Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[IanS]

It related only to the quality of the discussion in this thread about the authenticity of the shroud.

If your point is that was an off topic digression, then perhaps so. If you had a different point in mind then I have missed it and if so then my apologies.

But the question got me to thinking. Am I disgusted with some or all of the pro-authenticity advocacy people? I'm not sure. I tend to be more forgiving of what I think of as the true believer crowd. For one thing, I'd be in a pretty big state of continuous disgust given how much of the world believes in what looks like hokum to me. Am I disgusted by the scientists that have promoted what looks like complete crap to me for reasons that seem driven by some kind of self interest bias? Yeah, I suppose so, but it's not clear how to divide the pro-authenticity people between the cynics that pander to the credulous and the actual true believers for which even a scientific background has yielded low critical thinking capability.

Dave, I truly don't think you should take any of this to heart re. the "controversy".

All that was happening, was that some of us did not want to let Jabba & his fellow shroud fanatics, insist that the shroud is still a matter of any genuine "controversy", ie a great mystery, despite the C14 results. Or indeed to let him claim, as he does, that on top of all the original "controversy" we must now add even more "controversy" about the C14 results!

IOW - every time anyone shows that the shroud claims are likely to be wrong, shroud fanatics just claim that the shroud then becomes even more controversial! It's rather like the creationists and the Young-Earth believers etc., who, every time science plugs one gap in their God claims, they then claim there are now two gaps! ... because they now say we also need to explain what they claim is a new mystery about another “controversial” result of science!

But the "controversy" thing was never more than just a few of us not wanting to let Jabba get away with characterising the C14 result as controversial. Because the only thing controversial about that result is that religious shroud fanatics don’t like it.

As far as being more open minded about the shroud (if that’s what you mean) - some of us are completely open minded about any of these things. In the case of the shroud and Jabba, all that’s happening is that some of us are acknowledging that the C14 results are truly objective and valid as far as anyone can honestly tell (that’s how & why they got published). Whereas what Jabba is citing as “scientific evidence” from shroud websites and believers like Ray Rogers, is not remotely objective at all, and in many instances actually seems to be deliberately dishonest.

 

[pakeha]

Found at a Shroud site:
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/my-critique-of-charles-freemans-turin.html

Apparently Charles Freeman has written something that has raised blisters.
http://freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/articles/freeman_shroud_edessa_misguided_journey/

...If the Shroud of Turin had not been photographed in 1898 and its haunting image revealed, it is unlikely that it would have stood out from the rest. It was never recognized as anything very special until the sixteenth century and was in its own time considered a fake, although such denunciations were often made by shrine guardians who feared their own lucrative relic cults might be threatened by rivals. Calvin probably is aware of it but lists it among many others. The shroud at Compiegne had the most respectable pedigree, the abbey had held it since 877. The shroud at the Abbey at Cadouin on the pilgrimage route to Compostella was probably the most lucrative. The abbey claimed that its shroud had been brought back from the Holy Land after the First Crusade had captured Jerusalem in 1099. Indeed it had been, but we know that, as it still exists, that it is a fine piece of cloth from the Fatimid workshops, as were many other cloths and veils brought back as genuine relics by gullible crusaders.

I'm reading Freeman's article as I watch the battle at Silverstone.

 

[Jabba]

Thickness of Body

The one thing about the shrould that always puzzled me, is if you fold it so that the front and the back half of the images line up, the body that allegedly produced the image would have to be like an inch thick...

Ravenwood,
- Ive wondered about that myself, and so far, don't have a clear answer...
- The best I can do is suggest that what looks like the beginning of the back of the head is really the top of head... I'll have to find a better picture. I don't remember anyone answering that question. As I have time, I'll look around.
--- Jabba

 

[zooterkin]

Ravenwood,
- Ive wondered about that myself, and so far, don't have a clear answer...
- The best I can do is suggest that what looks like the beginning of the back of the head is really the top of head... I'll have to find a better picture. I don't remember anyone answering that question. As I have time, I'll look around.
--- Jabba

Have you considered it might be a 14th century, painted, forgery?

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating - Reweaving?

Please take the trouble to verify your links.
There is neither a #39 nor a #43 in the link you gave me...

Pakeha,
- That paper is a little confusing -- there being two parts. The first part is where you'll find those numbers and links.
--- Jabba

 

[Jabba]

Thickness of Body

Have you considered it might be a 14th century, painted, forgery?

Ravenwood,
- Sure, but why would this crafty forger screw that up?
- Also, if you really dig into the evidence, it's pretty clear that this wasn't a painting.
--- Jabba

 

[Dinwar]

Have you considered it might be a 14th century, painted, forgery?

Of course not. That's the one thing a True Believer can't do--consider, even for an instant, that their position may be wrong. That's fundamentally why Jabba can't provide the amount of contamination necessary--to think in those terms is to entertain the possibility that you're wrong, and he simply isn't allowed to do that.

A scientist, on the other hand, is REQUIRED to ask "What if I'm wrong?" Thus we're free to ask any question we deem important, and follow the data anywhere it leads us.

