Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[abaddon]

So would I! Seem to have lost that train of thought entirely. Again, sorry.

Meh. You wouldn't be the first to do so, and certainly won't be the last. I can say with certainty that I have typed faster than I thought, and thought faster than I typed on occasion. Just leave it and drive on.

OK then.

Back on topic: Where is the evidence of a 2,000 year old shroud, Jabba?

Presenting that is your first obligation. Forget your failed ¹⁴C objections. You don't understand the science.

Provide evidence supporting your claim of a 2,000 year old shroud.

Back on topic indeed. All of the evidence indicates a medieval fake, yet somehow, hoax proponents seem most abstemious when it comes to presenting actual evidence for a 2,000 year old date. I wonder why that might be?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Meh. You wouldn't be the first to do so, and certainly won't be the last. I can say with certainty that I have typed faster than I thought, and thought faster than I typed on occasion. Just leave it and drive on.

Back on topic indeed. All of the evidence indicates a medieval fake, yet somehow, hoax proponents seem most abstemious when it comes to presenting actual evidence for a 2,000 year old date. I wonder why that might be?

...heightened dramatic tension?

 

[AdMan]

Hugh,
- I haven't really stepped back. I'm just slow. My buddies here can vouch for me on that.
- I am surprised that you give the carbon dating so much credibility. I'm currently reviewing the relevant articles on shroud.com, and am still impressed with the apparent room for error...
- I'll eventually get back with what I can dig up.

And yet again you tell us what you're planning to do rather than just doing it. To be honest, your threads have been mostly (extremely) slow-motion train wrecks, in this case despite the months you were away preparing to come back. Why didn't you simply wait until you had gathered your arguments together and post then?

Are you planning on another year or two of this monotonous crap, or will you actually be presenting anything new?

 

[kmortis]

Do not personalize the argument. Doing so only leaves an indelible mark on the fabric of this forum. A mark which will cause debate for years to come.

Keep it civil; keep it on topic. The topic is not the other posters.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Kmortis

 

[Olowkow]

Thank goodness, Olowkow. I couldn't agree more, which is why I came back to this forum in the first place. What do people think of Charles Freeman's Quem Quaeritis hypothesis, and what do people think the Shroud looked like when it was first created - as it is now, or with a brighter or more distinct image?

I have read Hugh's review from the British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter 80.

Charles Freeman's hypothesis is summarized at his blog entry:
The Shroud of Turin As A Ceremonial Easter cloth

From the Guardian:
In particular, he turned up a little-known engraving by Antonio Tempesta, an artist attached to the Savoyard court, who made a meticulously detailed image of one of the ceremonial displays of the cloth to pilgrims in 1613.

“Astonishingly,” he [Freeman] writes, “few researchers appear to have grasped that the shroud looked very different in the 16th and 17th centuries from the object we see today.”

The Antonio Tempesta 1613 engraving, shown below, does resemble the Shroud of Turin in some respects, but of course is a much higher contrast image. However, I many have missed it, but no one seems to note that the hands, among other features, are not consistent with the SoT. In the original the figures right hand clearly is laid over the wrist of the left arm. In the engraving, the arms are crossed above the wrists, and of course there is a loin cloth in the 1613 Tempesta engraving, which is mentioned in the literature.

Freeman refers to "the shroud" looking very different from the pigment intensity point of view, but what about the obvious other differences? I have not read his paper, since I can't seem to find it without a pay wall.

Is he claiming that the engraving is essentially a stylized depiction of the original Shroud? Certainly not an accurate one.

 

[Akhenaten]

Hugh,
- I haven't really stepped back. I'm just slow. My buddies here can vouch for me on that.

Your buddies here will vouch for nothing more than an abject failure to provide anything even resembling evidence for a 2,000-year-old tablecloth

- I am surprised that you give the carbon dating so much credibility.

Sounds like a Crisis of the Faith. Call Dolmant!

I'm currently reviewing the relevant articles on shroud.com, and am still impressed with the apparent room for error...

That's about equivalent to the Mayor of Hiroshima saying, "Well it might just miss us."

- I'll eventually get back with what I can dig up.

That's exactly what Flavia Iulia Helena Augusta said.

I expect similar results.

 

[zooterkin]

The Antonio Tempesta 1613 engraving, shown below, does resemble the Shroud of Turin in some respects, but of course is a much higher contrast image. However, I many have missed it, but no one seems to note that the hands, among other features, are not consistent with the SoT. In the original the figures right hand clearly is laid over the wrist of the left arm. In the engraving, the arms are crossed above the wrists, and of course there is a loin cloth in the 1613 Tempesta engraving, which is mentioned in the literature.

