I had not realized how deeply we disagreed on this issue. For me, this forum is part of a search for truth. I don't come here to be part of a team to beat up on true believers. I am disgusted by the news talk shows where a partisan Republican is opposed by a partisan Democrat and neither individual gives a crap about truth. I would be disgusted by this forum if I thought that this is what it was.
I think we must be a cross purposes. I am not interested in "beating up" on Jabba (or on any other religious believers). What I am trying to do with Jabba is to get him to focus on why the C14 paper is so significant. And conversely, to focus his attention on why the so-called "scientific papers" which he is quoting, are in fact not real scientific papers at all (with the sole exception of the Rogers paper, which in fact I had to draw to his attention as the one publication that he should probably be presenting if he wanted to claim the C14 was in error ... check back to around page 15 to see how and why I began to suggest to Jabba that he should probably be raising the issue of Rogers paper, which until that stage he had in fact not pursed at all!).
If you/we/anyone continues to be drawn into debates with Jabba about his claims that the C14 is wrong due to a patch, or due to excess C14 somehow being absorbed into the shroud due to the 16th century fire, or due to neutron emission from a miraculous resurrection event, or due to a bioplastic polymer coating of the shroud fibres etc., then that is up to you and up to others here who are continuing to engage in that sort of discussion. However, we have discussed all of those issues here at least a dozen times before, and what keeps happening is that Jabba simply ends up going back ten pages as if the discussion had never happened and he simply raised the same arguments all over again ... and he has said here several times, he is prepared to keep doing that indefinitely. Well imho, that is not a way forward.
However, what I think is a way forward, and what Jabba has come very close to admitting in recent pages, is to get Jabba to face up to the fact that the so-called "science papers" which he keeps presenting, are in fact nothing more than the writing of shroud enthusiasts on the internet. He is quoting "papers" written by shroud believers on shroud websites like that of Barrie Schwortz, articles published in trade and industry magazines, or published as proceedings from shroud conferences. But that sort of publication is not remotely comparable with genuine research science journals such as Nature, or even better journals such as J. Am. Chem Soc. (for chemistry results) or Phys Rev (for physics results) or J. Phys Chem (for spectroscopy results etc.), or indeed Radiocarbon (for C14 testing).
In recent posts I think Jabba has been getting very close to accepting that crucial difference between genuine science papers vs. what people write on shroud websites and what they say at shroud conferences etc.
In repeatedly asking Jabba if he has any genuine science papers criticising he C14, I am not expecting him to produce any such papers, because it seems that no such papers exist. What I am trying to point out to him, and what I am trying to get him to admit (for the sake of his own understanding) is that what he has been believing to be real science papers are in fact not genuine science publications at all. I am trying to get him to appreciate the difference between real science publications, such as the C14 paper in Nature versus what he has been quoting as "papers" from shroud believers ... until you understand the vast difference between those two things, you will never understand why genuine science is valid in a way which un-scientific arguments and arguments from religious shroud websites are not.
I was disgusted by the discussion about controversy above. It is a simple truth that there is a controversy about the Shroud of Turin. The fact that the shroud sceptic team wouldn't acknowledge that simple fact because it wasn't part of the team message was disgusting to me. The fact that stupid semantics went on for pages driven solely by the unwillingness of the shroud sceptic team to acknowledge what they saw as an argument from the other side was juvenile and political, but it had nothing to do with a search for truth.
Well you need not be disgusted about it. All that was happening there, was that some of us did not want to encourage Jabba in his claim that the shroud was "controversial", simply because the C14 results should have removed much of what was once a "controversy" about whether the shroud was authentic or not. That's all.
I could have perfectly well accepted the shroud as remaining controversial. But the controversy is mostly an artificial one being maintained by religious believers who cannot accept that the shroud is anything other than the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
If you want to say that remains a controversy as long as people like Jabba keep raising objections to the C14 and keep claiming the shroud is the 1st century burial garment of Jesus, then I understand why you say that's perfectly reasonable. I'm not really disagreeing with that use of the word "controversy". What I was trying to highlight is that what Jabba and his fellow shroud believers would like to do is to continue claiming a "controversy" as if the C14 had never actually happened! Whereas, in fact, for almost everyone except fanatical shroud believers, the C14 has effectively resolved the controversy about the authenticity of the shroud (at least until some genuine science shows that the C14 dates were massively in error).
I think you are wrong that people presenting their views candidly plays right into Jabba's hands. I think an honest discussion where even people on the same team don't agree exactly is far more persuasive than a discussion where group bias and politics is a primary driver.
I don't think it actually matters if it "plays into Jabba's hands". But what I think is a rather bad mistake, is that if people here deliberately start arguing with one-another over their style of posting or their line of valid argument (and it certainly is a valid line of argument to try to pin Jabba down on addressing the question of why he cannot find even one genuine science paper criticising the C14), then it allows Jabba to avoid ever coming to the point and encourages him in a literally endless debate about what has been claimed on his favourite shroud websites, ie all the same stuff that he has stated here repeatedly over & over again for the past 50 pages ... as he himself has told us, he is prepared to keep doing that for ever!