More than anything else, that willingness to be proven wrong is what separates a real scientist from the likes of Jabba. It's not our conclusions, but our methods.

 

[Jabba]

"Spokesperson"

Don't take this the wrong way, because it is not your doing, but Jabba is adopting you as the sole spokesperson for all of the contributers on this thread.

Abaddon,
- All I'm asking Dave to do is tell me which q/c (question/comment) to answer next (if he accepts the job, I'm sure that he will suggest q/c's other than his own). I'm just trying to get someone else to blame for all the q/c's I'm leaving behind... And obviously, Dave is my best choice in that he seems genuinely open-minded. I mean, that's the truth.
--- Jabba

 

[Jabba]

Bias

- Why do you guys think that shroudies are more biased than skeptics?
--- Jabba

 

[Mashuna]

- Why do you guys think that shroudies are more biased than skeptics?
--- Jabba

Their failure to use the evidence to reach the conclusion, instead the assumption of the conclusion then the discarding or twisting of any evidence that contradicts it.

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating - Reweaving?

This is pure speculation that isn't useful without evidence that this is in fact the case...

Gao,
- Dave had asked me for my best guess (speculation) as to how the reweave would have been accomplished. And, while I didn't give citations, I did point to supportive claims that researchers have made -- e.g., that Fleury just said not to worry, as the cloth is all the same.
--- Jabba

 

[Jabba]

Bias

Their failure to use the evidence to reach the conclusion, instead the assumption of the conclusion then the discarding or twisting of any evidence that contradicts it.

Mashuna,
- You don't do the same thing?
--- Jabba

 

[Lucian]

- Why do you guys think that shroudies are more biased than skeptics?
--- Jabba

Because three different teams with experience in C14 testing tested the shroud as well as control samples at three different labs. The three teams came up with consistent results on all the samples. Those results proved conclusively that the shroud is medieval. Instead of accepting definitive evidence, shroudies twisted and turned to find any reason to reject the results: there were massive amounts of invisible contamination on the shroud samples which all three labs somehow managed not to account for, or magic pixies had produced a completely invisible repair far away from the image (even though there are very obvious repairs very close to the image).

 

[Akhenaten]

Abaddon,
- All I'm asking Dave to do is tell me which q/c (question/comment) to answer next (if he accepts the job, I'm sure that he will suggest q/c's other than his own). I'm just trying to get someone else to blame for all the q/c's I'm leaving behind... And obviously, Dave is my best choice in that he seems genuinely open-minded. I mean, that's the truth.
--- Jabba

You're what?

This is your interpretation of 'honest debate', is it?

 

[Dinwar]

- Why do you guys think that shroudies are more biased than skeptics?

Empirical data. Until a shroudy provides us with the amount of contamination necessary to make a 1st century cloth give a C14 date of the 14th century, your argument has NO foundation. Period. Full stop. Until you provide that data, YOU HAVE NOTHING. The fact that you still believe that the shroud is from the 1st century without evidence is the definition of bias.

 

[Akhenaten]

- Why do you guys think that shroudies are more biased than skeptics?
--- Jabba

Shroudies posting drivel like this is a fair indicator of the reason:

And, keep in mind that I believe that there are very significant pieces of scientific and historical evidence that the Shroud is much older than the 14th century -- and consequently, there just about "has to be" some sort of error in the dating.

In their minds, the scientific analysis of the thing is trumped by bleefs.

Their whole approach is based on a foregone conclusion that the shroud is the real deal and anything that doesn't fit that scenario is wrong.

It's no different to any other form of religious fanaticism, in other words.

 

[Akhenaten]

Mashuna,
- You don't do the same thing?
--- Jabba

What a ridiculous question.

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating - Reweaving?

http://www.thefrenchreweavers.com/reweave.htm

Here's a company that actually does invisible weaving. The French reweaving style works only for very small pieces of the garment, and requires threads to be taken from other parts of hte garment. If I'm reading it correctly, the threads are woven into the textile, then that weave is extended across the damaged portion. It will look invisible to the casual eye, but hardly to a trained one. This is like maille--when I'm working with a big piece minor errors that no one else can see stick out at me, because I'm so used to looking at it. Similarly, someone used to looking at cloth will see the variation in the weave pattern pretty quickly. It's good enough that no one would worry about wearing a rewoven shirt or pair of pants, but it's not truly invisible by any stretch of the imagination. And that's giving you the best of it:...

Dinwar,
- Do you agree that we now have two sets of experts disagreeing with each other? If so, I'll have to do some further analysis. Hopefully, you'll need to do some as well.
--- Jabba

 

[Pixel42]

- Why do you guys think that shroudies are more biased than skeptics?
--- Jabba

For the same reason creationists are considered more biased than those who accept the evidence for evolution.

When all the evidence supports position A and none supports position B, pointing this out is not an example of bias. Asserting that position B is supportable and wilfully misrepresenting the evidence in an attempt to justify that assertion is an example of bias.

 

[Jabba]

Bias

Dave,
- I gotta ask. What do you think of their answers about bias?
--- Jabba