Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[Dinwar]

- I think that the closest I can get to direct evidence of the age of the shroud has to do with the Sudarium of Oviedo.

In other words, you have NO direct evidence. I accept this as a confession of such.

(I think that the rest of my evidence is indirect, or circumstantial -- but, there's plenty of it.)

A massive pile of irrelevancies does not magically become relevant because of its size.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I had to pass a module physiology of the brain, but I admit defeat. I defer to your superior knowledge of a normal human body.

Does this, in fact, mean that you understand that the representation on the CIQ is not an "imprint", or even an "image", of an actual, living, human body? Independent of any dating?

...or are you merely indulging in sarcastic equivocation?

 

[Giordano]

Ah- luckily the full tex New Scientist "article" was available from by University.
1. It is not a research article at all- it is a report of a conference and it is approximately half a page in length. There are no experiments or data in it.

2. The author is a reporter and not a scientist. He has no experience in radioisotope dating even in that capacity.

3. The concerns mentioned from the conference are not detailed, apparently involve data from "some" laboratories participating in the conference, appear to be most severe for objects less than 200 years old, and the article and conference do not implicate any of the labs involved in the Shroud dating as having had this problem.

4. These undetailed potential errors must not have been a problem with the labs in the Nature paper because these errors would have caused much wider error bars and much more disagreement between the 3 independent labs in the Shroud study. The close match of the data indicates that these potential errors, which only apparently applied to certain labs and to very young material, were not a problem with the Shroud testing.

5. Finally, even if somehow these errors did apply to the Shroud dating, even the extra error bars would still create a range of dates that fall hundreds of years too early for an authentic Shroud of Christ.

 

[Giordano]

Take the paywall up with New Scientist; it's not my fault.

Jospehus is relevant as he gives an independent, respected, historian's non-vested account of the existence of Jesus.

1. Were you able to get past the paywall to read the actual "article" or were you relying on a summary?

2. We are not debating the existence of Jesus (that is another thread). But given you point it out, does Jospehus mention this type of Shroud? Did any one at the time, even as reported in the Bible, mention a miraculous image on the burial shroud? Do you think that someone might have noticed if it were there?

 

[jimbob]

5. Finally, even if somehow these errors did apply to the Shroud dating, even the extra error bars would still create a range of dates that fall hundreds of years too early for an authentic Shroud of Christ.

And if there was a process that made the shroud seem younger than it was when using Carbon-14 dating, why would one expect the dating to be no younger than its first known appearance?

 

[zooterkin]

Jospehus is relevant as he gives an independent, respected, historian's non-vested account of the existence of Jesus.

There's a reference to the followers of Chrestus, IIRC, and even that is suspected of being at least partially an interpolation.

None of which is relevant when the carbon dating shows the cloth to be about 1300 years too new.

ETA: Apologies, I'm confusing Josephus with Suetonius. Nevertheless, the passage from Josephus is highly suspect.

 

[Giordano]

Please point out where this figure of 1000 years is from the raw results, about half-way down this page: https://www.shroud.com/nature.htm (Table 1)

As I just posted- I think that the +/- 1000 years comes from a 3 year-earlier paper by Burleigh et al., an author (and from data) not involved in the Nature paper under discussion. The error bars in the Nature paper are all tightly clustered, both from repeats in each lab and when all 3 labs are compared to one another. All are quite incapable with a 30 AD authenticity. The Burleigh et al reference appears to me to be a total distraction that is not relevant to the Nature paper at all.

 

[Dinwar]

And if there was a process that made the shroud seem younger than it was when using Carbon-14 dating, why would one expect the dating to be no younger than its first known appearance?

C14 is generated from N14 (mostly, anyway; other sources are negligible until proven otherwise). Any radiation that made the shroud look younger would have to add C14 to the shroud. That would re-set the date to 2ka.

The only way for such magical shroud-youthening radiation to have the desired affect is if it occurred 780 years ago (give or take)--or if the radiatio from the resurection had an affect that continued until 780 years ago, absent any source. Both are obvious nonsense.

 

[Belz...]

- I think that the closest I can get to direct evidence of the age of the shroud has to do with the Sudarium of Oviedo.

And since the Sudarium HAS NOTHING TO DO with the Shroud of Turin, it means you both have no evidence for the age of the Shroud, and don't even know what "direct" means.

Your quest ends here, Jabba. You have nothing.

 

[Giordano]

A workshop with Church authorities in Turin was held in 1986 and protocol was agreed. Prof Carlos Chagas was the chair. It was to be blind, but this was a sham - according to De Wesselow - as it was not possible to find a blind control (same weave pattern, etc). The number of samples agreed, seven, was inexplicably reduced to three.

