There are a plethora of observations that point to the authenticity of the shroud but nearly only one, the carbon dating, that points to the opposite conclusion. Given that there are good evidence the the carbon dating was not valid for determining the age of the shroud (see below), if we are to follow the evidence wherever it lead, at this stage, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the shroud is authentic.
So this is where they claim this wasn’t the original shroud that was carbon dated, but some piece that was added to it in a repair?
Cool story bro. Send original samples to independent carbon dating laboratories then.
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Speaking of cool stories…
All of the microscopy and wet-chemical work was done in
the author’s home laboratory.
Unsurprisingly, sure enough as soon as anyone with an actually appropriate setup looked into it, they found the exact same problem that plagues every other “home lab”: A lack of control/protection against contamination:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tca.2015.08.002
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Not true. If there were, people wouldn’t be looking for more, and you wouldn’t need to serve up so much rubbish.
Not true. Many other reasons have been discussed on this forum, in threads you have partaken in.
Not true.
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The people who selected the sample to carbon date expected to get a much older date. They were satisfied they had a suitable sample - until the results were produced.
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No-one mentioned any possibility of the selected sample not being part of the shroud until after the results were produced.
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If it were true that they dated the wrong sample, then dating a better sample would show this, and shroud afficionados would be insisting the test be redone on a more appropriate sample. But none of them are. Instead they are looking for alternative dating mechanisms that are less accurate and easier to fudge.
Piffle.
You aren’t following the evidence, you’re discarding evidence until you find something you like.
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I studied at a fundamentalist Bible college back in the 70’s, well before the carbon dating. Even back then and there, nearly all staff and students considered it to be just another fake relic and a theological golden calf. The carbon dating only confirmed that assessment.
Have any of the methodologies underlying this “plethora of observations” been validated to the same degree as carbon dating? If not, then they should receive a low weighting in weighing the evidence – i.e. they are not “good evidence”.
But this is not “good evidence” Gil
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It has already been discredited by the journal that originally published it (see @Gisteron’s link above).
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It’s aging methodology does not appear to have been extensively validated.
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By its own admission, the article is only presenting “preliminary estimates”.
So let me correct your claim for you:
Given that there are [very marginal] evidence the the carbon dating was not valid for determining the age of the shroud (see below), if we are to follow [our prejudices blindly], at this stage, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the shroud is authentic.
There would seem to be only three options available that actually follow the evidence:
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Accept the original carbon dating, as being the only observation that follows an adequately validated methodology for dating an artifact of this age.
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If you have doubts about (1), repeat the carbon dating, but with more rigorous controls in place.
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Get an alternative methodology validated to at least the same standard as carbon dating.
Doing anything else is quite simply not "follow[ing] the evidence!
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Hi Ron
I think you should take a fresh look at the evidence.
-The image and no real explanation for its origin
-The blood type matching the Sudarium
-The pollen data showing a chain of custody including Palestine
-Alternative age testing with all 4 papers including -2000 years in the range
Hi Bill.
That is not “evidence”, just a bunch of unsubstantiated assertions.
“I think you should take a fresh look at” why you bother posting here.
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I’ve looked at this in the past, and did not find those arguments rigorous or convincing then, and I expect nothing has changed. They have that “Ancient Mysteries” type TV series characteristic where some maverick Dr. Brainiac proves Atlantis was an advanced civilization and aliens built the pyramids.
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There is a tradition some seem to have been raised with, of treating discussions like debates; like a sport, where all sides are listing points and these points are added to a score, and at the end one is declared a victor over the other. Unfortunately, however, many of the rest of us assume – on the outset, at least – that all of us are being earnest here, and take the topic seriously, and argue with sincerity, in a real search of actual answers.
