Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[Belz...]

JabbaPappa,

- Just to let you know that I'm still around.

- I'm desperately trying to focus on one sub-sub-etc-issue at a time -- but, the one in which I currently find myself embroiled is extremely peripheral to the basic debate, and has recently morphed into 10 different sub-sub-sub-etc-issues... This isn't easy.
- The issue started with me saying that I thought that "everyone involved" had accepted that the control samples used in the carbon dating of the Shroud were ineffective.

Then stop focusing on peripherals and focus on the important stuff: either show that the C14 dating is unrealiable (Jabbapapa disagrees with you on this) or admit that it isn't and that the shroud is a medieval fake.

 

[Slowvehicle]

- The issue started with me saying that I thought that "everyone involved" had accepted that the control samples used in the carbon dating of the Shroud were ineffective."

Slowvehicle,
- I'll try to start off with one sub-sub-etc-issue at a time.
#1. In 5138, I said, “I think that everyone involved accepts that the control samples were not effective.”
- Note that I didn’t just say that EVERYONE INVOLVED ACCEPTED something; I said that I THINK that everyone involved accepted something.
--- Jabba

Fine.

Since you posted this opinion, it has been pointed out to you that the control samples served exactly the purpose for which they were intended; so they were "effective" at demonstrating the calibration of the devices used. Further, two of the labs took the extra step of "blinding" the sample procedures, solely and specifically to address the possibility of charges such as yours.

What you "think" therefore, has been demonstrated to be incorrect, not to mention insulting. As a point of fact, you have failed to demonstrate that anyone "involved" thinks the control samples were ineffective.

Please notice that it is clear that you "think" that there must be some sort of concatenation of nefarious activities. It is also clear that the reason that you "think" there must be some impropriety (be it, incompetence, dishonesty, venality, conspiracy, or some combination of those, and other, malfeasances and misfeasances) is not because you have any evidence, but because you do not like the ¹⁴C results. Since "they" got the date"wrong", they must be up to something.

There are no sub-issues, or sub-sub-issues, or "sub-issues all the way down"; there is only this: demonstrate a reason not to accept the ¹⁴C date arrived at by three labs working independently, using three different protocols upon a sample of the cloth manifestly representative of the whole.

Or, as I have suggested before, simply go the miracel route, and declare that the cloth is the True Shruod^TM in a mysteriously true way that does not depend upon physical reality. That way the ¹⁴C date does not have to trouble you.

 

[Belz...]

- The issue started with me saying that I thought that "everyone involved" had accepted that the control samples used in the carbon dating of the Shroud were ineffective."

Slowvehicle,
- I'll try to start off with one sub-sub-etc-issue at a time.
#1. In 5138, I said, “I think that everyone involved accepts that the control samples were not effective.”
- Note that I didn’t just say that EVERYONE INVOLVED ACCEPTED something; I said that I THINK that everyone involved accepted something.
--- Jabba

Yeah, no one agrees that it was ineffective. Move on, for pete's sake.

 

[Belz...]

JABBA, do you ever plan on answering my question ? Why do you have a need for the shroud to be real ?

 

[wollery]

- The issue started with me saying that I thought that "everyone involved" had accepted that the control samples used in the carbon dating of the Shroud were ineffective."

Slowvehicle,
- I'll try to start off with one sub-sub-etc-issue at a time.
#1. In 5138, I said, “I think that everyone involved accepts that the control samples were not effective.”
- Note that I didn’t just say that EVERYONE INVOLVED ACCEPTED something; I said that I THINK that everyone involved accepted something.
--- Jabba

Which they clearly don't, particularly since blinding is irrelevant in 14C dating.

Have you changed your mind? Do you still think that everyone involved accepts that the control samples were not effective?

 

[IanS]

Quantitatively, the amounts of C14 that would induce a false dating would be infinitesimal.

I have NO IDEA what such a source of C14 might be, though the two obvious ones would be a spike in atmospheric C14, whether local or global, in the year that the linen was grown and harvested, or C14 being a by-product of whatever created the image in the first place.

As far as a C14 spike is concerned - do you know of any evidence for a spike like that around the date of the crucifixion?

You see the problem with suggestions like this, is that if there is no known evidence of any such event, then there is no credible reason to suggest it in the first place. How could a spike like that occur? Over what time span did that spike exist? Has it occurred also in other era’s?

If it’s just an un-evidenced fanciful way of objecting to the C14 results then it’s really not a valid objection at all. You might as well be proposing un-evidenced unexplained miracle rays radiating from the dead superhuman body.

Just to clarify something here - although there have been times in the history of the earth when conditions were very different from what they are today, eg a relatively “sudden” increase or “spike” in atmospheric oxygen levels, afaik those “spikes” tend to occur over vast tracts of time. Eg, the Oxygen “spike” lasted roughly from the start of the Cambrian period 540million years ago, reaching it’s peak towards the end of the carboniferous period 300 million years ago, before falling back quite rapidly to present day levels. That’s a period of about 300 million years.