Professors Riggi and Gonella argued for over an hour as to which bit to cut. They cut from an area next to the Raes sample whch members of the STURP team suspected was unrepresentative of the rest of the cloth.

AMS was chosen as inventor, Henry Gove, was keen to demonstrate it use.

And so on and so forth.

One of the labs, recognizing the problem with the identifiable weave, ashed the Shroud and control samples before given, blind, to their people for analysis to ensure the blinding of the test. THey got the same date as the other two labs. This idea both implies the scientists peeked and therefore somehow mysteriously distorted their actual data to get an inaccurate data, which at least one lab could not have done. This is just an irrelevant distraction.

The long discussion of where to cut the sample represented the intense care taken with the decision and involved the input of the scientists, a textile expert, and the Church representatives. The Nature paper discusses some of the reasons that this group of experts chose this region, who were there at the scene and included people heavily invested in a representative sample and a 30 AD date. The STURP people began to find pathetic "reasons" (an invisible patch?) that this simply couldn't be a representative sample only after the isotope date came out too early compared to their preconceived notions.

The samples were reduced to three because the Church representatives did not want their holy cloth cut more than the minimum. Same reason they chose a region of the cloth away from the image itself. I don't fault them for this: for any destructive test, one tries to use the minimum possible of the original and to test an inconspicuous region that will not damage the most important portion of the object. This is the same reason the Church does not make the Shroud widely available for studies by outside scientists and why, in 26 years, they have not initiated or allowed additional radioisotope dating. It is certainly possible that there is a concern as well that additional testing will even further confirm that it is not the burial shroud of Christ, but I don't know that. More likely IMHO is that the Shroud owners simply realize that there is not much in it for them to have the Shroud again tested; many believers venerate it as is, whereas any additional dating is likely to hurt its credibility. In many ways, I agree that authenticity is not an important question for the believers (the bible is clearly flawed yet is an object of worship by billions). Faith is believing things that are logically not true. Okay by me if someone wants to do that. But if you wish to convince me that something is logically true, then your logic had better support the premise.

AMS was chosen because it needs much less sample than the pre-existing methods. Its availability was the main reason the Church was willing to do the test at all because other tests would have destroyed too much of the Shroud for the comfort of the Church curators.

 

[Loss Leader]

Monza,

- Sorry. I've been busy...

- I think that the closest I can get to direct evidence of the age of the shroud has to do with the Sudarium of Oviedo.

So your best evidence that the shroud is 2000 years old is that it seems similar to you to another cloth that's 1400 years old?

You realize you're admitting that you can't get the shroud to have been created before 600 or so a.d., right?

If anything, you've strengthened the case for the shroud being a forgery.


"Your honor, it is clear the defendant was partying at Riley's Night Club on the night of June 16, 2014 because we have shown proof that Riley's Night Club first opened for business on May 4, 2015."

 

[Slowvehicle]

Monza,

- Sorry. I've been busy...

- I think that the closest I can get to direct evidence of the age of the shroud has to do with the Sudarium of Oviedo. (I think that the rest of my evidence is indirect, or circumstantial -- but, there's plenty of it.)
- The Sudarium appears to be covering the same face as does the shroud -- and, it is clearly much older than 700 years.
- Try http://www.sitelevel.com/query?crid=5b7907994c2a69a2&query=sudarium&B1=Search. There you'll find numerous links discussing the Sudarium's apparent match with the shroud.
- If you want, I'll try to pick out my favorite.

- You probably know all about the Sudarium already, so I should probably just ask whether or not you think that the two match -- if not, why not, and if so, how do you explain the match?

- Thanks, again.

Good afternoon, Mr. Savage!

Please present the evidence you have that demonstrates that the CIQ (not the SoO, the CIQ, is ~2000 years old.

 

[Dinwar]

The samples were reduced to three because the Church representatives did not want their holy cloth cut more than the minimum.

I want to emphasize that this is completely, 100% irrelevant as well (not that you're wrong to point it out!).

EPA guidelines call for 10% sample duplication--field dups, in common parlance. That means 1 out of every 10 samples gets duplicated, to test for reproducibility.

The shroud had 11 duplicates, in three labs. This is so far above and beyond normal that they could do a quarter of this and STILL exceed normal procedures.

