"Shroudies"? You mean experts with advanced degrees and/or training in physics, chemistry, graphics, forensics, fabric, photography, etc.?
Oh, dear, I must have been sick the day they taught resurrection in physics. It certainly wasn't on the test.
When we point out that you misrepresent the expertise of some of your authors, you backpedal and deflect. When we point out that some of your experts are speaking outside their expertise, you ignore it. When we show the flaws in the actual science, you sanctimoniously declare than none of your critics can possibly know enough about the sciences involved to render an informed opinion.
Ah, there we have it! All those scientists and experts must be dismissed because they believe in God. When people point out that most of the scientists and experts who have examined the Shroud believe it is authentic, the skeptics' answer is to dismiss them as unqualified because they also happen to believe in God.
Wow, more straw than a pioneer bunk bed. It's disingenuous for you to say that most of the scientists who have examined the shroud believe it's real. Most scientists don't care about the shroud at all, or about any other Catholic relic, and don't waste time examining it. The only people who care about the shroud seem to be those trying to prove it relates to a religious truth claim. That's a backwater eddy of science, populated by a very few people whose interest seems more motivated by religion than by science.
No, not all experts must be dismissed because they believe in God. One of my business partners is a brilliant scientist and a member of my state's dominant religion, which I believe is your religion. He believes in God. But none of that has anything to do with science. He knows the difference, whereas you apparently do not. Commensurately, about half the scientists who work for me happen to believe in God. Similarly they know where science and God part ways and are therefore good scientists. I don't reject their science because they happen to believe in God. I don't reject it at all, because it's good science that has bugger-all to do with religion.
The shroud of Turin is not a purely scientific question. It heavily entails Christian truth claims. It is not possible to study the shroud without coming up against those truth claims. The question everyone wants to answer about it is whether it's the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, as many Catholics claim. If, like me, you're not religious, it's simply one of many Catholic relics without any special significance, and therefore of almost no interest to secular science.
As I said in one case, you have someone who's a well established microscopist who has provided very high quality micrographs of the shroud. That's science per se, but it's unremarkable to that extent. That same person goes on to speculate wildly about the physical properties of the alleged resurrection. That's where it departs from science. Something that purports to be science but which either requires us to accept Christian truth claims as a premise, or which attempts to support Christian truth claims that have no other toehold in evidence,
is simply not science. It's religious proselytizing expressed in the language of science. You may be unable to distinguish between the two, but give us credit who can.
Your experts are not being treated skeptically because they
also happen to believe in God. They are being treated skeptically when they inappropriately combine science and God. They are being treated skeptically when their science is questionable, regardless of what might have made them make it questionable.
Sorry, you can't simply declare yourself to be the victim of anti-religious persecution when none of that is the actual argument against the shroud claims.
You, Thermal, believe in truly magical creatures, such as creatures who magically came to life...
When you have to invoke irrelevant religious arguments to vilify everyone else in the thread, it's pretty clear where the insecurity lies.
