Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[Mashuna]

Recovering Agnostic,

- I'm just admitting that I'm "significantly" biased. Personally, of course, I think that you guys are even more biased. You guys don't just disagree with the latter, you think it's a joke.

- When I run into Lord Acton's claim about "power corrupting," I figure he was trying to convey just how universal that is. I think he was saying that no one can escape that rule...
- When I complain about we humans' lack of objectivity, I'm marveling about how universal and insidious that lack is. Once into a debate, as objective as we think we are, we just want to win. That's our animal, and human, nature.

Hence the use of scientific protocol, blinding samples, multiple testing etc. Science has specifically developed as a way to protect against bias. You claiming that using the scientific results is more biased than your line of argument is laughable, hence why we think it's a joke.

- I've been studying this for a long time, and figure that I've learned to dilute that urge a little.

--- Jabba

This is you trying not to be biased? Good Lord.

 

[Recovering Agnostic]

- I'm just admitting that I'm "significantly" biased. Personally, of course, I think that you guys are even more biased. You guys don't just disagree with the latter, you think it's a joke.

Your first problem is that you treat everyone posting on this thread other than you as a single group acting in unison. We're not, we're a whole lot of different people, many of whom (including me) came to this thread undecided on the Shroud and were swiftly converted by the sheer volume of evidence that it's a medieval forgery, compared with - sorry, what was your evidence again?

Oh yes, that's your second problem - biased or not (and I suspect any neutral observer would identify your contributions as a massive ball of fallacies, wild conjecture and special pleading), you still need to provide evidence. Actual, solid evidence. You're still on about patching, but have offered no evidence to support it. You claim biased testing, based on conjecture, with no explanation of how that could distort the results so massively, nor any evidence to support it. You claim there's blood, despite a lack of evidence and the fact that finding blood would do nothing to substantiate what you want to be true. You have nothing.

You haven't given any good reason for concluding that there's anything wrong with the testing, nor any criteria for accepting the results if the Shroud was tested yet again. It's just a load of "It's possible that" and "We can't rule out", without any specific criticisms or suggestions. The only rational conclusion is that you will continue to hunt for possible loopholes as long as the result isn't the one you want. And do remember that when you're slinging accusations of bias around - you have a preferred result. The rest of us couldn't care less, because even if the Shroud was dated to exactly 33AD, it still wouldn't prove that it belonged to a Yeshua ben Yosef, that there was anything remarkable about him at all, or that his body disappeared from his tomb.

If you're going to look for bias and error, where would you start looking - the people who started with no view either way and no preference for a final outcome, or someone who came in here determined to prove that his existing belief was right? I'd say that's a no-brainer.

 

[Belz...]

- I'll have to get to your other points, separately.

--- Jabba

Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows...

 

[carlitos]

Jabba,

When you performed the above test, what was the result?

Carlitos,
- I accepted Slowvehicle's implication -- just that according to the people on my side, the shoulders of the victim would have naturally been raised.
--- Jabba

You quoted my question, and you wrote the words above, but I don't understand how your words form some kind of answer to the question I asked?

 

[Belz...]

Your first problem is that you treat everyone posting on this thread other than you as a single group acting in unison. We're not, we're a whole lot of different people, many of whom (including me) came to this thread undecided on the Shroud and were swiftly converted by the sheer volume of evidence that it's a medieval forgery, compared with - sorry, what was your evidence again?

Oh yes, that's your second problem - biased or not (and I suspect any neutral observer would identify your contributions as a massive ball of fallacies, wild conjecture and special pleading), you still need to provide evidence. Actual, solid evidence. You're still on about patching, but have offered no evidence to support it. You claim biased testing, based on conjecture, with no explanation of how that could distort the results so massively, nor any evidence to support it. You claim there's blood, despite a lack of evidence and the fact that finding blood would do nothing to substantiate what you want to be true. You have nothing.

You haven't given any good reason for concluding that there's anything wrong with the testing, nor any criteria for accepting the results if the Shroud was tested yet again. It's just a load of "It's possible that" and "We can't rule out", without any specific criticisms or suggestions. The only rational conclusion is that you will continue to hunt for possible loopholes as long as the result isn't the one you want. And do remember that when you're slinging accusations of bias around - you have a preferred result. The rest of us couldn't care less, because even if the Shroud was dated to exactly 33AD, it still wouldn't prove that it belonged to a Yeshua ben Yosef, that there was anything remarkable about him at all, or that his body disappeared from his tomb.

If you're going to look for bias and error, where would you start looking - the people who started with no view either way and no preference for a final outcome, or someone who came in here determined to prove that his existing belief was right? I'd say that's a no-brainer.