The apparent age of the cloth is not just one point on the score board to be tallied by the end. If it is the case, that the artifact is too young to have existed at the time of the events it is alleged to be a remnant of, that completely precludes the claim. No amount of other minutia can remedy this, no matter how compelling any of them would be[1] in the absence of a chemically determined age. By all means one could and should call into question the correctness of that date (and one has, unsuccessfully), but bringing up anything else unrelated is a complete waste of time for anybody actually sincerely interested in the facts here. Until the date can be conclusively dismissed, there is nothing here to talk about.
and none of those you present would be, even if we were to take your word for their accuracy: “We don’t know how X happened” is not evidence of anything, especially not if there are numerous candidate explanations; the odds of matching blood type AB is something like 1:20, which is frankly not all that remarkable; nor is that a linen cloth wrapping a corpse at a time right in the middle of the crusades should have Palestinian pollen traces on it ↩︎
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Have you taken a look at Raymond Rogers paper (see post 1) showing that the sample used for the carbon dating was not part of the original cloth of the shroud of Turin? And when assessing it, please consider that Rogers, an international renowned chemist, was initially very skeptical of the thesis he ended up supporting in his paper, simply because of the weight of the scientific evidence he gathered. IOW, he just followed the evidence where it lead, free of any religious bias.
So, in other words, over and above (or, perhaps, instead of?) following the evidence on its own, Ron should in your opinion consider things that have zero relevancy to the case, like a prior investigator’s reputation, or alleged opinions on the matter at different stages of their life and investigation.
Why?
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Hi Ron
There is new evidence and it changed me from a skeptic based on carbon dating to believing the shroud is most likely real. The pivot has been the blood evidence matching two relics, new dating techniques and the DNA pollen evidence.
The origin of the image has always been hard to explain as a potential forgery.
It seems that Roger’s claims are very much in doubt. A later analysis of the sample dated at the University of Arizona found that it was undyed linen.
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Hard cringe.
Can you please just stop with this pathetic credentials inflation you do every time some academic regurgitates a conclusion you agree with? The fact is you don’t give a damn about credentials at all and we know this beyond all shadow of doubt since you simply just ignore it when expert opinion goes against what you believe.
You ONLY EVER harp on this silly renown, prestige, and esteem thing when the person you are quoting can be invoked to somehow support something you already believe.
What’s even worse is you have genuinely no idea whether or to what degree any particular subject matter expert should be considered of particular competence in some field. You thought John Sanford was among the worlds foremost experts in population genetics, and he’s a literal nobody in that particular field.
It’s honestly getting unseemly.
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Ahh but are these authors renowned, work at prestigious institutions, and esteemed among their peers? 
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Hi Tim
How do you define evidence and why is the image, the blood type, and pollen type not evidence?
A J Timothy Jull also appears to be an internationally renowned chemist.
What can we do?
I have already explicitly answered that on another thread:
Your claims about “the image, the blood type, and pollen type” are not evidence, firstly because you merely make assertions about them, you never cite any verifiable facts (specific articles, etc).
An example is the “Sudarium” – which you have wittered on and on and on and on about, without ever presenting verifiable facts to back up your claim.
The second reason is that you fail to demonstrate that any verifiable facts, if they even exist, are dispositive. As an example @Gisteron’s footnote here demonstrates that blood-types are hardly dispositive.
Your discourse on this forum seems to consist almost entirely of repeating the same vacuous and discredited talking-points over and over and over again, with generally no discernible effect other than earning you near-unanimous derision. This is why I suggested you rethinking why you “bother”.
A recording of an actual sealion barking would have more information content than your constant, repetitive, sealioning.
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“Have you taken a look at” the article @Gisteron linked to above, from the journal that published Rogers’ claims, stating that:
There is no mass spectrometry evidence that the C14 sample from the Shroud of Turin comes from a “medieval invisible mending”
“International renowned” would appear to be an exaggeration.
More relevant in assessing it would seem to be the fact that Rogers was clearly obsessed with the topic – calling into question his judgement and objectivity.
Evidence for this claim? And even if he was skeptical initially, does not demonstrate that he was objective thereafter – convert zeal is a well-known phenomenon.
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