Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[Craig4]

It's worse than that. He's declared that if the dating is wrong, this supports it being 2000 years old. The dating could be wrong by a thousand years and the shroud still wouldn't be old enough to be genuine. He doesn't seem to understand that, even if the C dating is wrong, there are a couple hundred million possibilities other than this being the burial cloth of Jesus that are just as if not far more likely.

If the date is wrong we just go back to not having any other date beyond what the typology gives which isn't as precise but still later than 2000. The herringbone weave puts the cloth post Roman Classical period.

 

[Dinwar]

it's this part that fascinates me. He's an idol worshiper. And he needs to be. But he's obviously full of doubt. I don't know what to make of it.

A lot of Christians I've known are like this. They worship idols (statues, relics, whatever), and cling to any "evidence" of divinity in those idols. However, Catholicism is not really ammenable to idolitry, and many attempts have been made over the centuries to remove that inherently pagan concept from Christianity. (By "pagan" here I specifically mean the Roman religion--it was introduced in part to convert the populace, and in part because the populace brought it with them.) So there's in inherent tension between the two concepts. Many resolve that tension by loudly defending their icons, to drown out the tension. It's not that they don't believe, necessarily; they just don't known how to resolve what are fundamentally two contradictory beleif systems.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

As mentioned before - the last time we were in turin there were people weeping as they knelt before the display case where the TTC is no longer stored.

Eta- to make perfectly clear, they were weeping in front of an empty, glass fronted display cabinet.

 

[John Jones]

I'm wondering how this thread will end.

There is no evidence of a 2000 year old shroud.

Jabba has said he hoped to convince the lurkers, but not the skeptics.

Has any lurker been convinced by Jabba's sloppy arguments?

 

[slyjoe]

As mentioned before - the last time we were in turin there were people weeping as they knelt before the display case where the TTC is no longer stored.

Eta- to make perfectly clear, they were weeping in front of an empty, glass fronted display cabinet.

Sounds like what my friend did when he got to Dunkin Donuts late.

 

[slyjoe]

I'm wondering how this thread will end.

There is no evidence of a 2000 year old shroud.

Jabba has said he hoped to convince the lurkers, but not the skeptics.

Has any lurker been convinced by Jabba's sloppy arguments?

Don't know if I qualify as a lurker, but I have certainly been convinced by his arguments that some believers will do almost anything to try to prop up their beliefs.

As to the cloth, no. The other posters have provided a lot of interesting information though, so if we can take anything from this thread it is:
1. Don't trust fanatic believers
2. The shroud has plenty of evidence that it is only 700 years old.

 

[grmcdorman]

I'm wondering how this thread will end.

There is no evidence of a 2000 year old shroud.

Jabba has said he hoped to convince the lurkers, but not the skeptics.

Has any lurker been convinced by Jabba's sloppy arguments?

No.

This is the infamous 'appeal to lurkers'; I have seen it used by Apollo moon-landing deniers, among others. Generally it results in a spectacular crash'n'burn; I am not aware of anything even approaching success on forums like ISF or Apollohoax.net (the latter being a debunking site, despite the name).

 

[John Jones]

No.

This is the infamous 'appeal to lurkers'; I have seen it used by Apollo moon-landing deniers, among others. Generally it results in a spectacular crash'n'burn; I am not aware of anything even approaching success on forums like ISF or Apollohoax.net (the latter being a debunking site, despite the name).

I get it. The kook claims that all the lurkers are supporting him in PMs/email.

 

[abaddon]

I'm wondering how this thread will end.

It may never end. One must accept that reality, since the arguments presented can never end.

There is no evidence of a 2000 year old shroud.

Hence my point. If one can argue a point in the absence of any valid evidence, one cane argue forever.

Jabba has said he hoped to convince the lurkers, but not the skeptics.

Yes. That army of lurkers who support authenticity. Just as mythical as the CIQ.

Has any lurker been convinced by Jabba's sloppy arguments?

Beats me, they remain entirely silent on the issue at hand. Almost as though they did not care, or did not exist.

 

[grmcdorman]

No.

This is the infamous 'appeal to lurkers'; I have seen it used by Apollo moon-landing deniers, among others. Generally it results in a spectacular crash'n'burn; I am not aware of anything even approaching success on forums like ISF or Apollohoax.net (the latter being a debunking site, despite the name).

Found the one on Apollo Hoax: http://apollohoax.proboards.com/thread/1022 (the old ApolloHoax board).

There's also this one here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=233454 - 255 lurkers against, 43 non-lurkers against, 1 lurker for. EDIT: That one "for" may have been a miscast vote; there were two other miscast votes that were corrected by the mods.

Basically a spectacular crash'n'burn, as I mentioned.

 

[SezMe]

A lot of Christians I've known are like this. They worship idols (statues, relics, whatever), and cling to any "evidence" of divinity in those idols. However, Catholicism is not really ammenable to idolitry, and many attempts have been made over the centuries to remove that inherently pagan concept from Christianity.

I suspect I don't read you correctly because I think Catholicism is rife with idolatry. The most prominent being the worship of Mary. And weeping statues. And the nonsense around Lourdes. And so on.

