Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[sackett]

I’ve had an epiphany!

In fact, I’m having it now! (Aaaah, that feels better.) Listen, Jabba:

You don’t need to bother with any steenkin’ evidence; you don’t need to convince these lousy-brained unbelieving – what shall I call them? Protestants, probably. Why not? Because:

The image on the Shroud is miraculous, right? So evidence and logic and facts and science and all like that are irrelevant! A miracle is a miracle is a miracle – hell, it’s miracles all the way down! You believe that, and want to believe it, as do hundreds, probably thousands of believing people around the believing world – and that’s all you need to say!

The begruders on this forum can just go eat dirt, them with their “show us the proof” puckie. God blows his nose on their “proof” and “facts” and (I gotta laff) carbon fourteen boo sheet. God already did everything, didn’t he? Well then, he can also do anything! He could make Jesus Historical Christ’s pic show up on forty or fifty shrouds and they’d all be authentic because they’d all be miracles! How much simpler can you get?

Have I solved your problem? I just guess I have!

And you’re welcome.

 

[Jabba]

2000 Yrs?/Evidence?

It's an interesting typo, though. Jabba thinks that if he can cast doubt on the carbon dating, then it becomes more likely the thing is actually 2000 years old.

However, it becomes equally likely that the thing is 200 years old or 20 or 20,000, or any other number you can imagine.

Ruling out the carbon dating is not evidence that the shroud is authentic. It's not even evidence that the shroud is older than I am.

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

 

[Loss Leader]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

Utterly and completely wrong. And yet another post where you dither about while presenting no evidence.

 

[Slowvehicle]

In fact, I’m having it now! (Aaaah, that feels better.) Listen, Jabba:

You don’t need to bother with any steenkin’ evidence; you don’t need to convince these lousy-brained unbelieving – what shall I call them? Protestants, probably. Why not? Because:

The image on the Shroud is miraculous, right? So evidence and logic and facts and science and all like that are irrelevant! A miracle is a miracle is a miracle – hell, it’s miracles all the way down! You believe that, and want to believe it, as do hundreds, probably thousands of believing people around the believing world – and that’s all you need to say!

The begruders on this forum can just go eat dirt, them with their “show us the proof” puckie. God blows his nose on their “proof” and “facts” and (I gotta laff) carbon fourteen boo sheet. God already did everything, didn’t he? Well then, he can also do anything! He could make Jesus Historical Christ’s pic show up on forty or fifty shrouds and they’d all be authentic because they’d all be miracles! How much simpler can you get?

Have I solved your problem? I just guess I have!

And you’re welcome.

...what's in that coffee, eh?

 

[Dinwar]

- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

No. It's not evidence at all. All it does is remove one line of evidence in favor of a Medieval date. If the C14 dating is wrong, that line of reasoning gives NO indication of age, rendering it not evidence of anything.

Present your evidence. REAL evidence, not criticism of other lines of evidence.

 

[Belz...]

- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

No, it wouldn't. Please provide direct evidence for the 2000 year age of the shroud now.

 

[Slowvehicle]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

Good Morning, Mr. Savage.

This contention is fundamentally incorrect. it is the same foundational error upon which you tried to build your "proof of immortality" argument, and it is no less fallacious here.

If (and only if, and only to illustrate the argument) the ¹⁴C date were, in fact, proved to be the result of bias, incompetence, collusion, and outright dishonesty (as you claim it is), that would ONLY mean that the ¹⁴C dating was not valid evidence that the CIQ is, in fact, ~780 years old. That would in no way indicate that the CIQ was, in fact, ~2000 years old (or even was more likely to be ~2000 years old), particularly given the provenance (and lack of same), the fading, the style of the representational image, the history of votive artifacts; and--and this is important--the absolute and utter lack of any bit of evidence AT ALL indicating that the CIQ even might be ~2000 years old.

This is another attempt to exclude the middle: "If the ¹⁴C date was a 'fool ya'; the CIQ's authentic--haleloolyah!"

The derail will not avail you--what you need to do is present any evidence you have that the CIQ is ~2000 years old. Any evidence at all.

 

[John Jones]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

No. It. Would. Not. Ruling out the ¹⁴C dating would only rule out the medieval date.

You have not presented any evidence that the shroud is ~2000 years old. All you have provided is sloppy reasoning.

 

[ferd burfle]

Seems a tad counter productive to not present any evidence at all then doesn't it? If all that can be presented in favour of the CIQ being genuine is an endless series of excuses for the lack of evidence backed up by "in my next post..." predictive lies, who on earth will that convince?

It's only counterproductive if you assume the goal here is rational discourse. Jabba wants to give the twoo believer community the basis to pretend the authenticity of the shround is the subject of an ongoing serious debate with the scientific community and that the authenticist position is holding its own. To that end, anything that helps prolong the pretense is viewed as good. With apologies to Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message.

