Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[John Jones]

Worldwide controversy... To be fair, I suppose believers of the miraculous nature of the SoT are as widespread as Catholicism is. And I'm sure the "controversy" meme is well-spread throughout shroudie literature. Much as it is touted in the intelligent design camp. And for the same reason; It lends credibility to the cause to have the followers believe that the dissenters aren't able to present an argument strong enough to dispel the myth. It's not true, but the majority of the believers will never question it.

Exactly.

 

[HighRiser]

LOL

I've never seen of nor heard of that book. I'm now going to quasi-not-really-secretly start referring to the picture painted on this (one of many) Burial Shroud of Christ as 'Flat Stanley'.

"Flat Jesse" has a nice ring to it.

 

[HighRiser]

This is not worldwide controversy.

This is a point of religious faith among pathologically credulous people who can't keep-up with rational discussion, and who happen to live in different parts of the world.

Note the distinction.

Definitely distinct.

 

[David Mo]

EXUDATES.

(...) but do not explain the absence of blood on the 'sides' of the legs, which would surely have appeared if the cloth had been wrapped around them in the same way as it was around the arms.

Sorry for my insistence, but as Voltaire said I never will be tired to repeat the obvious if you don’t want to hear it. (Or similar saying).

Nothing and nobody (neither “stereo-registration” nor another invent) can explain the “nice rivulets” on the nape of the Man of Turin. Except a painter theory (with blood, exudated or not exudated, or pigment or dragon spit, if you want).

 

[catsmate]

Sorry for my insistence, but as Voltaire said I never will be tired to repeat the obvious if you don’t want to hear it. (Or similar saying).

Nothing and nobody (neither “stereo-registration” nor another invent) can explain the “nice rivulets” on the nape of the Man of Turin. Except a painter theory (with blood, exudated or not exudated, or pigment or dragon spit, if you want).

Nitpick: technically it's the man of Lirey. It almost certainly wasn't fabricated at Turin, it just ended up there.

 

[abaddon]

Well, this thread has been useful.

The good old Legion of Mary called and when I said I was atheist, guess what their very first proof of god was...the good ole ToS.

Needless to say, out came the howitzers.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Is howitzers a euphemism for "breasts?" If so, would you please pass on my contact details?

 

[catsmate]

Well, this thread has been useful.

The good old Legion of Mary called and when I said I was atheist, guess what their very first proof of god was...the good ole ToS.

Needless to say, out came the howitzers.

They never call on us Even since a........certain incident...........the god botherers seem to avoid our place.
Oh well.

 

[The Norseman]

"Flat Jesse" has a nice ring to it.

Consider it yoinked!

 

[Jabba]

Blood/Bodily Contact

EXUDATES.

Barbet was one of the first to confront the idea that fresh liquid blood, which he guessed would spread out and soak in around its source by capillary action was not an appropriate medium for making the well defined edges of the trickles on the arms and across the back. Perhaps he tried dribbling blood on a sheet, perhaps he tried blotting it with cloth; I don't know, but whatever it was, he failed. He was also aware that blood dries surprisingly quickly, and that it doesn't flow well from dead bodies, which again could not account for the trickles. However, he was unable to let go of the idea that the stains are really blood, so had to speculate, and the exudate was born. Trouble was, exudate, as well he knew, is yellow to colourless, and the marks he was trying to explain are red. The solution to that was that the red blood cells had largely hemolysed, and their content spread out into the plasma. He hoped that by a process similar to chromatography, the serum would spread out further than the red colour, and imagined he could identify serum borders to the wounds...

Hugh,
- I don't understand that sentence. Why would Barbet need to depend upon a kind of chromatography to produce serum rings when clotting should do that by itself?
--- Jabba

 

[pakeha]

"Flat Jesse" has a nice ring to it.

Nice one.

Sorry for my insistence, but as Voltaire said I never will be tired to repeat the obvious if you don’t want to hear it. (Or similar saying).

Nothing and nobody (neither “stereo-registration” nor another invent) can explain the “nice rivulets” on the nape of the Man of Turin. Except a painter theory (with blood, exudated or not exudated, or pigment or dragon spit, if you want).

Hmm.
Dragon spit.
Well, that possibility HASN'T been satisfactorily falsified, IMO.

...The good old Legion of Mary called and when I said I was atheist, guess what their very first proof of god was...the good ole ToS. ...

I think that's very sad.
Did they refer you to THAT video as evidence?

 

[Jabba]

Blood/Bodily Contact

EXUDATES.

Barbet was one of the first to confront the idea that fresh liquid blood, which he guessed would spread out and soak in around its source by capillary action was not an appropriate medium for making the well defined edges of the trickles on the arms and across the back. Perhaps he tried dribbling blood on a sheet, perhaps he tried blotting it with cloth; I don't know, but whatever it was, he failed. He was also aware that blood dries surprisingly quickly, and that it doesn't flow well from dead bodies, which again could not account for the trickles. However, he was unable to let go of the idea that the stains are really blood, so had to speculate, and the exudate was born. Trouble was, exudate, as well he knew, is yellow to colourless, and the marks he was trying to explain are red. The solution to that was that the red blood cells had largely hemolysed, and their content spread out into the plasma. He hoped that by a process similar to chromatography, the serum would spread out further than the red colour, and imagined he could identify serum borders to the wounds. As far as I know, nobody checked whether this was a credible hypothesis by lifting a dressing off a clotting wound to find out what had happened, and hypothesis became gospel first by authority and then by antiquity. Some rather gruesome images found by Googling "wound dressing removal" show what happens, and the marks look nothing like those on the shroud...