 

[Pixel42]

- Not so much that they would deliberately falsify the results due to their biases and emotionality -- but, they may be led by their biases and emotionality to not perform the testing properly

How could they have managed to perform the testing properly on the samples that weren't the shroud and yet not perform them properly on the shroud sample when they didn't know which was which? Don't forget they all got the correct dates for the other samples (including a genuine 1st century cloth sample) whose dates were already known and the same 14th century date for the sample that, unknown to them, was actually from the shroud.

You are ignoring the fact that the whole point of the scientific method - blinding, control samples etc - is to eliminate the experimenters' bias.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Carlitos,
- I accepted Slowvehicle's implication -- just that according to the people on my side, the shoulders of the victim would have naturally been raised.
--- Jabba

Oh, Rich...

You did not "accept my implication", nor did you even perform the demo. You just accepted the special pleading of the "people on your side".

Did the "people on your side" offer the slightest scintilla of a reason as to why the shoulders "would naturally have been raised", short of, "well, naturally, if the shoulders were not raised, the hands wouldn't cover the genitalia"?

Are any of them pathologists? Anatomists? Undertakers? SAR response workers? Any of them have any experience with actual dead bodies? What mechanism do the "people on your side" propose that would have raised the shoulders of a freshly-dead body? What about the absurdly, asymmetrically long fingers of the right hand?

...and you prattle about "bias"?

 

[John Jones]

Mashuna,
- Not so much that they would deliberately falsify the results due to their biases and emotionality -- but, they may be led by their biases and emotionality to not perform the testing properly (their statistics sound suspect, for instance), and to not do some of the important "peripheral" testing (for instance, someone made sure that STURP not be involved with its proposed multiple testing, and no one did the basic chemical testing that could have made sure the sample was representative of the greater cloth).
--- Jabba

Examples, please.

And what chemical testing, in your opinion, was called for?

 

[Humots]

Recovering Agnostic,

- I'm just admitting that I'm "significantly" biased. Personally, of course, I think that you guys are even more biased. You guys don't just disagree with the latter, you think it's a joke.

If you are "significantly" biased, couldn't part of that bias be that everyone who disagrees with you is even more biased?

When I run into Lord Acton's claim about "power corrupting," I figure he was trying to convey just how universal that is. I think he was saying that no one can escape that rule...
- When I complain about we humans' lack of objectivity, I'm marveling about how universal and insidious that lack is. Once into a debate, as objective as we think we are, we just want to win. That's our animal, and human, nature.
- I've been studying this for a long time, and figure that I've learned to dilute that urge a little
--- Jabba

And you have transcended that rule, unlike the rest of us poor, power-corrupted unfortunates? You are entitled to sit in judgement of our corruption and dismiss us as biased?

One of the achievements of science is to provide the objectivity that we humans. That's the reason why science has been so successful. Not that scientists are paragons, but the personal disciplines of science and the requirements for evidence and verification are powerful balances to personal bias.

Rather than address the evidence against your stand, you keep talking about other people's biases and spouting solipsist platitudes.

You've figured wrong.

 

[pakeha]

Jabba,

Did you notice how little actual data is in the Rogers publication? He goes on and on in the text about differences among the Raes sample, threads supposedly lifted from the image portion, and a few threads from the "radiocarbon dated samples" of absolutely unclear origin. Yet almost no actual data is presented to prove his statements! He shows a few photos of samples at different magnifications, which makes comparison impossible. He shows two mass specs trying to conclude that the image samples and Rae's samples differed. But does he present photos of any of the many other differences he claims he sees under the microscope and in response to is chemical tests? No. Does he, in fact, show any mass spec.data from the "radiocarbon dated samples"? No. This is not how most scientific papers are written. In fact, most scientific papers show the data for every conclusion they reach, and one can understand the publication simply by looking at the figures and graphs in the absence of the text.

Why does Rogers include unimportant and relatively meaningless data but leaves out the most important and exciting data, the very results that would prove his conclusions?

Bookmarked.

Probabalistically.

Pharaoh's wisdom illuminates us all, but may I respectfully bring to the divine presence the fact that it's not over till the fat lady sings?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Bookmarked.

Pharaoh's wisdom illuminates us all, but may I respectfully bring to the divine presence the fact that it's not over till the fat lady sings?

Hey! Who you callin' fat?!?!?

 

[wardenclyffe]

Ward,
- Do you basically agree with your colleagues?
--- Jabba

Jabba,

If, by colleagues, you mean my fellow posters here in the JREF Forum, then I would include you in that pool of colleagues. So my answer would have to be "sometimes."

I disagreed with you when you were quoting others who were talking about invisible patching because it did not seem to make sense.

I agreed with you when you went above and beyond and did your own primary research into the invisible patch theory and you found that such a thing was impossible or if it had been extremely well-disguised (but still not completely invisible) it would have used threads from elsewhere in the shroud.

