Does the Shroud of Turin Show Expected Elongation of the Head in 2D?"

[Gulliver Foyle]

The History Of Herringbone

One of the most popular weaving patterns for tweed custom tailing due to its broken zig-zag pattern, herringbone has a history which dates back to antiquity.

www.bookster.co.uk

So your "evidence" is an anonymous blog which does not provide any evidence for its assertions. Tell me, do you expect to be taken seriously at all?

 

[catsmate]

So your "evidence" is an anonymous blog which does not provide any evidence for its assertions. Tell me, do you expect to be taken seriously at all?

That's a classic @bobdroege7 tactic.

And, despite various assertions, @bobdroege7 has shown exactly zero examples of herringbone woven cloth in first century Palestine.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Mostly good marketing. But they really do have something extraordinary. As observed below, most relics are unimpressive: a sliver of wood from the "true cross," or a fragment of bone or cloth here and there. When I lived in Bari, Italy, I spent a fair amount of time at the Basilica of St. Nicholas where I had befriended one of the restoration workers. Not only did he let me restore a patch of the portal carvings under his supervision, he had access the crypt. Who wouldn't want to see the corpse of Santa Claus? As I said, it's unimpressive. Relics that are the remains of saints are invariably tiny bone fragments that have been sealed or encased in reliquaries. The "tomb" of St. Nicholas is just a stone box lined with these various hand-sized reliquaries.

In contrast, the Turin Shroud is gigantic and visually impressive. And it's tied directly to Jesus, whereas so many of the other relics are peripheral. There's probably a church somewhere that venerates a piece of Mary Magdelene's dental floss or toenail clippings from the local saint.


There's a passage in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in which Brother William disabuses his young novice Adso of the allure of relics.



The joke lands because this really is how the relic fetish works among some of the least critical congregants in Catholic countries.

I was over in Portugal in September 23 and did a go around of various churches in Porto while there. The exteriors are genuinely beautiful with the intricate tilework, but the interiors are lousy with relics, a lock of hair here, a bit of cloth there, a few finger bones next church over, and all encased in massive creations of silver and gold. All I could think of was the massive waste by the church to gild these few bits of nothing, just to keep the uneducated believing over the centuries.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Mostly good marketing. But they really do have something extraordinary. As observed below, most relics are unimpressive: a sliver of wood from the "true cross," or a fragment of bone or cloth here and there. When I lived in Bari, Italy, I spent a fair amount of time at the Basilica of St. Nicholas where I had befriended one of the restoration workers. Not only did he let me restore a patch of the portal carvings under his supervision, he had access the crypt. Who wouldn't want to see the corpse of Santa Claus? As I said, it's unimpressive. Relics that are the remains of saints are invariably tiny bone fragments that have been sealed or encased in reliquaries. The "tomb" of St. Nicholas is just a stone box lined with these various hand-sized reliquaries.

In contrast, the Turin Shroud is gigantic and visually impressive. And it's tied directly to Jesus, whereas so many of the other relics are peripheral. There's probably a church somewhere that venerates a piece of Mary Magdelene's dental floss or toenail clippings from the local saint.


There's a passage in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in which Brother William disabuses his young novice Adso of the allure of relics.



The joke lands because this really is how the relic fetish works among some of the least critical congregants in Catholic countries.

I'd like to assure younger visitors to the forum that JayUtah is just joking, Santa is alive, well and busy preparing for next Xmas!

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Given the versatility of modern technology, in addition to the easy access to scholarly sources that we all have, why aren't more relics being discovered, publicized, advertised, and, most importantly, sold to today's faithful? Anybody, you'd think, could dummy up a plausible story from the New Testament, helped out with authentic monkish commentaries (or cherries picked therefrom), to explain a new! shocking! incredible! scientist-are-baffled! discovery from, say, a Gaza bomb crater or a trench cut to build a new Walmart in Akron -- some damn thing.

Your actual relic? Oh, maybe a 'nauthentic 4-color wax portrait of Jeebus & Mary, with genuine dirty fingerprints of St. Rinderpest of Rotterdam, ca. 303 AD. Get datable grime from various sources, hire a minion in a white coat to play the scientist who can't explain it, and

Just watch the money roll in!

You want to make new relics? Get yourself an rcc certified "genuine" relic and start touching it with other items. Under canon law these things havesome of the holyness of the relic rubbed off on them and become relics themselves.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Not until someone explains the lousy chi^2 test on the shroud from the radiocarbon paper.

Also would be nice to know the identity of the forger and how the forgery was done.

The Shroud of Turin Website - Home Page

Shroud of Turin Website

shroud.com

Just for the picture, you can see the L shaped pattern of burn holes on the shroud, and the same L shaped pattern is on the Pray Codex.

Within standard staetistical probability measurements (p=<0.05), the three date ranges clearly overlap, therefore the problem you raise is clearly a false one. Whether you are raising it deliberately or out of ignorance is a different matter.

 

[catsmate]

Just look at the Holy Stone of Clonrichert....

 

[Thermal]

I'd like to assure younger visitors to the forum that JayUtah is just joking, Santa is alive, well and busy preparing for next Xmas!

