Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[pakeha]

Are you going to fix that broken link, Jabbapapa?

 

[JabbaPapa]

I've seen it before. A documentary it ain't.

It is a documentary.

Very few documentaries have any scientific value whatsoever.

Nor does this one.

As I SPECIFICALLY pointed out when I mentioned it.

 

[JabbaPapa]

"Authenticity is irrelevant to this question"

Just says it all, really. 139 pages about authenticity? Nah, doesn't matter, not important.

Thank you for demonstrating your superlative ability to quote a sentence out of context, and then make it appear to say something entirely different to its original meaning.

I am not impressed with your destructive rhetorical trick.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Oh, that's simple. Jabba came to the conclusion that the shroud is authentic before examining any data. Now he's attempting to find data to support that notion. Anything which does not support it, he is trying to find ways to dismiss. It's a very common logical error.

A logical error that is so common, in fact, that many people who have came to the conclusion that the shroud is a mediaeval forgery before examining any data prior to their reading it in a newspaper or seeing it on TV are committing it too.

 

[pakeha]

So far Jabbapapa has linked to a squirrelly docco, Roger's paper(linked to previously and discussed at length in this thread) and a Shroud Conference paper with a broken link.

Not the best beginning for their posts.

 

[catsmate]

Right -- so not pedantic, nor supercilious, nor arrogant at all, are we ?

No. If you make claims it's entirely reasonable to expect you to understand the subject matter.

<snippage of irrelevent material about carbon isotopes>
You seem to be (falsely) assuming that I have theories about this, whereas in fact I only have questions, nor do I **assume** that the carbon dating is necessarily wrong, as you seem to have (falsely) inferred.

You made claims about contamination affecting the radiocarbon dating result but are unable to estimate how much contamination would be needed. Therefore it's reasonable to ignore your ignorant assertions.

(oh, and please don't try the "infinite recursion" trick with me, of simply sitting behind your computer and asking me to substantiate every single word that I use ad infinitum -- it is a destructive rhetorical trick, that is dishonest, leads exactly nowhere, and I will not put up with it.

You make claims, you get to support them. It's part of how science works.

There's always the possibility that YOU could do your homework)

Oh I think I can safely say I know vastly more about radiocarbon dating, radioactivity and indeed the examination of the shroud than you do.

See above -- as concerns patching, reweaving, or biological contamination, I am keeping an open mind on all three questions, but I am a proponent of none of them, contrary to your beliefs otherwise.

Desperate back peddling noted.

I would personally assume that any C14 contamination -- IF it existed -- would have to be a contamination of the linen & cotton weave itself.

And your mechanism for this? And the amount of contamination? I see you still haven't done the calculations.

Though I do have to add that there is an arguable possibility, given that truly competent fabric analysts exist in very small numbers (it is an extremely difficult and extremely poorly paid field of research), and it is a discipline that is in its infancy -- so that it cannot be ruled out that the scientific team in the 1980s made mistakes in their analyses of the fabric.

And again you're ignoring the examination carried out in 2002 and the availability of micro-photographs. Not to mention ignoring the expertise of those who examined the shroud prior to that.

"Ray Rogers garbage"

I am fully aware of the nature of the politicised rejection of his research -- he himself IIRC has mitigated his findings as requiring further research and peer review.

Nope. Rogers' work was garbage, even many shroudies reject it. It's been dealt with in this very thread previously and in detail so I'm not planning on wasting more of my time on it again.
Furthermore your dismissal of the debunking of his nonsense as "politicised" is disingenuous; it was shown to be flawed and dubious on scientific grounds.

See here for a treatment of this question :

www.ohioshroudconference.com%2Fpapers%2Fp11.pdf

(or I suppose that you could just dismiss it instead, a priori, as not being coherent with your personal views on the question -- up to you, but if you decide to simply dismiss any and all evidence contrary to the radiocarbon dating out of hand, then please don't bother asking for any more of it, as this would simply constitute an unproductive waste of my time, and you cannot expect me to waste my time just for your own entertainment)

No I dismiss that rubbish on other grounds (and I suggest you created working links in future). Let's start with the authors, a pair of biased cranks with no background in science; it repeats Rogers' claims, already dealt with and Benford and Marino's own debunked claims about invisible patching.
Basically it's a collection of innuendo, dubious claims and junk science aimed at the market of shroud believers.

Can you please provide evidence that "high magnification microscopy under non-visible spectrum illumination" has been used for the purposes of fabric analysis, and that this work has been properly peer-reviewed and correctly supervised by multiple experts in fabric analysis, and furthermore that this microscopy has been performed at multiple points of the Shroud fabric, in the same lab conditions, and that a full comparative microscopic study of all of these points of fabric study of the artefact have been collated, reviewed, and published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal or similar serious publication ?