Freeman refers to "the shroud" looking very different from the pigment intensity point of view, but what about the obvious other differences? I have not read his paper, since I can't seem to find it without a pay wall.

Is he claiming that the engraving is essentially a stylized depiction of the original Shroud? Certainly not an accurate one.

As a general question, how accurate would you expect such an illustration to be? Was the person who made the engraving present, or were they working from someone else's drawing or description? Even if they saw the cloth, was it available to them when they made the engraving or were they working from memory?

 

[Craig B]

As a general question, how accurate would you expect such an illustration to be? Was the person who made the engraving present, or were they working from someone else's drawing or description? Even if they saw the cloth, was it available to them when they made the engraving or were they working from memory?

Agreed. It almost certainly represents the Shroud. What conclusions can we draw from its presence there, about the object's authenticity? I suggest none.

And if the contrast in the illustration is at all typical of its then appearance, that argues very strongly that it was at the time of quite recent manufacture.

 

[Olowkow]

As a general question, how accurate would you expect such an illustration to be? Was the person who made the engraving present, or were they working from someone else's drawing or description? Even if they saw the cloth, was it available to them when they made the engraving or were they working from memory?

I really didn't have any expectations of the accuracy of a 17th century engraving, since I know nothing about the artist's talents. I was more interested in figuring out what Freeman was claiming and whether the engraving's depiction may have been of copy of the Shroud hung out for display at celebrations.

There are certainly a lot of legitimate questions for which there are likely no good answers, but since the drawing seems to include a significant amount of detail, compared to the SoT, I can't help wondering why a loin cloth was added and the arms were shown crossed in a more human-like (anatomically correct) manner.

Did the original SoT artist bring the hands down to the pubic area to avoid the need for a loin cloth? Does the addition of the cloth reflect the 17th century artist's desire for increased detail beyond the original, while preserving the modesty of the human figure?

Agreed. It almost certainly represents the Shroud. What conclusions can we draw from its presence there, about the object's authenticity? I suggest none.

And if the contrast in the illustration is at all typical of its then appearance, that argues very strongly that it was at the time of quite recent manufacture.

The engraving seems to represent a version of the SoT, but because of so many differences, I see no reason to conclude that it had to have been the original shroud that was on display, i.e. drawn by an artist from memory.

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating Doubts

Hugh,

- I might as well get started. The following are some of the reasons I have
doubts about the Carbon dating. It's really just the beginning.
- I accept that I'm biased in favor of authenticity.
- You've probably read these already. Don't these provide some reasonable doubt about the carbon dating?


Scientists biased
http://shroudstory.com/2015/02/26/cognitive-response-to-thermochimica-acta-p
aper/

Biases and errors
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n24part1.pdf

Rogers
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n61part6.pdf

All sorts of contamination
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ssi2829part4.pdf


From shroudstory.com
By Dan Porter

The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon
dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought
of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins
admits it is controversial.

Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory,
thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and
archeologists.

Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and
subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are
chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older
threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair.


Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory.

Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon
dating results were published, recently wrote: "It's fair to say that,
despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of
Turin is murkier than ever."

If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth
is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested - and some
evidence suggests that - it is possible that the cloth is from the time of
Christ.

 

[John Jones]

Even if ¹⁴C dating were an invention of science fiction writers, it doesn't mean your shroud is 2000 years old.

Where is the evidence your shroud is 2000 years old? If you don't have that, nothing else matters.

 

[Monza]

Jabba,

Have you read the articles in the links you posted? I ask because I don't think they say what you think they say. For example, the "Biases and errors" link actually says that the speculated increased error margin does not make the shroud old enough to come from the first century. And the "All sorts of contamination" link has been addressed here before. Remember when you were asked to calculate how much contamination must be present to shift the date to the first century?

If this is the best evidence you have for questioning the radiocarbon dating, then I think you are fooling yourself. Please read Dinwar's fine post here for an explanation from a working scientist. I learned from this post and I hope you can too.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Not the invisible patch again?

 

[turingtest]

Even if ¹⁴C dating were an invention of science fiction writers, it doesn't mean your shroud is 2000 years old.

Where is the evidence your shroud is 2000 years old? If you don't have that, nothing else matters.

[Lurker pops in]

This is a good point, I think, one that Jabba either doesn't get or is just squirming away from. The claim that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus absolutely depends on it being 2000 years old; the burden for that claim rests on the claimant. The C¹⁴ tests cast more than sufficiently reasonable doubt on the claim. Jabba wants to cast doubt on the doubt; but this meta-doubt does nothing to advance the original claim; it's just a tactic to shift the burden of proof away from those who properly have it.