Of course C14 dating has now been applied to tens of thousands of objects, from relatively recent objects such as the shroud, back to early homo sapiens fossils. If there was a C14 spike lasting any appreciable length of time, then it would have affected the dating of all objects in that period. It would mean that thousands of C14 dates would be seriously wrong. Even though, for many of those objects the C14 dates have also been confirmed by various other dating techniques, inc. other isotopic methods as well as historical records.

As a case in point, many of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been dated both by historical analysis, and by C14.

Those Dead Sea Scrolls date from very close to the time of Christ. But there is no hint of any problem in the C14 dating of those scrolls.

I daresay thousands of other artefacts and fossil remains have been dated from that period by C14. But again, I’ve never heard of anyone saying the dates are all massively wrong and that there must have been something like an unexplained C14 “spike”?


Your second suggestion, ie “ C14 being a by-product of whatever created the image in the first place “, seems to be in that same category of unexplained un-evidenced speculation. So again, what is this event that might create extra C14 for a brief time whilst somehow also imprinting an image of Jesus on to a cloth shroud? That suggestion seems to be directly in the category of suggestions which claim that the shroud image was formed by a miraculous emission of some sort of radiation from the dead body.

 

[Olowkow]

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/04/01/new-testing-dates-shroud-of-turin-to-era-of-christ/

New scientific tests on the Shroud of Turin, which went on display Saturday (March 30) in a special TV appearance introduced by the pope, date the cloth to ancient times, challenging earlier experiments that dated it only to the Middle Ages.

Someone must have been reading this JREF thread! This is the first I heard that it was on display again.

But, the new Pope is having none of it.

The Vatican, tiptoeing carefully, has never claimed that the 14-foot linen cloth was used to cover Christ after he was taken from the cross 2,000 years ago, as some believers claim. Francis, reflecting that careful Vatican policy, on Saturday called the cloth, which is kept in a climate-controlled case, an “icon” — not a relic

Concerning the book “Il Mistero Della Sindone,” that is coming out "proving" the ancient dating:

Fanti, [one of the authors] a Catholic, used infrared light and spectroscopy — the measurement of radiation intensity through wavelengths — in his test. He said the results are the outcome of 15 years of research.

I am fairly familiar with IR/VIS/UV spectrometers and their uses, and I know a little about Raman spectroscopy, but I'm trying to imagine how these techniques are relevant to dating a material. Comparison of spectra with known 1st century items?

It seems like a lot of the shroud "authentic-ers" are Catholic, but it would be interesting to know if there is a common thread of other beliefs among shroudists, such as staunch conservatism or literalism.

 

[IanS]

Who shall I listen to --- those clamouring for links, or those berating me because all of this was dealt with extensively between pages 37 and 86 of the thread, or those accusing me of a pile of RUBBISH for having posted some links ?

The only thing that really counts is genuine scientific evidence. And in the case of the shroud that means research papers published in real research journals by independent scientists who are claiming evidence to show that the C14 dates are seriously in error. That is - a paper comparable to the C14 paper in Nature.

However, I and others have been asking Jabba for any such papers since almost page 1. And so far it appears there are no such papers.

There is of course the Rogers paper published in the rather obscure Thermochimica. Acta. However, quite apart from the fact that his paper has been discussed to death earlier in this thread with numerous fatal scientific flaws being pointed out, and with a good summary of all those flaws in an article by Mark Antonaccii (see http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/debate.pdf ), it is of course also the case that Ray Rogers was not an independent impartial investigator.

On the contrary, Ray Rogers was a well known long time believer in the shroud, and a member of STURP since it's formation in 1978.

At the time of publishing that paper contesting the C14 dating, he was also in the process of trying to sell his new book on the shroud. As indeed were Benford and Marino from whom Rogers got the idea of trying to claim an “invisible” patch.

But whilst many of us wondered how Rogers could possibly have got such and obviously flawed paper past the journals editors, it turns out that Ray Rogers was himself apparently one of the founding editors of that very same journal.

At the time of writing that paper, Ray Rogers was in his 80’s and retired from his work as a chemist. But note that like other members of STURP, whilst Rogers did indeed work in a scientific research capacity, he was never a well known scientist, and in fact he did not even have a PhD (something which these days is almost unthinkable in research Chemistry).

So in summary, and just to be crystal clear - the only thing that counts as “evidence” against the C14 dates, is if you can find a genuine science research paper published in a real mainstream science journal, where properly qualified independent scientists have claimed that the C14 dates are significantly in error … ie a paper comparable to the C14 paper (comparable in fact to any of the hundreds of thousands of real science research papers published every year) … but so far, nobody here has been able to find any such paper … so, ...

... do you have any such genuine paper?

 

[catsmate]

Drivel.

For me the fascinating part about this is it's further evidence of JP's double standard, e.g.

As for "if he even existed", his historical existence is attested by the largest number and the oldest copies of texts than any other individual of the early 1st century.

which is rather interesting given that earlier he claimed:

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]

So Jesus is the best documented historical figure from the first century (a statement JP doesn't deign to actually prove) yet documents from that ere don't exist when their lack of reference to the shroud relic is embarassing to his case.

 

[catsmate]

As far as a C14 spike is concerned - do you know of any evidence for a spike like that around the date of the crucifixion?