Hugh,
- I don't understand that sentence either -- as far as I know, no one on the authenticity side claims that simply lifting the cloth off the body would produce the results that we find on the shroud.
--- Jabba

 

[Jabba]

Hugh,
- I have other questions regarding 8900, but I probably should have let you respond to my first question, before throwing anymore at you anyway. As always, I think we're best off dealing with one tiny issue at a time -- I think that's our best chance at fully understanding each others' positions, which seems to me the first requirement of actually effective debate.
--- Jabba

 

[pakeha]

 

[TjW]

Let us see if I can adequately express my position.
The 14th century happened after the first century.
Flax fiber grown in the 14th century could not have been used to wrap anything in the first century, because 14th century flax fiber did not exist in the first century.
There is nothing that can be added to 14th century flax fiber that will make it exist in the first century so that it can be used to wrap something.
Since there is nothing that can be added to 14th century flax fiber to use it to wrap something in the first century, there is no arrangement or pattern of things added to 14th century flax fiber that would allow it to be used to wrap something in the first century.
Therefore, discussing the properties of anything on the 14th century flax fiber is pointless with respect to showing that the 14th century flax fiber was used to wrap something in the first century.

Is there anything unclear about that?

 

[Dinwar]

They never call on us Even since a........certain incident...........the god botherers seem to avoid our place.
Oh well.

That happened to us when I was a kid. Jehova's Witnesses came into the house uninvited. Mom with a 12 gauge is a terrifying sight.

- I don't understand that sentence either -- as far as I know, no one on the authenticity side claims that simply lifting the cloth off the body would produce the results that we find on the shroud.

What specific process would result in the type of image we find on the shroud? The only thing that makes sense after reading the thread is "someone painted it".

 

[Garrette]

Hugh,
- I have other questions regarding 8900, but I probably should have let you respond to my first question, before throwing anymore at you anyway. As always, I think we're best off dealing with one tiny issue at a time -- I think that's our best chance at fully understanding each others' positions, which seems to me the first requirement of actually effective debate.
--- Jabba

But we do understand your position, and you understand ours. We have repeatedly and in depth discussed all the relevant issues.

Skeptical position: The evidence inexorably leads to the conclusion of forgery.

Your position: Continue to look for a way to support my desired conclusion of authenticity. Use my flawed and completely unscientific debate technique to disguise this position.

 

[hugh farey]

Chromatography is a process whereby different fractions of a liquid spread out by different amounts on a substrate. Children habitually place M&Ms on a piece of absorbent paper, and by dripping water on them, the constituent colours spread out, giving, say, rings of blue and yellow when the original M&M was green. Many liquids behave in a similar way, without needing extra solute to separate them, as they are runny anyway, although they dry before distinct rings are formed. In this case they tend to stay roughly the same colour, with a distinct 'halo' of one of their constituents around them. I'm speculating that a drop of blood on a piece of cloth, be it dripped onto cloth directly from a wound, absorbed into a covering of cloth over a wound, or dripped by a forger from a pipette, might have been assumed by Barbet to have demonstrated a similar process. However, he did not actually experiment to find out if this assumption was true.
When one applies a dressing to an excoriation, which appears to have happened here [Caution, not for the squeamish] (http://homelineimpact.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Homeline-Enluxtra-use-6.jpg) a large amount of yellowish serum has been absorbed by the cloth, and associated with it a reddish liquid which may consist of haemolytic products, and in the middle and indistinct mass of old blood cells and clotting material. Although the scourge wounds are considerably smaller, this is the sort of stain they ought to have produced. There is no evidence for that sort of stain on the shroud. In particular, I think that if the dressing was observed under UV light, it would glow very brightly, with minor extinction towards the middle. It would not show a distinct dark image of the wound with an almost indistinguishable greeny-blue glow round the edges.

 

[Akhenaten]

Yes, it's a bit like that, isn't it?

Apparently this effective debate thingy consists of selecting the person who is least unsympathetic to one's foregone conclusion as a partner and then playing pin-the-tail-on-the-red-herring with them in a room full of elephants.

 

[Akhenaten]

Let us see if I can adequately express my position.
The 14th century happened after the first century.
Flax fiber grown in the 14th century could not have been used to wrap anything in the first century, because 14th century flax fiber did not exist in the first century.
There is nothing that can be added to 14th century flax fiber that will make it exist in the first century so that it can be used to wrap something.
Since there is nothing that can be added to 14th century flax fiber to use it to wrap something in the first century, there is no arrangement or pattern of things added to 14th century flax fiber that would allow it to be used to wrap something in the first century.
Therefore, discussing the properties of anything on the 14th century flax fiber is pointless with respect to showing that the 14th century flax fiber was used to wrap something in the first century.

Is there anything unclear about that?

Of course not. It's as clear as crystal.

You are therefore disqualified from the game and will be ignored.

We're doing Actually Effective Debating™ here, not some nasty, evidence-based, skeptical thing.