- Re one vs two foci -- I'm torn.
- For simplicity sake, I'd like to stick to one, and carbon dating would be the natural first choice.
- However, I disagree with you about the surety of the dating, believe that I have evidence in other areas that "outweighs" the dating, don't want to be restricted to just arguing against the dating and want to have my chance (in my own "sub-thread") to direct the conversation.
- I'm trying to follow your lead re the carbon dating, but think that the blood issue and its implications, outweigh the carbon dating results re the date of the Shroud. So, that's the area I wish to address, and will try to develop my own sub-thread accordingly.
--- Jabba
Either show the math--specifically, show how much C14 would have to be added to the sample to get an error of the magnitude you're proposing--or we're done with the C14. If you can't show the math, you don't know the methods well enough to comment on them and you're going to continue to get trounced in debate. And that's just where you need to START--it by no means proves your arguments, it's merely the beginning. Because it's not enough to show that C14 dating was wrong--you have to show that YOUR date is RIGHT as well, which you've thus far avoided like the plague.
As for the blood, we've already given numerous reasons it's irrelevent. At best, you can prove there's blood. WHO'S blood is completely unknown, and if you can't even pin the date of the cloth down to the correct time it's entirely possible that the blood came from someone/something much, much later.
A. There is no image below any of the blood stains.
All this shows is that the fraud who made the shroud was a good fraud. Seriously, do you know ANY artists? I do--they take a lot of time to make sure their images are correct. Knowing what's in back or front is sort of a major part of that, and certainly well within the skills of Medieval artists (look at any Celtic knotwork). You seem completely unaware that artists SKETCH THINGS before they paint them.
B. There were like 150 different wounds depicted on the depicted body. In order for there to be no image under the depicted wounds, the artist would have had to leave 150 well-shaped "holes" in the image, and most of the holes would have included spaces not visible to the naked eye.
This is Argument from Incredulity, nothing more. Trust me, 150 is not a large number. When you get to the 10,000s, THEN you can be impressed (I routinely make jewelry with a few hundred individually cut rings, and I know artists that frequently make sculptures with hundreds of very small holes; I don't know many painters, though, so if someone does I'd love to hear their perspective).
the first "landing" in my projected "staircase," is that I can pretty much prove -- by the blood evidence -- that neither the image nor the blood were painted, and that one way or another, a dead body was involved.
First, you haven't proven anything with the blood other than your own incredulity and lack of understanding of how paintings are made. Second, no one's argued against dead bodies being involved. If you'd bother to read what I've been writing, you'll note that I admited this posibility numerous times. What you're running from as fast as you can is the fact that you can't prove that the dead body is from the correct time period. And without that, we're left with nothing more than an interesting historical artifact--which is exactly what it'd be if it was a fraud--and NOT the burial shroud of Jeshua bin Yoseph.
I never told you it'd be a snap--I said that you knew what you were getting into, and have no right to now complain that the people on this forum are acting the way we've always acted. 