Pathetic attempt to shift the burden. The research materials derived from the earlier tests are archived. Hell STURP and the shroudies cite them when it suits them
As for submission and peer-review you're creating another strawman to cover the flaws in your own (to be charitable) "argument".

Already provided upthread -- NO I will not translate it into English for your personal convenience.

No actually you didn't; your "paper" fails in the area of proper description of provenance et cetera.

Not my problem if you can't read it.

I have already provided my answer to the question "why ?" -- did you neglect to read it ?

No you didn't. You cited a collection of nonsensical and unverified claims.
In fact we've dealt with them previously in this thread.

<snip>, though you may be unfamiliar with the methodology that is habitual in this sort of research, and so might wrongfully conclude otherwise.

I find your attempt at patronising me to be rather amusing.

It is clear that the most solid pre-14th century testimonial, the 1203 one, cannot be considered as being "confirmed", as I pointed out myself concerning all of these earlier sources

So even you best claim is worth nothing.

The blanket refusal of some people to outright reject anything and everything that casts any kind of doubt on the dating provided by the radiocarbon tests is just as irrational, notwithstanding the FACT that radiocarbon dating is less than 100% reliable, and has been proven to have provided bad datings for more than one artefact in the past.

Sign. This kind of rant is unfortunately fairly typical for believers in woo when confronted with reality.
I note that you've failed to address my request for a failure of radiocarbon dating under circumstances comparable with that of the shroud.

No, it is not.

Yes it is I'm afraid.
Pigment and binder traces have been found. The shroud is typical of the artistic style of the period it was created and it has been replicated by painting.

If you know even HALF as much about the Shroud as you are pretending, then you'd be fully aware of the FACT that the image on the Shroud is NOT the product of an artist's pigment.

Untrue.

Anyway -- this is YOUR claim, so not my burden of proof nor anyone else's -- please can you point me to a peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in a scientific journal or similar publication proving that the composition of the image on the Shroud is the product of the application of artist's pigments.

Certainly. Start with "The Shroud of Turin: Blood or Artist's Pigment?" by Walter McCrone published in Accounts of Chemical Research back in 1990.
He also published two paper on the subject in Microscope detailing his use of microscopic techniques in examining the shroud fibres and the resultsb thereof.

Nope.

A blatent and rather silly lie. The duplications of the shroud have been dealt with previously. Denying that they happened is just silly and pathetic.

You are entitled to your personal opinions, of course, but I would not accept half of what you have written there as being factually accurate.

It's common for believers to reject reality when it conflicts with their beliefs; however this doesn't alter reality.

 

[John Jones]

Why do you assume 1st century ?


.

I'll give you 3 guesses why, and the first two don't count.

 

[pakeha]

...
No I dismiss that rubbish on other grounds (and I suggest you created working links in future). Let's start with the authors, a pair of biased cranks with no background in science; it repeats Rogers' claims, already dealt with and Benford and Marino's own debunked claims about invisible patching.
Basically it's a collection of innuendo, dubious claims and junk science aimed at the market of shroud believers...

So Jabbapapa's broken link was to the Benford and Marino presentation?
Really?

 

[catsmate]

Why are you assuming that a bad dating MUST necessarily be discrepant by 1300 years ?

Why not 100 ? 200? 450 ?

Why? are you proposing such an error? The only two commonly claimed dated for the shroud are ~1300CE (supported by the evidence and science) and ~50CE (claimed by the god botherers)
Of course this is just an attempt by you to deflect from the inability of shroudies to justify their claims with real science.

"Well?" is not a very useful answer to my question "What is the Mass of C¹⁴ isotopes that would affect the Carbon dating by +1300 years relative to the Mass of the linen fragments in question, assuming that these fragments were 1950 years old ?"

Sign. Please stop trying to deflect attention from you failure to support your claims, it just makes you appear even more pathetic. Why not just do the calculation, it's not very difficult.

Well, it's quite the leap of logic to suddenly go from "I don't think that a 1st century burial cloth could look like that" to "it's a fake".

It doesn't look like a Jewish burial shroud, it doesn't resemble the only sample from the period and it doesn't match Jewish custom. Therefore it's quite reasonable to doubt it is a Jewish burial shroud. Supporting the medieval fake source for the cloth.

There is NO evidence, in the first place, (following your weird notion that the Shroud can ONLY be either a) a fake or b) the honest-to-goodness burial shroud of Jesus Christ ; with NO other possible theories whatsoever) in Scripture that Christ was entombed anything other than extremely hastily, because there were only a couple of hours before the Sabbath started, and the handling of corpses would become ritually impossible.

