Shroud of Turin redivivus

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Gisteron

Quite frankly it scarcely matters at all just what the Shroud looks like in detail. That an artist assumed a unique style never seen for centuries before or after, no matter how unlikely, should remain more believable than an actual physical impossibility.

This is the statement on your post 517 that I am basing my claim on. Here you are obviously dismissing evidence based on your priors.

[Gisteron]

@colewd

@Gisteron

Quite frankly it scarcely matters at all just what the Shroud looks like in detail. That an artist assumed a unique style never seen for centuries before or after, no matter how unlikely, should remain more believable than an actual physical impossibility.

This is the statement on your post 517 that I am basing my claim on. Here you are obviously dismissing evidence based on your priors.

Considering the evidence and deeming it grossly inadequate to establish a physical impossibility is not the same as dismissing it. That’s if we are going to say that some visual detail of the Shroud is evidence. If we are going to go with silly questions like “Why would / how could an artist do this-or-that?”, that is not even evidence in the first place.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Gisteron

Considering the evidence and deeming it grossly inadequate to establish a physical impossibility is not the same as dismissing it.

You are letting your personal conclusion dismiss evidence that may lead to you understand it may not be a physical impossibility. The blood evidence is quite interesting but you seem to be disinterested due to your priors.

We all do this and this is why discussion among those with different priors is valuable.

[Gisteron]

@colewd

You are letting your personal conclusion dismiss evidence that may lead to you understand it may not be a physical impossibility.

No. Incredulity about the motivations or capabilities of medieval artists to produce visual features of one sort or another are not, in fact, forms of evidence that may lead me to understand that the carbon-date-only altering high intensity neutron flash may not be a physical impossibility. Nuclear physics is not a matter of personal opinion, and it most assuredly takes more than “oh but look at that colouration” to dismantle all of it, no matter how I feel about any of this. I have nothing more to say on this matter.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

You need to back up a bit. The patent absurdity is that the “shroud” is genuine. Shellacking the nonsense in countless layers of absurd analysis may build up quite a body of shellac, but there is still nothing inside. The whole point of exercises such as you are engaged in is to render the core absurdity as a kind of analytical abstraction, in the hopes that the horrid and hilarious nature of the actual proposition being defended will fade from view as people argue over minutiae.

Given that you didn’t explain at all why the authenticity thesis is absurd, your whole tirade appears as rethorical nihilism to me.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

Ah, so you think that after others have explained to you in excruciating detail the various compelling reasons why a fraudulent relic that was spotted as a fraud when produced, and which turns out to date to the very time when we know it to have been produced, is inauthentic, I owe you yet another explanation of what you just refuse to take in? That is a fascinating point of view and I will take it under advisement, in the effort to assign it exactly the value it deserves.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Gisteron

@colewd

The problem is you have previously dismissed the possibility of neutrons being emitted from the body based on your own personal incredulity.

• I have not. That’s just straight up a lie.

It really is nothing but, Bill. You owe Gisteron a retraction and apology.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Mercer

It really is nothing but, Bill. You owe Gisteron a retraction and apology.

Fanti paper on Blood reduced nitrogen.pdf (1.1 MB)

Hi John
Do you think this evidence should be dismissed based on believing that neutron emission from the body is impossible. You are the one who insists we follow the evidence.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@colewd

Do you think this evidence should be dismissed based on believing that neutron emission from the body is impossible.

“Impossible” and “believing” a quite the goalpost moves and two more deliberate falsehoods. Science isn’t about belief!!!

Please obey the Ninth Commandment, Bill. It’s infinitely more important than the authenticity of any shroud.

It appears from my perspective that this aggressive dishonesty is practiced because your faith is weak, not strong. As my church says, God is still speaking. He’s speaking to you about this shroud through the evidence, but you’re not listening.

[Faizal_Ali]

“World Scientific News: An International Scientific Journal.”

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Mercer

It appears from my perspective that this aggressive dishonesty is practiced because your faith is weak, not strong. As my church says, God is still speaking. He’s speaking to you about this shroud through the evidence, but you’re not listening.

I think you need to study the evidence here before you make false accusations. Did you read the paper? Do you see @Faizal_Ali immediate attempt to discredit it despite experimental evidence posted from a university professor.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@colewd

I think you need to study the evidence here before you make false accusations.

I didn’t make any.