Furthermore, such alterations to sample plans are the norm. Most sample plans I have worked under include provisions for allowing for alterations due to site conditions--increased or decreased numbers of samples based on what you seen when you're "boots on the ground", so to speak. So none of this deviates from normal procedures, except in as much as it exceeds normal procedures by leaps and bounds!

As for not allowing further sampling, this is the norm. These days destructive testing is almost never done. And once it's been done (and replicated to death), no one will re-do the sampling. That's just SOP. To use that as an excuse to dismiss the results merely shows that one has no concept of the issues involved.

 

[jhunter1163]

I think the Sudarium is a much more interesting artifact than the Shroud. A better case* can definitely be made for its authenticity as a burial cloth of the late Mr. C than can be made for the SoT.

* - Not a good case, at least not without better C14 data, but a better case than that of the obviously medieval SoT.

 

[Giordano]

I want to emphasize that this is completely, 100% irrelevant as well (not that you're wrong to point it out!).

EPA guidelines call for 10% sample duplication--field dups, in common parlance. That means 1 out of every 10 samples gets duplicated, to test for reproducibility.

The shroud had 11 duplicates, in three labs. This is so far above and beyond normal that they could do a quarter of this and STILL exceed normal procedures.

Furthermore, such alterations to sample plans are the norm. Most sample plans I have worked under include provisions for allowing for alterations due to site conditions--increased or decreased numbers of samples based on what you seen when you're "boots on the ground", so to speak. So none of this deviates from normal procedures, except in as much as it exceeds normal procedures by leaps and bounds!

As for not allowing further sampling, this is the norm. These days destructive testing is almost never done. And once it's been done (and replicated to death), no one will re-do the sampling. That's just SOP. To use that as an excuse to dismiss the results merely shows that one has no concept of the issues involved.

Sorry- I meant to point this out also, and just forgot. To have an object sampled twice, let alone three times for radioisotope dating is unusual. To have it done by three different labs independently is extraordinary. I agree with you that 7 times, or we should do it again because "it is controversial" (i.e. some people just don't want to accept the data), or that they didn't cut a sample out of the middle of the image of "Jesus's" nose, is just a smoke screen.

 

[jimbob]

C14 is generated from N14 (mostly, anyway; other sources are negligible until proven otherwise). Any radiation that made the shroud look younger would have to add C14 to the shroud. That would re-set the date to 2ka.

The only way for such magical shroud-youthening radiation to have the desired affect is if it occurred 780 years ago (give or take)--or if the radiatio from the resurection had an affect that continued until 780 years ago, absent any source. Both are obvious nonsense.

Agreed - I nearly said "miraculous" or "magical".

As an aside, we used to use transmutation to accurately and evenly dope the silicon ingots in my industry. I still find that amazing.

 

[Vixen]

1. Were you able to get past the paywall to read the actual "article" or were you relying on a summary?

2. We are not debating the existence of Jesus (that is another thread). But given you point it out, does Jospehus mention this type of Shroud? Did any one at the time, even as reported in the Bible, mention a miraculous image on the burial shroud? Do you think that someone might have noticed if it were there?

1. I read De Wesselow's paraphrasing of its content.

2. I doubt it.

 

[Vixen]

Does this, in fact, mean that you understand that the representation on the CIQ is not an "imprint", or even an "image", of an actual, living, human body? Independent of any dating?

...or are you merely indulging in sarcastic equivocation?

I don't do sarcasm.

 

[wollery]

1. Were you able to get past the paywall to read the actual "article" or were you relying on a summary?

2. We are not debating the existence of Jesus (that is another thread). But given you point it out, does Jospehus mention this type of Shroud? Did any one at the time, even as reported in the Bible, mention a miraculous image on the burial shroud? Do you think that someone might have noticed if it were there?

1. I read De Wesselow's paraphrasing of its content.

2. I doubt it.

Which particular question in Giordano's number 2 was your answer number 2 addressing?

 

[Garrette]

1. Were you able to get past the paywall to read the actual "article" or were you relying on a summary?

2. We are not debating the existence of Jesus (that is another thread). But given you point it out, does Jospehus mention this type of Shroud? Did any one at the time, even as reported in the Bible, mention a miraculous image on the burial shroud? Do you think that someone might have noticed if it were there?

1. I read De Wesselow's paraphrasing of its content.

2. I doubt it.

Which particular question in Giordano's number 2 was your answer number 2 addressing?

It appears to me she is saying that she is answering the last question, i.e., Vixen doubts that anyone would have noticed the image-imprinted shroud at the time of the alleged resurrection.

Which is another internal contradiction because de Wesselow's entire point is based on the idea that it was noticed.