The question of miracles - Are there convincing miracle cases?

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Hugh_Farey said:
  1. The radiocarbon determination of a 13th century date is most certainly evidence that the Shroud is a fake. It must be credibly discredited before rejection, and this has not been achieved.
  2. However Jan10000 is correct that few impartial observers accept the authenticity of the Shroud.
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The British Museum’s interpretation of the Shroud’s C-14 evidence most certainly has been discredited. Fanti and Malfi dedicated an entire book to this very subject and reported that:
  1. The linen fibers of the Shroud’s threads had been processed by the ancient, rather than the medieval method.
  2. The facial castings of 6th century gold coins have conguences with the facial image found on the Shroud. Statistical analysis reults in a one in a billion chance that the artists making the coin molds did not use the facial image on the Shroud as a model.
    (Attempting to discredit Fanti’s research by claiming that the coin artisans used 6th century icons as their model is no more that a silly “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” reponse.)
  3. Fanti noted that the British Museum’s statistical analysis of the Shroud’s C-14 evidence was flawed (fudged really.) As Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone noted, the Museum had reached its verdict prior to conducting the statistical analysis. This amounts to nothing less than the Museum holding a kangaroo court on the Shroud. Then the Museum refused to forward the raw C-14 evidence to the Colonnetti Institute in Turin for its own statistical analysis as had been agreed, and it was not until 2017, when forced by a court order, that the Museum final released the raw C-14 data.
    Fanti concludes that the Shroud’s C-14 evidence is “scientifically meaningless” as far as indicating a date is concerned and that, if one insisted on assigning a date, it would be 1325 A.D. with an uncertaintly factor of several thousand years.
  4. Fanti and Malfi then developed alternative methods of dating Shroud fibers and dermined a date of origin of about 35 B.C. +/- 250 years with a 95% probability. Attempting to discredit this reseach by claiming that the samples were “flawed” sounds a lot like the attempt to discredit the 1988 C-14 evidence by the same erroneous method.
“…few impartial observers. . .??” What nonsense. It is a common practice among the modernist crowd to attempt to discredit legitimate Shoud researchers by claiming that they are infected with a religious bias. Nothing could be further from the truth. (This sounds a lot like Jan1000’s refusal to consider the research of any scientist who he does not deem “respectable.”)

It is really the other way around. Modernists are infected with an anti-religious bias proven by their refusal to accept the possibility that Gospel accounts of Jesus walking on water or of His corpse vanishing may actually be true. Note that Jan1000 still refuses to answer my simple question about the latter event.
 
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Hugh_Farey said:
On the Pray Codex: the relevant image fits perfectly into the iconographic trend of “Three Marys” images, and it is artistically inconceivable that the rectangular objects can represent the shroud. The alleged ‘poker holes’ and the alleged ‘herringbone’ are clearly on the lid of the sarcophagus, and not related to the shroud, which is, typically, crumpled in a heap on the top. Hoping that the allusion is esoteric or arcane is unjustified, and without any supporting evidence.
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I agree this is similar to the “Three Marys” motif. However, Three Marys iconography doesn’t depict a lid to the sarcophagus and they always have an empty shroud. There is obviously some divergence here from traditional iconography.

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Well, no, obviously. Although it has convinced you, Fanti and Malfi’s book is unconvincing to many others. Specifically:
  1. There is no particular difference between the ‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’ process of spinning flax or weaving linen. There were different methods, but they are not exclusive to any particular time.
  2. The congruences Fanti and Malfi find between the Shroud image and Byzantine coins are not at all convincing to me, and the attempt to make a statistical probability from such congruences are wholly based on guesswork.
  3. a) As all the returned dates were medieval, it is not very surprising that the British Museum thought the Shroud was medieval even before its statistical analysis.
    b) The raw data was indeed forwarded to Professor Bray of the Colonnetti Institute, who found no problem with the analysis. Evidence for this is in the papers recently released by the British Museum to Tristan Casabianca.
    c) Although Fanti considers the radiocarbon data scientifically meaningless, most of the papers published on it (such as those by Riani & Atkinson, Remi van Haelst, Tristan Casabianca, Joe Marino and Bob Rucker) consider it meaningful, accurate, and quite precise, although the last two do not consider that the dates derived from the data properly indicate the date of manufacture of the Shroud.
  4. Fanti’s alternative dating methods have failed to find any popular acceptance even among textile specialists, and his data on the Shroud repudiated by the Turin church authorities, as well as many authenticist scholars.
 