So what is the shroud then? Because it's not a burial shroud, it's medieval origin and it has a completely wrong image painted on it.

Certainly no evidence there of any great big traditional Jewish burial for Jesus.

Strawman.

I have ALREADY pointed out that the documentary is unscientific in nature -- why belabour a point that wasn't worth making in the first place ?

Because you're using it to support your denial of real science.

The fact that it's Entertainment TV does not magically vanish away the fact that a 3D image of the Shroud Man was successfully extracted from the Shroud.

Still no peer-review of that claim then?

Your personal rejection of that data does not magically vanish it away.

This is just open prejudice.

No it's a summary of past experience. When shroudies make a claim it falls apart when examined.

I have very little time for any of the more bizarre claims, but it seems obvious to me that your definition of what constitutes a "shroudie" would include anyone and everyone not sharing your cast-iron belief that it's a 14th century forgery. I do not consider such an attitude to be rationally motivated.

It's based on the mountain of mutually reinforcing evidence I summaried previously.

No, I'm not -- repeating claims made by third parties does not require believing such claims -- in fact, I neither believe nor disbelieve them.

Ah so you're back peddling and JAQing off.
No evidential support = no reason to accept.

Evidence of the above, please.

I've cited several papers by McCrone and I don't plan to waste my time doing any more of your research for you.

That is an extremely poor analysis of my position.

No it's an accurate summary I'm afraid. You claim that a technique that might exist (without support and with several excellent reasons to doubt it's existence) and which might invalidate the radiocarbon dating is sufficient to ignore the latter. This is simply stupid.

The radiocarbon technicians might be demigods who are magically endowed with forensic infallibility and weave analysis omniscience, despite their entire lack of training in that VERY obscure discipline...

Another strawman. The textile experts selected the sample area and supervised the removal of the sample. The radiocarbon experts performed the testing. Science you see tends to involve specialisation.

"the experts" --- in fact, ONE single individual.

Not true. I see you haven't done the research.

BTW, the "invisible reweaving" technique is more accurately referred to as interweaving -- it is NOT the same technique as French re-weaving.

Good grief. We've gone into the different techniques in detail before.

I suggest you read the thread before you embarrass yourself any more.

 

[Belz...]

I guess I'm on Jabbapapa's ignore list already.

 

[John Jones]

[...]


I have ALREADY pointed out that the documentary is unscientific in nature -- why belabour a point that wasn't worth making in the first place ?

[...]

If it wasn't a point worth making in the first place, why did you make it in the first place?

And The Face of Christ was not a documentary.

 

[catsmate]

Well, that's as good a number as I've seen from shroudies here.

Indded it's highly illustrative of their attention to scientific accuracy.

I don't think anyone here believes that for a second, not even you. We've seen "just asking questions" too many times.

Yeah, s/he's back peddling frantically.

Well, it's a good thing no one here is doing that. Your attempt at equivocation fails, and shows once more that you should perhaps take the time to read the entire thread.

That would be an excellent start.

We've already discussed the provenance of th cotton threads here.
Is there some reason why you haven't read those posts?

Laziness? Lack of desire to deal with uncomfortable facts?

Christians?

Indeed. Dinwar was right.

I can't find anything that indicates 'interweaving' can be considered an 'invisible' techniques.
Could you post up some sources for you opinion, please?

I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

What do you mean, Jabbapapa?
Do you have some reason to not think Mme Flury Lemburg competent in her field?

Well she did rubbish the shroudie's favourite patch theory.

Are you going to fix that broken link, Jabbapapa?

Yeah that was sloppy and annoying.

So far Jabbapapa has linked to a squirrelly docco, Roger's paper(linked to previously and discussed at length in this thread) and a Shroud Conference paper with a broken link.

Not the best beginning for their posts.

Nope.
However the "paper" is a recycled (and somewhat dumbed down) version of Benford and Marino's previous ramblings aimed at the believer audience.
(I should have quoted your later post, yes it's the same stuff we've seen cited by Jabba.)

 

[JabbaPapa]

Well here's my summary.

Thanks, that's helpful.