I disagree with you now when you just repost the old invisible patch stuff again and you seem to ignore your own research.

I'll confess that I'm having trouble understanding that the patch was not "invisible" but was somehow missed by everyone. If later examination of threads from the sample area were obviously not representative of the shroud as a whole, then the patch should have been obviously visible. I just do not understand what you are trying to say. I assume you have thought this through and are trying to reconcile your research on the patch with date of the shroud. Please give the explanation one more try, because I'm not getting it.

Ward

 

[pakeha]

No matter how slim they are, sopranos are 'fat ladies'.
Get used to it.

 

[Slowvehicle]

No matter how slim they are, sopranos are 'fat ladies'.
Get used to it.

 

[Agatha]

Hey! What about those of us who have more of a contralto range? (though admittedly I used to be a mezzo-sop, in my younger days). We wanna be fat ladies too - even while being slender as a willow reed.

Jabba, do you realise how insulting it is to continually accuse scientists of bias towards a mediaeval date, when the very ethos of science is to put prejudice and pre-judgment aside and follow the actual evidence, wherever it leads?

And remember that on this very thread, people have chimed in and reported that prior to the information listed here, they had actually assumed the shroud to be a first century relic. Those neutral observers to whom you appealed earlier have read the thread and found the evidence conclusive - 14th century piece of art, fascinating in its own right in terms of both in its artistic and cultural significance, but not the 1st century burial cloth of Jesus which you so want it to be.

You are the one displaying bias because you are the one who begins with the conclusion and looks for the evidence to support it, ignoring the contrary evidence. Science starts with the evidence and goes where that leads - even if (especially if) that is something which leads to discarding everything that one believed. For a scientist, there is nothing more exciting than finding something which changes their worldview.

 

[Dinwar]

I think that, unfortunately, 1) there were too many egos in the kitchen; 2) the artifact involved was held sacred by the church; and 3) even scientists tend to be significantly biased and hard-headed.

All three of these are self-serving lies.

The third is slander. It's an attempt to shift the conversation from the data to the personalities of the scientists involved. If your whole CSI: Jerusalem garbage held true, you'd be in contept of court at this point and in jail.

Please provide SPECIFIC instances of fraud or incompetence in the scientific analysis of the shroud, or admit that you are wrong to argue that the scientists involved committed it. And don't hide behind the cowardly cop-out of "I only said they MIGHT do so!!!" You know perfectly well that this is nothing more than a facade over your argument, which is that they were frauds or incompetants.

- Re "multiple labs," while on the face of it, three labs should be plenty, I can quickly think of at least three potential problems: the labs only used one carbon dating technique, none of the labs were allowed to do the chemical testing to make sure that the sample was representative of the greater cloth and they all shared the same small piece of suspect fabric.

This is also a lie. You demonstrably know nothing about radiometric dating. You thought that it had a linear decay pattern.

But I'm willing to be proven wrong. WITHOUT LOOKING IT UP, please describe the radiometric dating method used and two others that you recommend, given your vast experience.

I've taken C14 samples as a professional. I can tell you from the perspective of someone who's done this type of work that NO ONE uses multiple dating techniques. It simply isn't done. The fact that they used one technique is perfectly in line with standard procedures in the field.

As for the chemical testing, there's no reason at all that someone is obligated to waste money looking for something that would have been detected via visual examination. THERE WAS NO PATCH. Thus, chemical analysis is without value--all it can do is tell us what we already know. The ONLY reason you are demanding the chemical analysis is because you want the shroud to be old.

As for sharing the same piece of fabric, that's a demand YOUR SIDE placed on this research.

- I'm just admitting that I'm "significantly" biased. Personally, of course, I think that you guys are even more biased. You guys don't just disagree with the latter, you think it's a joke.

It's demonstrably untrue. The only side giving any data here is the side that agrees with the 13th century date. You've given nothing--*I'V* given better reasons to believe the shroud is ancient than you. You are attempting to establish a false equivalency, and it's exactly what it says on the tin: false.

- When I complain about we humans' lack of objectivity, I'm marveling about how universal and insidious that lack is. Once into a debate, as objective as we think we are, we just want to win. That's our animal, and human, nature.
- I've been studying this for a long time, and figure that I've learned to dilute that urge a little

This is completely irrelevant, but as you refuse to discuss the topic at hand that's fine. I'll address it. You have NOT diluted the urge to win, not one iota. Your entire argument is nothing more than a post-hoc justification for an a priori conclusion; you've already decided what the answer was, and now you're trying to "win" the debate by trying to convince us that your answer is correct. Notice what's lacking here: the data.

Scientists, on the other hand, actually DO accept that winning isn't the main goal of a debate. They way they do that is a strict adherence to the data. What they say is what's true, period--regardless of personal beliefs.