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irenaeuslyons said:
However, Three Marys iconography doesn’t depict a lid to the sarcophagus and they always have an empty shroud. There is obviously some divergence here from traditional iconography.
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Not really. The development of Three Mary’s iconography is quite elaborate, and there is a fair amount of evolutionary diversity. In its early stages the angel sits on a rock, or a carved stone, outside a temple-tomb, but this morphs into a weirdly angled tomb-lid as the sarcophagus moves out of the tomb, which by about 1100 disappears altogether. In the Western (Catholic) tradition there is almost always a lid to the sarcophagus, and almost always there is an angel sitting or standing on it. The Pray Codex image is of this type. In the 15th century, in the Eastern (Orthodox) tradition, there is a - rather minor - lineage in which the round "stone rolled away’ replaces the stone. Since there is usually only one stone, this means that the coffin lid necessarily goes missing.
In the Western tradition, the shroud is crumpled, screwed up, or draped carelessly over the scene, and the sudarium is rarely present. In the Eastern tradition the shroud often looks like an undisturbed mummy wrapping, with the sudarium displayed at its head, and is placed in the coffin rather than on it or over it. Grabbing one or two icons in the hope of defining a tradition is rarely possible for any biblical theme, and for one which has lasted for such a long time, it is well-nigh impossible.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
Well, no, obviously. Although it has convinced you, Fanti and Malfi’s book is unconvincing to many others. Specifically:
  1. There is no particular difference between the ‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’ process of spinning flax or weaving linen.
  2. The congruences Fanti and Malfi find between the Shroud image and Byzantine coins are not at all convincing to me,
c) Although Fanti considers the radiocarbon data scientifically meaningless. . .
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  1. Who said anything about “spinning.” Your use of this term shows just how out of touch you are with Fanti’s research. That research was about the retrieval of linen fibers from the flax plant and had nothing to do with “spinning” or “weaving.”
  2. Of course not. You are a modernist who holds a great prejudice against the idea that the Shroud might be authentic, You also misrepresent yourself as a “scientist” and chide us for our failure to use “primary sources” in your attempt to make us feel concerned when you do not find evidence “convincing.”
    Believe me, Mr. Farey, I am not in the least concerned or impressed that you do not like this evidence.
3.Prof. Fanti finds the C-14 evidence meaningless for the indication of a date of origin.
That evidence, however, does have a great and profound meaning.
 
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A post or two back I wrote: “… few impartial observers accept the authenticity of the Shroud. I believe the real reason for this lies less in the evidence itself than in the different attitudes generally presented by proponents of the opposing views.”

I had no idea how soon this would be illustrated.

But perhaps you are correct, and I should have written: “There is no particular difference between the ‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’ processes of growing, harvesting, retting, scutching, hackling, drafting or spinning flax or weaving linen. There were different methods, but they are not exclusive to any particular time.”

I do believe you when you say you are not interested in evidence that contradicts your prejudices, and despise people who like to base their opinions on primary sources. That sort of thinking is entirely typical of many authenticists, and, as I hint above, probably the principle reason why most people do not accept the authenticity of the Shroud.
 
It would be far easier to sully any data… than to replicate the Shroud…
 
THE TRIAL OF JOSHUA PANTERA

Joshua Pantera was 33 years old, and he had lived in Key West, Florida, for as long as he could remember. His parents had passed away, but he did have a brother. He held a steady job and had absolutely no criminal record, but he was often critical of the corruption in the local government and judicial system which made him disliked by the local authorities. One summer day at the start of the sport lobster diving season Josh got up early and went out on the local waters to catch some crawfish. Florida lobsters are sometimes caught with a small net, but the good divers are able to make a very fast arm-thrust at the crawfish and grab it that way. Josh went to an old submerged iron wreck and thrust his hand toward a nice-sized lobster, but, wouldn’t you know it, a jagged piece of the iron hull caught his arm and gave him a nice bloody gash. Well, that was the end of diving for the day, and Josh had to go to a local clinic to have his arm sowed up.

It so happened that on that very same morning a Key West home was broken into and a serious crime committed therein. The culprit had busted a door window to gain entry and seemed to have suffered a cut which left blood. The local detectives gathered this blood for DNA testing and also checked the area clinics for anyone having been treated for a wound. Sure enough, they found out that Josh had been so treated and they were able to get a sample of his blood which they sent to the DNA lab.

Unexpectedly to Josh and everyone who knew him, the DNA from the crime scene turned out to be a perfect match to his DNA. He was, of course, arrested and hauled into court. The judge disallowed all of Josh’s character witnesses. Even his defense attorney was not allowed to speak. The jury was made up of the 21 persons who had worked on the DNA testing. It was a true kangaroo court which rendered its guilty verdict based on the “irrefutable scientific evidence.” Josh’s brother, Phillip, had sent the judge a letter stating that he thought that Josh had been adopted, but it was rejected as irrelevant.

So Josh was put away for a long time, but some of his friends refused to accept that DNA evidence as conclusive. They dug into old court records and found out that Josh had indeed been adopted at birth from California. Digging deeper they eventually determined that Josh was born with an identical twin brother who was adopted by a different family and who grew up in a different state. Further research revealed that this brother had an extensive criminal record and had visited Florida at the time that Josh was supposed to have committed that crime.

Josh’s brother confessed to the Key West crime, and Josh was exonerated and freed from prison.

I present this story in order to illustrate just how wrong a prejudiced court system can go by relying on an in correct interpretation of scientific evidence to the exclusion of all else.
 