I'll summarise the general objections that I'm aware of (if any) for every one of your points [in red]

Firstly the evidence against the authenticity of the shroud:
1. Historical:
a) the lack of evidence for the shroud's existence prior to the mid fourteenth century [partially untrue -- there is no independently corroborated evidence of its existence prior to 14th century]
b) it's emergence during the 'holy relic' craze (along with about forty other such burial shrouds) [false reasoning, not "evidence" -- the existence of 40 fake $1 bills does not prevent the existence of a genuine one]
c) lack of mention of a miraculously imaged Shroud in any early Christian writings [irrelevant -- the MAXIMUM life expectancy of even the most carefully preserved manuscript is about 1200 years. It is unreasonable to expect that any such evidence could possibly have survived in the first place]
d) the distinct changes in the shroud, fading of colour, since its first exposure [This is evidence neither one way nor the other, it is very unsurprising that the colours should have faded since the 16th century when it was first publicly exposed]

2. Physiological:
e) the lack of resemblance of the shroud image to an actual human body; [This is from the same thread that's also denying any distortion from the fold of the fabric]
f) likewise the position of the body with hands folded across the genitals which simply isn't possible for a body lying flay (the arms aren't long enough) [ergo it was not laying flat ?]

3. Textile:
g) the weave pattern of the shroud does not match anything known from first century Mid East [Special reasoning]
h) the weave pattern matches medieval Europe well; [one piece of incontrovertible contrary evidence]
i) no example of the complex herringbone twill weave has even been shown to come from the first century Mid East [No, but the The Hungarian Pray Manuscript (1192-1195) depicts the Burial Shroud of Christ as using the same distinctive herringbone pattern] ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pray_Codex ) [this is of course only purely circumstancial evidence contradicting the 14th century dating, but it's evidence nonetheless]

4. Testimony:
j) the d'Arcis Memo indicates the shroud was created around 1354 and was a known fake [FALSE -- it indicates that an artist made a copy in painting of the Shroud --- furthermore, NOBODY to my knowledge has ever been able to demonstrate, scientifically, that the image on the Shroud is a painting, and in fact nearly every recent source that I have consulted expressly denies it]

5. Artistic:
k) the face of the image resembles medieval Byzantine style, with Gothic elements; [Eidolia]
l) the unnaturally elongated body shape and extremities are typical of the elongated style the Late Medieval/High Gothic period [Well, NO it isn't -- but this aspect of the image is certainly very odd]

6. Reproducibility:
m) contrary to the claims of shroudies the image can and has been reproduced using medieval methods [No -- artefacts superficially resembling the Shroud have been created, none of which to my knowledge exhibit chemical qualities identical to those of the Shroud image]

7. Analytic:
n) microscopic examination, (including non-visible, polarised light and electron microscopy) shows the shroud is composed of common artistic pigments of the period of its origin [Link ?]
o) chemical testing shows the same [Link ?]
p) radiocarbon testing, carried out under highly controlled conditions by three laboratories. showed the cloth to originate between 1260 and 1390AD (>95 per cent confidence) and between 1000 and 1500AD (>99.9 per cent confidence) [Indeed]

8. Cultural:
q) the shroud does not match with what is documented and known of first century Jewish burial practices
r) nor does the shroud match the only extant sample of such burial cloths; [Well, that's not exactly a very good quality corpus of reference]
s) neither does the shroud match the biblical accounts of the burial cloths;
t) there any no demonstrated artefacts of the putative Jesus extant today [irrelevant]
u) the supposed historical background does not suggest that such a cloth would have been preserved, certainly without publicity prior, to ~1355 [I do not believe that there is any even "doubtful" reference to the Shroud prior to 10th century]

9. Serological:
v) a minor point (as blood probably wouldn't survive this long anyway) but despite the best attempts of (and much lying and pseudoscience by) shroudies, there is no evidence for blood residue [Lying -- that's a pretty serious accusation]

And a quick summary of the radiocarbon dating. [Nobody can seriously doubt the methodology of the radiocarbon testing]
1. under heavy supervision a sample of the shroud were removed on 21APR1988 by Riggi; the strip came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas and was split into three pieces and sealed into containers by Ballestrero and Tite.
2. the samples were subjected to a dating technique called accelerator mass spectroscopy, selected because it required less sample material than earlier techniques; three labs, Oxford, Arizona and Zürich were selected to carry out the testing
3. cleaning was done with expert input (including Proctor & Gamble), this removed ~30% of the sample mass. Each laboratory used slightly different methods; hot ether, ultrasonic bath, vacuum pipette, repeated acid and alkali baths with intermediate washing, detergents, ethanol, bleach
4. the three laboratories analysed shroud samples in conjunction with three other supplied sample of known provenance
5. all three analyses agreed, the shroud dates from 1260 and 1390AD (>95 per cent confidence) and between 1000 and 1500AD (>99.9 per cent confidence)
6. the results were formally published in Nature in February 1989:
“These results therefore provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the shroud of Turin is medieval”
7. accusations from believers began almost immediately accusing scientists of faking the tests or substituting samples.
8. later various claims of mysterious contaminants or patching were invoked to justify non-acceptance of the dating results

And finally more than any shroudie ever wanted to know about decontamination of the shroud samples.
Each laboratory (Zürich, Oxford and Arizona) carried out a comprehensive, multi-stage, cleaning of their sample. Firstly by microscopic examination and removal of gross contaminants, followed by preliminary cleaning using a mix of ultrasonic bathing, vacuum pipetting and/or hot ether soaking.
After this the samples were split and more stringent methods were used.