I'm thinking the Pook read that post, and it became her Joker moment?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Just look at the Holy Stone of Clonrichert....

That would be an ecumenical matter.

 

[Myriad]

Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding something, but is the following not the case?

Say you have a Quantity To Be Measured (QTBM). The QTBM is a singular value, immutable at any particular time of measurement, like the number of jelly beans currently in some large container, or the current age of some centuries-old artifact. But it is not known apart from the measurements made. (You can't "open the jar and count.") The measurement process is subject to error, and the error in the measurement is characterized by a normal probability distribution.

Three separate independent measurements are taken at (for all practical purposes) the same time. Isn't the most probable result that two of the measurements will fall within one standard deviation (technically, within the standard error) of the actual QTBM, while the third will fall outside one and within two standard deviations of it? And (this is where I'm less certain, but I did some Monte Carlo tries and it seems to come out that way), is it not also the most probable result that two of the measurements will fall within one standard deviation of each other, while the third will be within two standard deviations of the other two?

 

[pgwenthold]

It was taken from a repaired area.

I may have missed it, but what is the basis for this claim?

I don't get it. The people in charge of the shroud are taking the big step to have it dated by using 14C dating. But they are too stupid to not know to use a patch?

Certainly, the patched areas are well known and obvious. Although I seem to recall some claim somewhere that the "patch" was an invisible patch that looked exactly like the shroud, and, in fact, you couldn't even tell the shroud had been repaired. You can't be so stupid to be claiming that kind of crap, can you?

The only way this works is if you assert either incompetence or conspiracy.

 

[pgwenthold]

Sigh. Not this drivel by Van Haelst again..
First Van Haelst, who was an industrial chemist decides to use an analytic technique invented by himself, rather than standard methodologies, and rejects the dating of 1260 – 1390....
In favour of a dating of 1220 -1420.
So much for a first century relic.

@bobdroege7, you might try reading the material you uncover before posting it. It'd help prevent you looking like an idiot.,

Interesting. As in, yeah, no ◊◊◊◊.

There are a couple of explanations for why the dates given don't agree within some statistical test to a specified level. I don't remember the book, but the old science stats book that I used to use all the time basically said, "If you have data that fall outside the standard deviation, what it means is that someone most likely overstated their uncertainties."

In our work, we always expand the uncertainties beyond simple standard deviation due to things like (identifiable) systematic or random errors in our measurement.

Ooooo, the 3 dates don't agree sufficiently within the stated uncertainties. Probably because the uncertainties are overstated. Double the uncertainties and the problem is solved. What that does is, as noted above, expands the range of possible values.

What it does NOT do is make anything compatible with being 2000 years old.

(exercise for the reader: what would the uncertainty in the measured 14C amount need to be to have a date range that includes 30CE? Hint: a lot)

 

[Pacal]

Within standard staetistical probability measurements (p=<0.05), the three date ranges clearly overlap, therefore the problem you raise is clearly a false one. Whether you are raising it deliberately or out of ignorance is a different matter.

Exactly! I really don't see the problem. They overlap within 2 standard deviations which is actually not bad. And of course two overlap within 1 standard deviation. The third makes it within 2 standard deviations. All the statistical manipulations in the world just don't make these results meaningless, because one deviates more than the other two, or supports a conspiracy theory of substitution etc.

Also the fact that the results date the shroud to less than 1/2 of the age required for it to be the burial shroud of Jesus, i.e., c. 600-800 years old rather than c. 1900+ years old is telling. And of course the amount "alleged" contamination on the shroud required to move the date from c. 1900 years to c. 800-600 years old would weigh more than the shroud fabrics tested. Very unlikely.

All the statistical games in the world won't change any of that.

 

[Pacal]

I may have missed it, but what is the basis for this claim?

I don't get it. The people in charge of the shroud are taking the big step to have it dated by using 14C dating. But they are too stupid to not know to use a patch?

Certainly, the patched areas are well known and obvious. Although I seem to recall some claim somewhere that the "patch" was an invisible patch that looked exactly like the shroud, and, in fact, you couldn't even tell the shroud had been repaired. You can't be so stupid to be claiming that kind of crap, can you?

The only way this works is if you assert either incompetence or conspiracy.

The claim it came from a repaired area is based on the fact that the shroud was in the past repaired. Thus the fact that the carbon 14 results did not agree with Shroud believers claims about the age of the shroud meant that of course that the fibers tested came from a repaired area.

There is of course no evidence that that was in fact the case, it is all mere assertion with zero evidence for it.

The reasoning is The Shroud is c. 2000 years old, the carbon 14 results gave an age of c. 600-800 years; since the age given is not 2000 years the wrong fabric must have been tested because we know it is 2000 years old. Whatever.

 

[pgwenthold]

Exactly! I really don't see the problem. They overlap within 2 standard deviations which is actually not bad. And of course two overlap within 1 standard deviation. The third makes it within 2 standard deviations. All the statistical manipulations in the world just don't make these results meaningless, because one deviates more than the other two, or supports a conspiracy theory of substitution etc.