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TEST THE SHROUD, Antonacci, 2015, pg 311-312:

"Arizona was the first radiocarbon laboratory to date the Shroud samples, taking eight different measurements on four separate dates in May and June of 1988. . . .Thereafter, Zurich reported five radiocarbon ages, and Oxford reported three… . .
"However, these ages provided a serious problem for the British Museum for the radiocarbon ages of the samples ranged from 540 to 795 years old. In this case, these particular ages were considered to be ‘outliers.’ A 255 year age range for samples taken less than five centimeters from each other on the same cloth would be too great of an acceptable degree of accuracy or a 95% certainty in age.
“Based on private correspondence with two scientists at Oxford and one at Arizona, chemist Remi Van Haelst states that the British Museum solved this problem by asking Arizona to combine or to essentially average the two radiocarbon sample ages from each of its four testing dates in May and June, which Arizona did. The British Museum and the Arizona laboratory thus combined eight age measurements into only four age measurements. This combination was not mentioned in the official Nature report.”
 
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Almost none of the above is true. The dates 540 and 795 BP were not considered outliers and were not rejected. Measurements derived from them both appear in the Nature paper. The range of dates across the 12 pieces of Shroud that were dated was 299 years (at the single sigma level) which was not considered unreasonable. All the dates of the 12 samples, not solely Arizona’s, were combinations of measurements. This combination was mentioned in the official report: “The results of these independent measurements in each case represent the average of several replicate measurements made during each run.”

The story of Josh and the lobster is as fictitious as the authenticity of the Shroud. As an illustration of the US justice system (‘his defence attorney was not allowed to speak’, ’ the jury was made up of the 21 persons who had worked on the DNA testing’) it is ludicrous.
 
The thing about miracles is that they have the habit of popping up randomly and not in laboratories.

I’ve seen a person walk into an ICU unit, place their hands on a person who is in terrible condition and may die and be healed to the point of getting out of the ICU in minutes.

How can that be proved though? Even in the hospital there is not way to prove it. Ive witnessed a number of https like this just around and in hospitals and even then it is still impossible to prove it.

They happen all the time but unless we are going to turn the world into a lab and hire scientists to be everywhere all the time its going to be hard to prove it to anyone.
 
irenaeuslyons said:
Yes it does. It is a well known icon motif that depicts the shroud of Christ in the burial chamber with the angels.
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I’m not sure what you mean here. The whole whole scene is a typical Three Marys, with its sarcophagus, twisted ‘lid’, and crumpled shroud. All well known, I agree. The shroud is never depicted stretched out or rectangular, so to suggest that the ‘lid’ is the shroud is certainly not well known at all. But perhaps you meant something different. And if a ‘burial chamber’ is a room rather than a coffin or sarcophagus, then the number of Three Marys icons showing anybody or anything actually in a ‘chamber’ is almost unknown from the 10th to the 19th century.
EndTimes said:
“what most people think”
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It all depends not so much on what they think, but why they think it.
 
FiveLinden said:
credible.
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It’s interesting that this has come up since I was discussing this with someone else not long ago.

There are a couple of websites that come to mind related to the topic of miracles:

The Miracle Hunter:

http://www.miraclehunter.com/

And…

The Magis Center:


Maybe these might help in your search for answers.

God bless you on your spiritual journey.

Pax Christi.

kainosktisis
 
Hugh_Farey said:
The story of Josh and the lobster is as fictitious as the authenticity of the Shroud. As an illustration of the US justice system (‘his defence attorney was not allowed to speak’, ’ the jury was made up of the 21 persons who had worked on the DNA testing’) it is ludicrous.
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You deduced that my story is “fictitious?” How clever of you. But the tale is a good representation of how the British Museum put the Shroud on trial. No defense attorney, no defense witnesses, a jury of the 21 scientists who had evaluated the evidence, and a refusal to consider the alternate explanation of that evidence.
It was a true kangaroo court.
 
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I did get your point, but I think you mischaracterise the radiocarbon test by pretending that it was any kind of trial. The three laboratories were given samples of the Shroud and asked to date it, which they did, to the best of their ability. The British Museum co-ordinated their results and published an assessment of the Shroud’s age based upon them. That’s all. Neither the British Museum nor the radiocarbon laboratories had any remit to take into consideration any other evidence for or against their conclusions.

If some comparison with a trial must be made, then the judge and jury were the owner of the Shroud and the Catholic Church. It was their responsibility to take all the evidence into account, listen to authenticist ‘witnesses’ or ‘attorneys’, evaluate the evidence and pronounce the verdict that they accepted. That neither the pope nor the Turin authorities publicly queried the radiocarbon date, in spite of the STuRP evidence of ten years previously, suggests that they rejected the ‘defence’ arguments for authenticity.
 
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jan10000 said:
If the best evidence you can show that the shroud is older than 13th century is that paining,
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Fair Enough .

As for me I realize that our Lord’s Enemies decry/decried but one Miracle - His Resurrection.

The Shroud - presents many extremely convincing - even unexplained evidences
Of Extra-Ordinarynesses … and which also connect strongly with 1st Century Palestine

As for me… My Faith is Real and continuously transforming after unexpectantly opening a Door…

… and it depends not upon the Shroud.

Nor do I ever care to attempt to Prove it. It is what it is.

_
 
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