Shroud of Turin redivivus - Not following where the evidence leads

[Tim]

@colewd

@Roy

If that were true, you would have a date and error range from the WAXS method.

We have dates of linen with know dates that show the method is reasonably accurate.

This is a false claim Bill. As Roy has pointed out, and as I further impressed upon you:

WAXS provides no independent dates!

All WAXS does is provide evidence that suggests that some fabrics may be older than others (all other things being equal). It does not (and most probably cannot) [see addendum below] provide independent dates. The dates in question come from other dating methods being performed on comparator samples.

Addendum: Correction:

A closer examination of De Caro et al 2019 (‘X-ray Dating of Ancient Linen Fabrics’) indicates that they do (at equation 8) offer an (unvalidated) method of date estimation.

However, I can see nowhere where De Caro et al 2022 (‘X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud’s Linen Sample’) performs this equation for the shroud. The only dating appears to be by comparison to the Carbon-dating dates for samples A, D, FII & LII.

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@colewd

The waxes test shows almost certainly there is a contamination problem with the carbon sample.

Why not the other way around, that the carbon dating invalidates the waxes test?

@colewd

The waxes primary uncertainty comes from temperature variation.

Even if there is any promise in the technique, there remain a multitude of other factors which need to be controlled. Humidity varies markedly. Has the correlation of scattering against thread tension and width while spinning and looming been examined? Has the effect of storage of flax been examined? Has the variation of growing climate and plant variety been examined? Coarse, heavy cloth against the silky fine cloth?

As it stands, it is not ruled out that a scattering trend could be contrived using four samples of cloth made in 2025.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Tim

I think it is time for some (more) MATH Bill. If you want to claim that the shroud is 12-13 centuries older, then you have to show the math as to how this is possible. What percentage of contamination, what date of contamination, and calculations showing that this would give the date that Carbon Dating found.

@colewd can’t do maths. At all. Not even 3rd-grade^[1] maths like basic subtraction:

490 - 115 = 385
30000 - 28850 = 250

I doubt @colewd has posted a single calculation, no matter how trivial, that wasn’t wrong^[2] - yet you want him to delve into percentages and exponential curves? Are you trolling for miscalculations?

---

1. US grades. Equivalent of primary school level in the UK. ↩︎

2. @colewd: Feel free to provide a counter-example - if one exists. ↩︎

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@colewd

@Roy

If that were true, you would have a date and error range from the WAXS method.

We have dates of linen with know dates that show the method is reasonably accurate. Again if the shroud was of the 14th century it would have spent its life a low temperature and would show little degradation.

You don’t have any dates from the WAXS method. Not a single one. You have absolutely nothing to show that the method is accurate.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Roy

I doubt @colewd has posted a single calculation, no matter how trivial, that wasn’t wrong[2] - yet you want him to delve into percentages and exponential curves? Are you trolling for miscalculations?

@colewd can’t. But these guys can. And look what they found. (This is a 9 hour video, but I’ve time stamped the excerpts to the appropriate sections).

Unravelling The Shroud of Turin | Bad Apologetics 30

Also, as previously mentioned, Fantis’ technique is so dependent on temperature that if he is off by just a few degrees in his (very imprecise) estimate, it produces an age consistent with the C-14 dating.

Unravelling The Shroud of Turin | Bad Apologetics 30

I look forward to responses from Bill that deal with these objections.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@RonSewell

Why not the other way around, that the carbon dating invalidates the waxes test?

Hi Ron
Good question. Both tests have error issues carbon mainly contamination and WAXS mainly temperature. The carbon date says the linen is from the 14th century. If the linen is from the 14th century the known chain of custody is France and Italy which have lower temperatures than Egypt which are some of the controls.

If you look at the paper that Faizil posted Hugh Farey had to assume chain of custody beyond France and Italy to argue that a higher temperature was responsible for the breakdown in the linen fibers.

The is a big challenge to validity of the carbon date being 14th century.

@RonSewell

Even if there is any promise in the technique, there remain a multitude of other factors which need to be controlled. Humidity varies markedly.

Humidity is a factor but much less of one than temperature in the model. The biggest assumption in the WAXS model is the storage temperature.

[Faizal_Ali]

@colewd

If you look at the paper that Faizil posted Hugh Farey had to assume chain of custody beyond France and Italy to argue that a higher temperature was responsible for the breakdown in the linen fibers.

Wrong. Among other things, he showed that de Fantis’s groups own data provides dates that contradict their own data when applied to the other samples from which the calibration curves were drawn. e.g. the Masada fabric, which should have an aging factor of 0.7 by de Fantis’s method, actually had one that went of the scale of the chart.

That’s pretty funny, don’t you think? What a bunch of clowns.

@colewd

Humidity is a factor but much less of one than temperature in the model. The biggest assumption in the WAXS model is the storage temperature.

Yeah. They decided that the average temp and humidity in the entire country provided an accurate measure of this. How ridiculous. Especially when most of their samples for calibration were drawn from mummies that had laid in tombs for centuries.