@colewd

Did you read the paper?

Yes, it’s a ludicrous bit of pseudoscience.

@colewd

Do you see @Faizal_Ali immediate attempt to discredit it despite experimental evidence posted from a university professor.

Your hyperselective touting of credentials is ludicrous and dishonest, as you ignore the credentials of those who disagree with you.

The author is making claims about biochemistry. Does he have any credentials in that field?

Do I?

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@RonSewell

It is not even close to topologically consistent with a body being wrapped in a burial cloth, nor is it anatomically proportional

@colewd

What you cited is more opinion than evidence.

If the image does not fit, you must quit.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Mercer

The author is making claims about biochemistry. Does he have any credentials in that field?

He posted experimental results. Do you disagree that the shroud samples were not showing nitrogen beyond the noise level?

Here is his resume:

Giulio Fanti is Professor of Mechanical and Thermal Measurements at the Department of Industrial Engineering of Padua University, Italy, since 1996.
He was founding member of the Center of Studies and Activities for Space CISAS “G. Colombo” http://cisas.unipd.it/, Secretary of the Italian group of official professors of Mechanical and Thermic Measurements and he has been member of technical teams of international Space Missions: the Giotto Mission to the Halley Comet, the TSS-1 Mission, the Mission Mars '94 for the study of “Fourier Realtime Michelson Spectrometer”, the Cassini Mission for Huygens probe for HASI; he is also a member of various groups for studies on the Turin Shroud…
His past research activity was devoted to the study of physical models of space structures, uncertainty analysis, finite elements modelling, thermo-mechanical optimization of space instruments and sound, pressure, vibration, damping, color and strain measurements and testing of spatial systems.
His present research activity is devoted to studies regarding the Turin Shroud, measurements by means of vision systems and diagnostic of structures.
He is the author of more than 150 papers also published in Italian and international journals, lecture notes and books.

[John_Harshman]

So, to answer @Mercer’s question much more succinctly, “no”.

[John_Harshman]

Note that the “blood sample” contains no nitrogen, and hence no protein, and yet somehow its blood type has also been identified. These “results” are contradictory.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

The measurement does not show nitrogen maybe due to noise.

[Tim]

@colewd

There is evidence that nitrogen was dramatically reduced in the Turin blood samples.

No Bill. What you have is the wild speculation of a blatantly misqualified crank, published in a journal of doubtful reliability. I already addressed it here:

@Tim

@colewd

Fanti paper on Blood reduced nitrogen.pdf

1. This paper does not seem to be a “test” so much as a further supporting hypothesis.
2. As @John_Harshman points out, this new hypothesis is as equally far-fetched (“insane”) as Rucker’s.
3. Its hypothesis is explicitly “incomplete and needs further development”.
4. It is published in World Scientific News, which is on a number of predatory journal lists (e.g. here), so is of highly questionable reliability.

@colewd

How would you argue against authenticity if additional Carbon 14 data followed Ruckers model?

I would suggest that, if Rucker’s batshit bullshit ‘model’, by some unlikely miracle, proved correct, we would have far greater problems than the purported ‘authenticity’ of some medieval forgery. We would be frantically rewriting all we thought we knew about Nuclear Physics, and buying radiation detectors to try to detect previously-unexpected neutron bursts before they ‘cook’ us.

Nobody except you (and perhaps the ever-gullible Gil) is buying any this science-fantasy bullshit in the slightest – so it is curious why you insist on repeatedly peddling it – even after your claims have been discredited.

@colewd

We all do this and this is why discussion among those with different priors is valuable.

Again, no Bill. When their “priors” are so high that they will credulously believe, and parrot, any old unsubstantiated bullshit, then their discussion is utterly worthless!

This is true whether their bullshit is YEC, ID, Anti-Vax, Flat Earth, or whatever.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Tim

Again, no Bill. When their “priors” are so high that they will credulously believe, and parrot, any old unsubstantiated bullshit, then their discussion is utterly worthless!

If this is what you believe why do you engage?

[Tim]

A combination of native argumentativeness, morbid curiousity (your argumentation would seem perfectly analogous to the carwrecks that people seem compelled to ‘rubber-neck’ at) and a reflexive impulse to correct bad logic (probably a result of a strong background in Maths and Formal Logic).

Also it provides at least a minimal level of mental stimulation.