[Lurker pops back out]

 

[Craig B]

Hugh,

- I might as well get started. The following are some of the reasons I have
doubts about the Carbon dating. It's really just the beginning.
- I accept that I'm biased in favor of authenticity.
- You've probably read these already. Don't these provide some reasonable doubt about the carbon dating? ...
From shroudstory.com
By Dan Porter
<snip part of Porter's remarks>
If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth
is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested - and some
evidence suggests that - it is possible that the cloth is from the time of
Christ.

I have already addressed Porter's absurd and indefensible ideas.

Does this remark suggest expertise in the relevant discipline? (Dan Porter) What evidence suggests that? He doesn't bother giving us any detail. And if half the thread in the samples is mediaeval, which seems impossible to me to have passed unnoticed by the testers, then the result would not show a wholly mediaeval date, would it?

All this has been discussed here in the very greatest detail, and shroudstory is still churning out such tosh, without addressing the obvious objections to its credibility.

I received this reply.

Dan's personal statement is one of belief, not a proselysation nor a scientific explanation, nor does it need to be.

Now it does need to be, if you use it as evidence. It is not evidence in any sense.

Dan Porter has never pretended to be an expert in any particular aspect of the Shroud and rarely makes extra comments of his own after his initial posts. However he is absolutely invaluable to shroud studies by his careful, impartial and tolerant management of his blog, and his seeming to discover every single mention of the shroud wherever it crops up and notifying his readers to save us the bother.

 

[hugh farey]

Charles Freeman refers to a large number of engravings of the Shroud during expositions, over quite a long period of time, in which it is almost always shown clearly delineated, wearing a loincloth (and sometimes a crown of thorns), with clear space between the upper arms and the body, and well defined feet not touching and splayed slightly apart. His contention is that they are all so similar that they must be based on a common model - the Shroud. However, he does not explain the fairly large number of "extractum ex originale" copies, from roughly the same period of time, showing a very faint image, with no loincloth, and the feet ill defined and either overlapping or at least pointing inwards. These too are all sufficiently similar for us to suppose they must come from a common model. The trouble is: the two models are sufficiently dissimilar for us to wonder who is copying what! As to the 'correct' image, whichever it is, I have to disagree with Charles on cultural grounds as to its origin. A miraculous image of Jesus should be clearly miraculous - in other words not at all 'natural looking.' Other miraculous images (particularly Veronicas) are obvious paintings, but that doesn't matter (to a true believer), as Jesus was quite as capable of miraculously producing a painting as of any other image. In this case, a forger might have gone out of his way to produce a brightly coloured illustration of Christ lying on the Shroud. For the Quem Quaeritis ceremony, however, exactly the opposite was required. the miracle was the miracle of the resurrection, not that of the Shroud, which only served as evidence of the main event. As such, the Shroud image, if there was one should do its best to look like the imprint left behind by a sweaty, bloody body.

So, paradoxically, although I like Freeman's suggestion that the Shroud was made as a prop, I believe it must then have resembled the Shroud as it is now, a faint image resembling a contact print, whereas the well defined and obvious fakes he shows in his engravings fit the 'straight forgery of a miracle' scenario better. I really can't decide what the truth is.

 

[turingtest]

Originally Posted by abaddon View Post
...
Back on topic indeed. All of the evidence indicates a medieval fake, yet somehow, hoax proponents seem most abstemious when it comes to presenting actual evidence for a 2,000 year old date. I wonder why that might be?

...heightened dramatic tension?

There's probably some truth in that. Faith, after all, requires an irresolvable mystery at its center; and isn't mystery built on maintaining dramatic tension, rather than resolution? Like so many other things to do with faith, there's a loop involved.

 

[Akhenaten]

Hugh,

- I might as well get started. The following are some of the reasons I have
doubts about the Carbon dating. It's really just the beginning.

Beyond which your argument has, for three years, failed to progress.

Ω

- I accept that I'm biased in favor of authenticity.

For values of "biased" that include "completely impervious to the facts of the matter".

- You've probably read these already. Don't these provide some reasonable doubt about the carbon dating?

No.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Good afternoon, Mr. Savage!

My school was closed due to icy snow conditions this morning; the nature of my commute is that I was already on the road when that decision was broadcast. I spent a few hours alone on campus, and am now safely home, dem schnee, dem regen,dem wind entgegen notwithstanding, with some unexpected leisure to peruse your post.

Hugh,

- I might as well get started. The following are some of the reasons I have
doubts about the Carbon dating. It's really just the beginning.
- I accept that I'm biased in favor of authenticity.
- You've probably read these already. Don't these provide some reasonable doubt about the carbon dating?