And why it's never been noticed in previous radiocarbon datings.

Your second suggestion, ie “ C14 being a by-product of whatever created the image in the first place “, seems to be in that same category of unexplained un-evidenced speculation. So again, what is this event that might create extra C14 for a brief time whilst somehow also imprinting an image of Jesus on to a cloth shroud? That suggestion seems to be directly in the category of suggestions which claim that the shroud image was formed by a miraculous emission of some sort of radiation from the dead body.

Yeah he seems to be going with a variation on Di Lazzaro's magic god energy crap.

 

[Jabba]

- Would you guys have been mad at me if I had said that I think that everyone involved accepted that the "blinding" was ineffective?
--- Jabba

 

[pgwenthold]

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/04/01/new-testing-dates-shroud-of-turin-to-era-of-christ/

Someone must have been reading this JREF thread! This is the first I heard that it was on display again.

But, the new Pope is having none of it.

Concerning the book “Il Mistero Della Sindone,” that is coming out "proving" the ancient dating:

I am fairly familiar with IR/VIS/UV spectrometers and their uses, and I know a little about Raman spectroscopy, but I'm trying to imagine how these techniques are relevant to dating a material. Comparison of spectra with known 1st century items?

I'm very familiar with UV/Vis/IR AND Raman spectroscopy, and I have no clue what it has to do with dating the shroud.

Raman is just an alternative approach for vibrational spectroscopy. It has different selection rules than IR, so it provides complimentary information to it.

Using alternative and complimentary properly in their literal sense.

 

[Akri]

- Would you guys have been mad at me if I had said that I think that everyone involved accepted that the "blinding" was ineffective?
--- Jabba

Yes. The blinding is irrelevant, so making a point of it being "ineffective" is dodging the actual issues at best, and an attempt to slander the scientists involved at worst.

 

[Slowvehicle]

- Would you guys have been mad at me if I had said that I think that everyone involved accepted that the "blinding" was ineffective?
--- Jabba

Rich:

Are you, in fact, claiming that it was bias on the part of the labs that made them come up with the "wrong" date? What about the two labs that went ahead and added a blinding protocol? What about the fact that ¹⁴C dating samples are not routinely blinded? What about the fact that the purpose of the control samples (as has been explained to you) was to assess the calibration of the machines?

"Mad at you" is not really the issue, nor a correct description--say, more, disappointed at your resort to dishonesty and weaseling.

What evidence do you offer that the ¹⁴C testing resulted in the "wrong" date, other than your sincere desire that the cloth be the True Shroud^TM?

 

[IanS]

- The issue started with me saying that I thought that "everyone involved" had accepted that the control samples used in the carbon dating of the Shroud were ineffective."

Slowvehicle,
- I'll try to start off with one sub-sub-etc-issue at a time.
#1. In 5138, I said, “I think that everyone involved accepts that the control samples were not effective.”
- Note that I didn’t just say that EVERYONE INVOLVED ACCEPTED something; I said that I THINK that everyone involved accepted something.
--- Jabba

If you merely meant that the C14 labs almost certainly knew which sample was the shroud, because the weave of the shroud was very distinctive and unlike anything else, then you could just say that. And that's probably true ... they probably did always know which sample was the shroud.

But in C14 dating it actually does not matter if you know which sample is which. Because as has been explained several times over the past 10 pages, instrumental techniques like C14 are not open to the same subjective bias as most medical and biological testing methods.

Of course, if you think there was a deliberate conspiracy where the three labs deliberately falsified the results, then that is a different claim altogether (but not one which will stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny).

 

[Belz...]

- Would you guys have been mad at me if I had said that I think that everyone involved accepted that the "blinding" was ineffective?
--- Jabba

Yes, because that would mean that you completely ignored what people have told you about blinding.

 

[Olowkow]

Doofus: I think it's raining. Take your galoshes.
Rufus: No, it's just overcast, no rain.
Doofus: I didn't say "It's raining", I said "I think it's raining". What's wrong with you?
Rufus: Oh, Ok. I think you are clueless.
Doofus: Thank you.

 

[FergusM1970]

- Would you guys have been mad at me if I had said that I think that everyone involved accepted that the "blinding" was ineffective?
--- Jabba

I've joined this discussion late, so you'll have to forgive me for not having a clue what your problem with the C14 dating is. Could you just explain very simply why you think it's wrong?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

He's got an obvious agenda, has made claims without supporting them, expects others to spoon feed him and shows a double standard on evidence.

One of the few things I hate about this board is the tendency for people to jump on newbies, based on what they believe their "agendas" are, rather than on what they actually post. I would suggest that judging people on what you believe they probably think is less a sceptical position and more a cynical one.

For me the fascinating part about this is it's further evidence of JP's double standard, e.g.

The two statements of JabbaPappa's you quote there don't contradict each other. Which is not to say that they're not flawed - earlier replies have mentioned flaws - it's just that you seem to be looking for "gotchas", rather than anything else.

 

[kerikiwi]

I've joined this discussion late, so you'll have to forgive me for not having a clue what your problem with the C14 dating is. Could you just explain very simply why you think it's wrong?

As a long time lurker, I can answer that question:
No.