I would like to agree with the above, but there is a very obvious problem with the last concluding sentence. And it's this - it cannot be the case that it's never occurred to Jabba that he has been reading " fabrications and lies ", because everyone here pointed that out to him from page one ... and more generally, Jabba and other shroud believers are fully aware that their belief in the shroud has been criticised in the strongest possible terms by countless authors for many centuries, and that's before we get to the inescapable fact that Jabba and other believers know full well that C14 tests have been made and that the C14 scientists have unequivocally stated that the shroud dates from 1260AD to 1390AD ...
... just to repeat that (to be completely clear) - it cannot be the case that Jabba is unaware of that history of objection to shroud beliefs. He most certainly does know that belief in the shroud is concentrated almost entirely within religious circles, and that outside of religion, genuinely independent investigators and particularly those involved in the C14 tests, have always said, and indeed explained in detail (as the C14 results themselves explain very clearly), why independent non-religious sources all reject the shroud as a medieval fake.
Jabba most certainly is aware of all that.
The problem is not that Jabba is simply unaware of why the logical and honest conclusion is to say the shroud is almost certainly 13th-14th cent. The problem is that Jabba and other believers, where they genuinely do believe what they say, are quite deliberately and knowingly deceiving themselves in order to maintain their wider belief in God and religion as the fundamental basis of their lives ....
... unfortunately, if we want to be blunt about that, then we have to say that is a matter of straightforward dishonesty. Ie, Jabba and his fellow theists are not being honest with themselves when testing their own beliefs, and they then pass on that dishonestly quite deliberately and knowingly when they try to maintain their God belief in argument with others.
To use another word (instead of "dishonesty") ... it's a deliberate form of self-delusion. And their justification for it is that it preserves their own personal integrity & credibility, because it means they do not have to publicly admit that everything they have said about the meaning and value of life was/is in fact completely wrong. That would be admission so huge and so damaging to a theists own personal credibility, that they will do and say absolutely anything to avoid any such admission ... in which case, the self-delusion must go on.
2000 years ago, in biblical times, beliefs like this were understandable and entirely forgivable. Because at that time almost everyone believed in Gods and devils, and nobody had ever explained an better understanding of the world.
But now, in a scientifically enlightened 21st century, it's no longer credible for educated people (scientifically educated, in particular) to maintain beliefs like that if they are being honest with themselves.
For example - it's now over 150 years since Darwin explained the discovery of evolution, which immediately showed that God could not in fact have actually made Man. OK, so what? Well, if theists were being honest with themselves then they should have admitted that discovery was hugely at odds with what is probably the entire basis of the bible and the entire religious belief system of Christians, Jews and Muslims ... at a stroke it showed that the basis of their religious books was entirely untrue.
Now you can try shifting the goalposts and say " OK, well if God did not make man directly, then maybe we have to "interpret" the words of the bible to mean that God made man indirectly by creating the universe 13.7billion years ago, and then waiting to see if Homo sapiens would ever appear! ". But when theists begin to say things like that they should know full well that they are in all honesty again stretching their truth to breaking point.
The plain honest fact is that evolution showed that the Bible and it's religion based on the creation of Man as God's principal aim, is undoubtedly wrong.
The point of saying all that, is of course to illustrate a core example of how and why believers such as Jabba, quite happily indulge in self-delusion in order to maintain their own self respect and avoid ever having to admit that they have been so badly wrong about something which they claim to be the most important thing in the universe and their entire reason for living. Eg, if we accept that evolution is almost certainly true, then in all honesty the idea of a God who creates Man and set's him in a created universe, becomes completely untenable.
If that seems to be an off-topic diversion away from the shroud and into religion - it’s not really a diversion, because Jabba is not really talking here about the shroud at all. That’s why it seems impossible to get through to him with any honest conversation here. What Jabba is actually talking about is his religious belief … the shroud is only a vehicle which he is using to mainatain that belief, and broadcast it here.
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