Zürich
The Zürich group split each ultrasonically cleansed sample in half; the first half of the original sample was again split into three parts and these [one sixth portions] were subjected to different tratments:
1. soaking in room temperature baths of 0.5% hydrochloric acid, 0.25% sodium hydroxide and then acid again; samples were rinsed with purified water between each course.
2. no further treatment
3. soaking in hot (80°C) 5% hydrochloric acid, 2.5% sodium hydroxide and then acid again; samples were rinsed with purified water between each course.

The second batch of samples were retained until after the first radiocarbon dating run was completed. As this showed no evidence of contamination, the second set was split into two portions, to which the weak and strong chemical treatments were applied.

Arizona
The Arizona group split the shroud sample into four subsamples.
1. one pair of subsamples was treated by soaking in dilute hydrochloric acid, dilute sodium hydroxide and again acid, with purified water rinsing in between baths.
2. the second pair of subsamples was treated with two commercial detergents (with advice supplied by Proctor & Gamble), distilled water and 0.1% hydrochloric acid; after this the samples were then submitted to a Soxhlet extraction with ethanol for an hour, followed by further washing with distilled water at 70°C in an ultrasonic bath.

Oxford
The Oxford group divided their pre-cleaned sample into three parts.
1. all three parts were bathed in 1 molar hydrochloric acid at 80°C for two hours followed by 1 molar sodium hydroxide at 80°C for two hours and again in acid, with rinsing in between.
2. two of the three samples were then bleached in 2.5% sodium oxychloride [bleach] for thirty minutes.

Each laboratory used the same techniques on the four cloth samples provided, the shroud and the three controls with one exception; one of the control samples used at Zürich disintegrated while being cleaned and so it was additionally centrifuged to retain the material.[/QUOTE]

 

[JabbaPapa]

... duplicate

 

[pakeha]

Ah, well, catsmate1.
There's still the possibility Jabbapapa's posts will bring something fresh to the discussion.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Jabba and PappaJabba, you are both a couple of failed intellects.

Thank you for your lovely insults, that can only be demonstrative of a keenly analytical mind, bubbling with creativity, loathe to jump to hasty conclusions, and that makes Montaigne's motto its own : "Que Sais-je ?"

/roll-eyes/

 

[Olowkow]

Any digital photo can be rendered into a 3D image. I had a shareware ray tracing program back in the 80's that could lift up detail based on intensity or any color. Photoshop makes 3D imaging from a 2D picture trivial. There is nothing "encoded" in the image that magically makes it 3D worthy. The guys in the video surely had to know this just to do the demo.

Originally Posted by JabbaPapa
The fact that it's Entertainment TV does not magically vanish away the fact that a 3D image of the Shroud Man was successfully extracted from the Shroud.

Well, actually that fact does sort of "magically vanish away" your facts.

ETA: I think my old CorelDraw even has a tool for "bas relief", which is what they were doing to the image of the shroud head. You were duped by the lies of the History Channel. Just think of letting kids get their science from this train wreck of a channel. Pretty outrageous really.

 

[pakeha]

"Ah, well, catsmate1.
There's still the possibility Jabbapapa's posts will bring something fresh to the discussion."

...I'll summarise the general objections that I'm aware of (if any) for every one of your points ...

Then again, maybe not

Jabbapapa, how about fixing your broken link?

 

[JabbaPapa]

... all that vast mass of blood and DNA could be positively dated to the 1st century AD ….. but afaik, there are no papers saying anything remotely like that.

What "vast mass of blood and DNA" -- this is the first I've heard of any such claim !!!

 

[AdMan]

Any digital photo can be rendered into a 3D image. I had a shareware ray tracing program back in the 80's that could lift up detail based on intensity or any color. Photoshop makes 3D imaging from a 2D picture trivial. There is nothing "encoded" in the image that magically makes it 3D worthy. The guys in the video surely had to know this just to do the demo.

Exactly. Just like any other woo "documentaries" airing on the History Channel or similar, its pseudoscience can be dismissed as silly entertainment.