I'm trying to short circuit that recipe for Jabba's endless circle of repeating all the same shroud claims every 20 pages, and instead get him to accept the fact (a true fact as far as any of us know) that there are actually no genuine scientists disputing the C14 dates.
It sounds like you are making an argument that the shroud sceptic team should stifle dissent so as to be more convincing. I don't want to be more convincing if that is what that entails. I speak for myself and if I don't agree with a point that is made I say so and when a person writes something that I agree with even if I disagree with his overall conclusion I acknowledge that. I might not be winning friends with that approach and I might not always be promoting my side as well as possible but I don't care all that much. I like to pretend truth matters and that is what I like to pursue.
I did not realise there was "shroud sceptic team" here? But I agree with you that the "truth" is what matters here. And I'm trying to focus directly on that point too. So what is the truth here? OK, well the one thing that is certainly true as much as anyone here can possibly ever honestly tell, is that that C14 paper is constrained by the rules of science publishing to present the objective facts as truly and honestly as possible ... and that objective fact is that the shroud almost certainly does not date to anywhere near the time of Christ. That is the "true" objective fact here. And what is not "true" is that the sources and claims presented by Jabba from shroud websites, are in any comparable sense real scientific results at all ... on the contrary they are the subjective and mostly erroneous beliefs of faithful Christians who cannot accept that the shroud is not actually the very burial cloth which has touched the body of Jesus Christ.
It may be the case that Jabba will never admit that the C14 dating is likely to be correct, no matter what the real evidence is. That's obviously likely given his posts in this thread.
But personally, in the light of the past 50 pages, I think it's probably a waste of time trying to argue with him indefinitely in an attempt to convince him that an invisible repair is impossible, or that the C14 sample was actually not part of the original shroud, or that C14 contamination could not possibly occur, etc. etc.
The truth is, whether it's the shroud or anything else, all sorts of things are possible. It's not literally impossible for the C14 to be completely wrong. It might be, and for various possible reasons. But that really is not the relevant point here. What is relevant is how confident we can be in the C14 dates versus opposing claims presented by shroud believers. And the answer to that question is that C14 is a genuine objective and scientifically valid results which is more likely than not to be highly accurate. Whereas what Jabba is presenting, and what some here wish to keep arguing about indefinitely, is nothing more than error strewn claims from religious believers on shroud websites where they cannot bring themselves to accept that the shroud is probably not old enough to be the first century burial cloth of anyone, let along Jesus Christ.
As a final word on that issue of engaging Jabba in even more discussion of the details of his various shroud papers etc - in earlier pages, I’ve probably done as much as anyone here to show in detail why the C14 results are correct, why Ray Rogers paper is so weak, and why an “Invisible Patch” is not just not believable. If you really want me to then I can waste even more time going into details of why C14 contamination is not credible, we could spend another 50 pages indulging Jabba in a discussion about that, though it’s obvious from the past 50 pages that Jabba is not going to be convinced by any such arguments against his belief that the same arguments on his shroud websites are to be preferred.
But as I say, what I think is a better line of discourse with Jabba, is to clarify with him what he was on the verge of indirectly admitting just a few pages back, namely that the reason he cannot find any genuine independent scientists publishing any work saying the C14 was wrong, is because it seems there are no such scientists genuinely disagreeing with the C14.
If we get Jabba to accept that, then it means he is also accepting that the so-called “papers” which he has been relying on, are not in fact genuine science papers in the same sense that the C14 paper is.
If your source of information is only claims made on shroud websites, as Jabba’s source actually is, then just as the creationists do when arguing from publications from creationist sources, you could argue that shroud case or creationist case literally for ever. But you are then arguing about scientific results (eg the C14 dates or evolution etc.) from what are actually unscientific sources on what are essentialy religious websites promoting belief in such things (religious things) as the shroud or creationism or fine-tuning etc.
If you want to argue all that for the next thousands years then that’s’ up to you. But there is a much simpler and more objective way. And that is to face those faithful believers with the unarguable fact that what they are claiming as science, is in fact not genuine established science at all. That is precisely what was shown in the Dover Trial, where creationists tried to argue that they
were presenting real science, and where they had also spent decades trying to get their claims published in genuine science journals, and where they also claimed that many thousands of their own “papers” were real published science.
But most people here probably know the outcome of that trial - the creationists were clearly shown to be pedalling religious beliefs masquerading as “science” … it was NOT science, and it was not genuinely published in the science literature. As with the shroud and with Jabba’s shroud references, the creationist “papers” and creationist books, were (and are) in fact nothing more than all their own numerous and constant vast output of religiously inspired propaganda masquerading as if it were genuine science, which it is emphatically not.