 

[Loss Leader]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

Evidence is anything that makes a proposition either more or less likely to be true.

So, let's examine two propositions:

First: The shroud is exactly 780 years old.

Evidence that makes this more likely to be true is the carbon dating. If such techniques are wrong, then perhaps the carbon dating does not lend much help in supporting the idea of a 780 year-old shroud.

Proposition Two: The shroud is 2000 years old.

Evidence of carbon dating suggests this is unlikely to be true, as it is only 780 years old. If such techniques are wrong, then perhaps the carbon dating does not lend much help in supporting the idea of a 780 year old shroud, but they tell us nothing about whether the shroud is 2000 years old.

In short, you've confused the concept of evidence with the concept of weight of the evidence.

Let me try it this way: How many seconds have there been in the last 5,000 years? 6.5 billion seconds. The carbon dating tells us that the thing is 780 years old. Let's give that a generous margin of error of plus or minus 100 years. That;s a window of 263 million seconds.

If the C dating is wrong, that still gives us 6,250,000,000 seconds from which to choose.

You are saying that the C dating being wrong makes it more likely that this shroud is from 2000 years ago. Giving you the benefit of all the doubt, your odds only increased from 1 in 6.5 billion to 1 in 6.25 billion: or from a 0.000000154% chance to a 0.00000016% chance.

But let's go hog wild. Let's assume that the chance of the shroud being authentic goes from 0% to 1%. Are you actually arguing that anybody should be persuaded that the shroud might be authentic because the chance it isn't is only 99%?

And that assumes that we forget all of the other evidence: A historical record that only goes back 780 years; a painting technique available in the middle ages and not the Roman age; a figure that cannot be produced by rolling up a dead person; the fact that thousands and thousands of people were crucified in roman times; and more.

I wouldn't bet on a 1% chance that the moon were made of green cheese because, even if man never went to the moon, we can measure its brightness, color and density and it definitely cannot be green cheese.

 

[jimbob]

No. It. Would. Not. Ruling out the ¹⁴C dating would only rule out the medieval date.

You have not presented any evidence that the shroud is ~2000 years old. All you have provided is sloppy reasoning.

Ruling out the ¹⁴C dating wouldn't even rule out the medieval date - unless there was a systematic error that meant it was usable

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

For those interested, the thread in which Jabba's style of debate was trialled can be found here.

 

[Dinwar]

Ruling out the ¹⁴C dating wouldn't even rule out the medieval date - unless there was a systematic error that meant it was usable

Again, finding fault in the C14 can only eliminate the C14 as evidence--which means it cannot support or refute EITHER argument.

 

[Monza]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

Hi Jabba. As others have pointed out, you have made an error in logic here. Per your own cited definition, evidence is anything presented in support of an assertion. Ruling out the carbon dating does not support the assertion that the cloth is 2000 years old. It is less evidence toward the assertion of a 14th century date, but not more evidence toward an assertion of any other particular date. Do you understand?

 

[abaddon]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

Hoist by your own petard. Wiki can wander on witter at length about what may constitute "strong" or "weak" evidence but what does Wiki say about "no evidence at all"? Does Wiki have an opinion about that?

Or are you going to dodge yet again presenting evidence strong or weak for the 2k date of the cloth of baloney?

 

[MRC_Hans]

LL,
- From Wikipedia:
Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence.
- So, ruling out the carbon dating would be weak evidence that the shroud is authentic, and older than you.

Incorrect. If the C14 dating could be ruled out (something you have failed to do, however), it would just mean we knew less about the age of the shroud. It would not strengthen the assumption of any other age.

Hans

 

[Sideroxylon]

If the carbon dating is wrong then this is evidence that the cloth dates form the early Cretaceous.

 

[Belz...]

You all fell for Jabba's feint, neglecting to ask him for direct evidence that the Shroud is 2000 years old NOW. There's no end to this cycle unless we collectively block his attempts to squirm. The more words you type, the more he can hang onto to skip having to answer the request.

 

[Mashuna]

For those interested, the thread in which Jabba's style of debate was trialled can be found here.

That is interesting, I'd not seen it before. This is the thread that Jabba claimed Loss Leader left because Jabba asked two questions instead of one in the early stages?

 

[Monza]

That is interesting, I'd not seen it before. This is the thread that Jabba claimed Loss Leader left because Jabba asked two questions instead of one in the early stages?

Yes. What is not seen here is that Jabba abandoned this thread to continue arguments in the un-moderated thread. It is the un-moderated thread where he originally felt he could not conduct a proper "effective debate", thus the creation of the moderated one-on-one thread. Yet it is here he turned when he couldn't handle a single opponent. Others could offer a more detailed play-by-play.