Please get back to addressing the data, Jabba. Slander, personal attacks, and asserting that you're on a higher plane than us plebs are obnoxious and irrelevant.

 

[Dinwar]

Slowvehicle,

- Good questions in that they identify basic issues -- and, they are not easy to answer...
- Re #1, I have a couple of questions myself. 1) Just for the sake of trying to make our discourse as academically unassailable as possible, who are you quoting? And 2) does "most supervised" mean -- most carefully monitored and controlled?
- If so, I accept that there were a lot of respected scientists trying to keep everything (again) as academically unassailable as possible. I think that, unfortunately, 1) there were too many egos in the kitchen; 2) the artifact involved was held sacred by the church; and 3) even scientists tend to be significantly biased and hard-headed.
- I'll have to get to your other points, separately.

--- Jabba

"...as academically unassialable as possible"?!?! Jabba, you've done nothing on the last five pages except throw around lies and ad hom attacks. If this were an academic debate, you'd have lost tenure by now for this sort of conduct. You ARE aware of the fact that slander is something you can be sued for, aren't you?

As for "most supervised", I've already walked you through a standard C14 sampling event numerous times. The shroud sample represents the single best-controled C14 sample and single best-documented sample ever taken. The standard is to have someone like me go out--often alone, without anyone watching--and take the sample. If this sample isn't good enough for you, your standards are WAY too high. Let's put it this way: companies routinely make decisions worth millions based on samples that aren't 10% as well documented as the shroud sample.

The "too many egos in the kitchen" garbage is just a ploy to attempt to sneek in the idea that more oversight=worse results. You've constructed the perfect argument against any sample: if there's a lot of oversight, its' too many egos; if there's not as much, you can claim that there wasn't enough! When your "logic" proves that it's impossible to accept any result, there's a deep flaw in it.

And frankly, you know this. You know that these arguments are nothing but attempts to dismiss the C14 dating. The proof is that you don't hold anyone how advocates a 1st century date for the shroud to the same standards. The C14 samples have an unbroken chain of custody, but you dismiss them as not good enough. But some fibers on some sticky tape with no chain of custody whatever, now THOSE are just fine and dandy!

The shroud isn't held as sacred by the Church. It's held as an odd and interesting artifact, and that's it. Even frauds can be interestiing, in that they reveal the mindset of the perpetrator and the population that they're attempting to fool. The Church has long acknowledged that the shroud wasn't authentic. You are lying again.

The idea that scientists are biased and hard-headed is nothing more than an overly-verbose method of the "Keep an open mind" argument we've all heard so many times.

 

[Jabba]

Jabba,

If, by colleagues, you mean my fellow posters here in the JREF Forum, then I would include you in that pool of colleagues. So my answer would have to be "sometimes."

I disagreed with you when you were quoting others who were talking about invisible patching because it did not seem to make sense.

I agreed with you when you went above and beyond and did your own primary research into the invisible patch theory and you found that such a thing was impossible or if it had been extremely well-disguised (but still not completely invisible) it would have used threads from elsewhere in the shroud.

I disagree with you now when you just repost the old invisible patch stuff again and you seem to ignore your own research.

I'll confess that I'm having trouble understanding that the patch was not "invisible" but was somehow missed by everyone. If later examination of threads from the sample area were obviously not representative of the shroud as a whole, then the patch should have been obviously visible. I just do not understand what you are trying to say. I assume you have thought this through and are trying to reconcile your research on the patch with date of the shroud. Please give the explanation one more try, because I'm not getting it.

Ward

Ward,

- Glad to be considered a colleague.

- I guess that I'm not explaining myself very well.

- I try to never say never, so it's hard for me to say that I've tossed the invisible patch theory entirely. I assume that almost anyone else -- with the evidence I now have -- would toss it entirely.
- But then, I did admit a little while back that I was 99% convinced that even if invisible re-weave was for some reason involved, it wouldn't have effected the dating anyway...
- In other words, I didn't mean to say, or imply, that I was ignoring my own research.

- What I'm suggesting now is that 1) some "patching" (a "patch" even) that wouldn't be seen by the naked eye has been identified by other means, and that 2) the chemistry of the sample was, one way or another, not representative of the greater cloth.

- I'll get to your last paragraph above if necessary -- but first, I would like to make sure that I'm now actually communicating. Did that help any?

--- Jabba

 

[Jabba]

A solipsist. I suspected this. Impossible to argue with a solipsist. [/thread]


.

Olowkow,
- I didn't say that I believed that I'm the only thing that exists -- I just don't know that I'm not.
- I'm trying to describe, or allude to, an aspect of my personality that pretty much keeps me from dismissing any claim entirely...
--- Jabba

 

[Akri]

- What I'm suggesting now is that 1) some "patching" (a "patch" even) that wouldn't be seen by the naked eye

Is there any evidence that such a thing exists?