Maybe make your point again using a different approach?

 

[Loss Leader]

A lot of Christians I've known are like this. They worship idols (statues, relics, whatever), and cling to any "evidence" of divinity in those idols. However, Catholicism is not really ammenable to idolitry, and many attempts have been made over the centuries to remove that inherently pagan concept from Christianity.

I'm sure that this is what you and many other christians would like to be true. However, when the mass of pagans converted, they brought their idolatry right along with them. And there really was no christian religion before that (it was a tiny alternative cult of Jews). Now you've got bunnies and eggs and crucifixes and pictures and statuary. I would have a hard time naming a modern religion that practiced idolatry more.

Wander into a Jewish synagogue sometime. Tell me how many statues and paintings and reliquaries you'll find. The difference is eye-opening.

 

[Stuart]

I'm wondering how this thread will end.

There is no evidence of a 2000 year old shroud.

Jabba has said he hoped to convince the lurkers, but not the skeptics.

Has any lurker been convinced by Jabba's sloppy arguments?

In a word - NO

It has been very educational though in a whole swathe of topics.

 

[MRC_Hans]

The thing about lurkers is that there aren't many. Especially not for threads this long. What confuses many people like Jabba is the apparently disproportionate number of views compared to the number of posts. This thread has nearly 3,000 posts but 110,000 views, so one might think that a whole lot of people are only reading, not posting. However, those numbers come if 20-30 posters view the thread once or twice for each time they post.

So probably, there are no lurkers to speak of.

Hans

 

[Filippo Lippi]

I don't post much, but I do like to stop by the car-crash regularly

 

[Dinwar]

I'm wondering how this thread will end.

There is no evidence of a 2000 year old shroud.

Jabba has said he hoped to convince the lurkers, but not the skeptics.

Has any lurker been convinced by Jabba's sloppy arguments?

This is the thread that does not end. Yes it goes on and on my friend!

(I'm gonna hide from those of you old enough to now want to kill me......)

To answer your last sentence, it's been the opposite. I started out as a lurker, and joined only to provide some information on C14 dating. Honestly, I'd never thought about the shroud before the first of these threads; it was something I vaguely knew existed, but that's all. Now I can prove it was a Medieval artifact (for standard definitions of proof--this is not math, I am not obliged to use mathematical jargon).

I suspect I don't read you correctly because I think Catholicism is rife with idolatry.

Rife with? Sure. In the same way that some dogs are rife with fleas--but you wouldn't say that fleas are a necessary component of dogs. There has been a tension in Catholicism between idolitry and the actual theology sinice Rome. Strictly speaking, idols are not a component of Catholic theology; such things as statues of saints healing others are accepted as evidence of divine power (ie, God's grace transmitting through a saint to help the living), but Catholicism is all about a personal relationship with God, so relics, holy icons, and the like aren't necessary. Historically, the cult of the saints and the worship of relics is a hold-over from the pagan religions that were converted to Catholicism, and there have been numerous attempts to cull these from Catholicism throughout history.

I'm sure that this is what you and many other christians would like to be true.

Oh goody. More "closet Theist" nonsense. I'm an OBJECTIVIST--by DEFINITION I am an atheist. I also consider Catholicism to be an astonishingly evil religion. It's just that I'm not willing to condemn something without understanding it, the way many here are. You want to see the REAL evil of Catholicism? Stop wasting your time on the lighweights in the pews (Catholicism never really altered paganism among the masses much, it just shifted some things around) and look into the actual belief system they ostensibly believe. For example, look at Benedictine monasticism. You want an image of Hell, a Benedictine monastery is as close as you're going to come on Earth--yet if you accept Biblical teachings, it's pretty much the only way to live without contradicting your beliefs!

 

[pgwenthold]

I suspect I don't read you correctly because I think Catholicism is rife with idolatry. The most prominent being the worship of Mary. And weeping statues. And the nonsense around Lourdes. And so on.

As I pointed out above, the Catholic version of the Ten Commandments does not have the commandment against "graven images" and has, instead, split "thou shalt not covet" into two.

That's not an accident.

 

[Peter i]

You might like the Onion, too...

I love The Onion!

(And I especially love, when the "established media" are fooled by them, and reprint their stories as being true)

 

[ferd burfle]

...Catholicism is all about a personal relationship with God...

I don't have a deep understanding of Catholicism so there may be more objective (npi ) truth to this than I know, but don't try to tell this to any serious Protestant. A core outcome of the Reformation from the Protestant point of view was that they no longer needed the priest to act as their intercessor with God. Direct dialing; no need for an operator.

 

[Jabba]

2000 Yrs?/logic

Nonsense. We understand you perfectly. We DO NOT AGREE WITH YOU. There is a difference...

Dinwar,
- At this point, I'm trying to address (what I think is) your claim that my approach to the shroud issue is logically backwards -- i.e., that I start with a theory that I want to believe, and then look for evidence to support that theory.
- Before I go any further -- in doing this, am I properly understanding one of your claims?