Do you remember the last time you made these allegations? How about the time before that? Or even the time before that? I challenge you to locate where you did so, and what was said about them then, as an exercise. Don't expect your homework to be done for you--it is proper for you to support your claims.

Scientists biased
http://shroudstory.com/2015/02/26/cognitive-response-to-thermochimica-acta-p
aper/

There are actually two probleems with your use of this article.

The first is that it does not, as you seem to think it does, indicate that the CIQ "must be" "authentic" because all three of the labs that did the ¹⁴C testing were "biased" against authenticity. What the article actually says is that the reader's responses to the issue of the veracity were, in fact, to a large part influenced, even dependent upon, confirmation bias...both in the case of "support" for the Rogers paper, and in the case of opposition.

Read it again. The "strong opposition from contemporaies" tended to be represented by those readers with expertise in the nature and provenance of the CIQ; who found their opinions confirmed by the poor methodology, dubious provenance, and appearances of undue influence. OTH, the "broad support" for the paper about Rogers' support for the CIQ, primarily represented by those with no exposure to, or expertise in, the nature and provenance of the CIQ and the test doen to it was aldo due to confirmation bias. The paper you present does not support you opinion that the scientists and technicians who tested the CIQ got a medieval date, or fudged a medieval date, or lied about the "real date" for the CIQ because they were biased.

The second problem is more fundamental. You do not have standing, or understanding, to allege "bias" on the part of scientists and technicians whose work you do not comprehend; and which you reject not because you have identified the working of bias, collusion, or incompetence, but because you do not like the results form three independent labs. How odd that you do not dismiss your own position because of "bias"...

Be that as it may, the allusions of this article do not comprise evidence that the CIQ is 2Kyo.

Biases and errors
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n24part1.pdf

I have to ask: did you, in fact, read the article?

Let's pretend, for just a moment, that it does not, in fact, represent a ham-handed fishing expedition in search of soem way to seem to be justified in dismissing the ¹⁴C date provided by one of the three independent laboratories that dated the CIQ (which, among other stresses of the suspenders of disbeleif by the pants of reality, requires one to think either that the other two labs made the same errors as are intimated that ORAU must have done; or that three different sets of errors all converged on the same "incorrect" date.

Did you read this line?

Although it would be quite wrong to suggest that the survey's findings in any way explain the large discrepancy between the "1260-1390" carbon dating of the Shroud and the circa 30 AD date that might be expected if the Shroud is genuine...

Even if the allegations of "errors" were, in fact, demonstrated to be accurate, that would still not serve as evidence that the CIQ is 200Kyo.

Rogers
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n61part6.pdf

Rogers has been dealt with before, by multiple posters. Do you remember any of that?

Do you not find it odd that Rogers, who never handled the CIQ, is able to detect that the dated sample was "totally different in composition" from the rest of the CIQ, a "difference" not one single researcher who has actually interacted with the CIQ has detected?

Do you not find it odd to base your hopes on threads of dubious (to say the very least) provenance?

Do you not find it odd that Rogers' "vanillin degradation" protocol has never been used to support a ¹⁴C date, nor, for that matter, has it ever been used to reliably date anything?

Ah, well--as I said, none of this is new ground.

All sorts of contamination
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ssi2829part4.pdf

It appears that you have forgotten (or chosen to hope that it is not clear that you are ignoring) the cleaning protocols. It does you no credit to pretend that three independent laboratories just missed "contamination" that would have had to be equal to if not greater than the mass of the actual sample.

As I said, this is not new ground.

From shroudstory.com
By Dan Porter <snip of multiple unsupported claims about which I reserve comment depending upon your response to the above

 

[Giordano]

Hugh,

- I might as well get started. The following are some of the reasons I have
doubts about the Carbon dating. It's really just the beginning.
- I accept that I'm biased in favor of authenticity.
- You've probably read these already. Don't these provide some reasonable doubt about the carbon dating?


Scientists biased
http://shroudstory.com/2015/02/26/cognitive-response-to-thermochimica-acta-p
aper/

Biases and errors
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n24part1.pdf

Rogers
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n61part6.pdf

All sorts of contamination
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ssi2829part4.pdf


From shroudstory.com
By Dan Porter

The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon
dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought
of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins
admits it is controversial.

Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory,
thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and
archeologists.

Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and
subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are
chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older
threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair.


Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory.

Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon
dating results were published, recently wrote: "It's fair to say that,
despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of
Turin is murkier than ever."

If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth
is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested - and some
evidence suggests that - it is possible that the cloth is from the time of
Christ.

And around we go!

Perhaps Jabba can highlight any of this, if any, that he did not already post in this very thread? To allow us to focus on that part in particular?