, it does contribute to the probability that the alleged blood on the Shroud really is blood.