Also the fact that the results date the shroud to less than 1/2 of the age required for it to be the burial shroud of Jesus, i.e., c. 600-800 years old rather than c. 1900+ years old is telling. And of course the amount "alleged" contamination on the shroud required to move the date from c. 1900 years to c. 800-600 years old would weigh more than the shroud fabrics tested. Very unlikely.

All the statistical games in the world won't change any of that.

Yep. I'm not going to squint about t-tests or chi-squared values or p values for 3 data points.

As I noted above, uncertainties in physical measurements involve more than simple standard deviation. If they are using AMS techniques, for example, there could be some systematic discrimination in detection that could have an effect. It would be a few percent maybe, and won't change the overall conclusion, but it will increase the error bars.

As I said, ok, increase the uncertainties in the measurements to get them to the point where they satisfy your statistical limit.

It doesn't extend the range to include 30CE, so it doesn't help.

 

[pgwenthold]

The claim it came from a repaired area is based on the fact that the shroud was in the past repaired. Thus the fact that the carbon 14 results did not agree with Shroud believers claims about the age of the shroud meant that of course that the fibers tested came from a repaired area.

There is of course no evidence that that was in fact the case, it is all mere assertion with zero evidence for it.

The reasoning is The Shroud is c. 2000 years old, the carbon 14 results gave an age of c. 600-800 years; since the age given is not 2000 years the wrong fabric must have been tested because we know it is 2000 years old. Whatever.

The sad part is, I understood exactly what you said.

Someone can remind me, was that here in the discussion with Jabba where the claim was that it was an invisible patch? Or did I see that in some other shroud discussion?

 

[acbytesla]

That's a classic @bobdroege7 tactic.

And, despite various assertions, @bobdroege7 has shown exactly zero examples of herringbone woven cloth in first century Palestine.

I'm not sure the fact that he hasn't doesn't mean herringbone woven cloth wasn't in use. We know that herringbone woven cloth existed hundreds of years before the time of Jesus. We also know that cloth doesn't necessarily preserve very well. Don't get me wrong. I don't believe for a second that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus. I'm just unconvinced that we can say that such a weave is impossible or even unlikely to be available in first century Palestine.

 

[zooterkin]

The sad part is, I understood exactly what you said.

Someone can remind me, was that here in the discussion with Jabba where the claim was that it was an invisible patch? Or did I see that in some other shroud discussion?

Yes, it was one of Jabba's.

Debate/Perceptions


Slowvehicle,

- This is the first.

carlitos:
Anyhoo, Jabba? Were the scientists biased, incompetent, or was there a conspiracy? Enquiring minds want to know.

Jabba:
Carlitos,
- I do suspect that the leaders were biased.
- I do not suspect that they were incompetent.
- I do not suspect any conspiracy.
- I do suspect, however, that the leaders let their biases affect their judgment.

- Your claim referring to that post:
You have repeatedly said that "bias" is the reason that 3 independent labs, performing 3 independent protocols, all came up with the "wrong" date. No matter how you try to soft-pedal it, that is a charge of incompetence--a level of incompetence that would end a career.


- Slowvehicle, I was simply answering carlitos' questions. I told him what I suspected. I was not "charging" anybody with anything. And finally, I don't even suspect "incompetence." I do suspect bias (and lots of it, actually) -- would you have me lie to carlitos, or simply not answer his question?
- And, keep in mind that we are all biased -- some more than others.


- Here's the other one.

Jabba:
- So anyway, I’ve been trying to show potential weakness in the carbon dating process.
- Most recently, I’ve been trying to show why we shouldn’t yet dismiss the possibility of a near-invisible patch. I believe that the papers I’ve referenced do, in fact, preclude an out-of-hand dismissal of that possibility, in that 1) they appear to show significant evidence missed by the people responsible for the dating, and 2) the something missed, according to these papers, was evidence of patching.
- You guys do not believe that the papers I’ve referenced do, in fact, preclude an out-of-hand dismissal of that possibility.
- For now, I'm happy to leave that as a clear point of disagreement between us. In other words, my case for a semi-invisible patch is, at least momentarily, closed.
- But then, a near-invisible patch is only one of the possible explanations for that late date...


Your claim re that post:
You have repeatedly claimed that fabric experts, who have actually had access to study the linen, "must have missed" an "invisible repair" (or "some patching"), when the site of the testing samples was chosen because it shows no sign of any such. (and, in fact, you have ignored evidence that demonstrates that the sample area is undisturbed, at the very structural level.

- I still seems obvious to me that they did miss some things, and I don't understand why you guys don't, at least, suspect that they did. Again, would you have me not express my opinion...?

--- Jabba

 

[I Am The Scum]

What on earth is a "near-invisible patch?" Is that what the emperor's new clothes were made from?

 

[catsmate]

The sad part is, I understood exactly what you said.

Someone can remind me, was that here in the discussion with Jabba where the claim was that it was an invisible patch? Or did I see that in some other shroud discussion?

Yep, Savage repetitively claimed there was an "invisible patch" conveniently in the area sampled. Despite the expert examination....
Bollocks of course, but @bobdroege7 needs something to justify rejecting the radiocarbon dating, be it magic god emergy, contamination, invisible patches or fraud.