The question of miracles - Are there convincing miracle cases?

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Thanks for your post. The Pray Codex is important evidence.
However, Prof Rogers" theory that the Shroud’s C-14 samples were part of a “reweaving” repair has been disproven a long time ago. In 2002 the Shroud was subjected to a “restoration,” and its backing was removed. Textile experts very carefully examined all of its underside, and especially the corner where the C-14 sample had been cut. They found no evidence of any repair, invisible or otherwise.
 
His paper was not about the reweaving. It was about an alternate dating method which showed the shroud was much older than the C14 suggested
 
There is a man who can lift 300 pounds. Why can’t I? Maybe because he has practiced and worked for a long time.

In the same way, that a saint can do something is a lot different than my being able to do something. The saint has practiced holiness to the point where they can receive the gift to love on only the Eucharist for long periods of time.

So in effect, you are putting your conversion on whether or not you receive a miracle, without putting any of your self in the deal.
 
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jan10000 said:
People use miracles to demonstrate the validity of their beliefs over other faiths. There is no physical, rational evidence to justify faith (that’s why we call it faith), so we divert to miracles.
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Buddha is said to have performed many miracles.
 
OK. But your post mentioned that Prof. Rogers had “determined that the C14 sample was not representative of the whole cloth.” That statement may be true in that other parts of the Shroud, being closer to the corpse, received substantially more neutron radiation, but that is not what Rogers had in mind.
 
Here is what Shroud historian Ian Wilson published in 2010:

"The big problem with the Shroud dating, and one that virtually never happens with any other datings, was that there was no one equivalent to an archaeologist to act as an interpreter, and potential rejector, of the results. . . .
“This left that role to be filled by the three radio-carbon dating laboratories–primarily . . .by Oxford’s Prof. Edward Hall. Unabashedly atheist, and neck-deep in his multi-million pound propaganda war against Harwell, Hall positively relished the opportunity to be judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud. He lectured on the subject to the British Museum Society. His laboratory’s role in proving it to be a “fake” was proudly displayed at his offices as among his finest achievements. There was no way he was going to modify the conclusiveness of the laboratories’ findings with any cautionary proviso of the kind that his Zurich counterpart Professor Wolfli had volunteered.”

 
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Contrary to the false assertion that the Church has condemned the Shroud are the opinions of its Holy Bishops of Rome, Pope Pius XI in particular:
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Contradictions involving the Shroud of Turin? Sacred Scripture
Those who came into close contact with His Holiness Pius XI know how rigorous and exacting was the scientific precision which guided his lucid mind; he would be content with nothing less than good reasoning based on solid facts. Mgr. Ratti (later Pius XI) had seen the Shroud’s exposition in 1898, and he remembered the supple quality of the material, the fineness of the linen, the absence of all colouring material, and the perfection of the anatomy of the body. But he had worked for many years …
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Id look into the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Thats something that happened in the past, but is still hanging around for people to inspect.
 
jan10000 said:
When the Shroud first appeared, the local Bishop claimed it was a fake and did not want the faithful spending their money to see it. He claims to have found the artist and the model, and obtained confessions.

The Shroud then disappeared for a few decades. It then reappears, this time in the possession of the Church, who claims it authenticate and makes money off of it through donations and displays (this was a VERY common practice at the time, there are hundreds if not thousands of holy artifacts).

In the late 20th century, scientific tests were performed (see rest of this thread). Shroud was found to be a medieval artifact.
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This so-called “information” is not factual. The “local bishop” was attempting to raise money for the completion of the Troyes cathedral and became jealous that Lirey was attracting more pilgrims. This bishop had never even seen the Shroud, and his allegation of an artist is hearsay. (The idea of a “model” is a product of someone’s imagination.) Pope ordered him to remain silent about the matter and permitted exhibitions at Lirey to continue. The next Popes endorsed the Shroud.

The Shroud did not “reappear in the possession of the Church.” This idea is nonsense. The Savoy family was rich and did not need to make money off of the Shroud.

The the data from the “scientific tests” that you cite were analyzed in a prejudicial manner and the proper interpretation of the evidence was ignored.

Pope Pius XI endorsed the authenticity of the Shroud, and I provided a link to that history. Apparently it has been ignored.
 
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jan10000 said:
But that’s not the case here. The stories CONFLICT. For example, consider the nativity - two distinct contrary stories. Even the genetic lines are different. Try reading each Gospel and track four different summaries. There are four different persons. It’s very interesting.
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For those who want to find evidence that the Bible is not true, it’s easy to find and dwell on.

And for those who want to find explanations for these apparent contradictions, they, too, are easy to find.

As one poster noted above, law enforcement views matching stories with skepticism and suspicion. As a mother, I have dirst-hand evidence about how the stories of different participants in an event can differ 😉

I am sorry that you have to grapple with these issues, but it is a good sign, albeit painful, that you continue to grapple instead of just giving up.

These are not issues for me, so I am not the right person to ask these questions of.
 
To jan10000
undead_rat said:
Sir, when you say that it is “not possible” that radiation from a vanishing corpse could have created the Shroud’s image, are you saying that Jesus’ corpse did not disappear from the inside of a sealed and guarded tomb as is recorded in the Holy Gospels ?
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Third request

and still waiting for an answer to a simple question
 
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jan10000 said:
The modern Church position is that they make no claim of its authenticity.
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The Catholic Church does not, as a matter of policy, endorse relics of any kind. Many Popes have made their personal endorsement.

But it is undisputed that other Christians at the time including clerics (at least one) thought it was a fake.

Only the Bishop of Troyes and no one else is recorded as objecting to the Shroud at that time.

The Shroud was not heard from for several decades and then it was again displayed, this time under Church possession. I’m going by memory here, but I don’t think you disagree.
I have said more than once that you are wrong about this. The Shroud did not come into possession of the Church until the late 20th century.

The test shows that the shroud is medieval. There is no “interpretation”. You can claim it was an invalid test, or whatever, but the results are the results.

The “test” shows nothing of the sort. What the 1988 C-14 testing did show was a higher ratio of C-14 to C-12 than would be expected of a 2000 year old relic. I have explained this many times: there is more than one way to interpret the evidence, but you just don’t seem to get it. And, as I have said before several times, I do not say that the evidence gathering was invalid. What is contested is the interpretation of that evidence. Now, if one denies the possibility that Jesus’ corpse disappeared from the inside of a sealed tomb (as you apparently do) then you are left with only one possible interpretation, and that, my friend, is your problem here.

And why not test it again? The Church refuses.

No need. We have all of the evidence that we need, and that evidence proves that the Shroud is authentic and that the corpse did indeed vanish just as is recorded in the Holy Gospels.
 
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The Resurrection is the one and only Miracle denied by Jesus’ enemies of back when…

The Shroud? Cannot be replicated…

There’s science arguments in favor of the Shroud - including the problems w/the 1988 Dating

The Pollen … cannot be denied.

[4 new dating tests] which have as a midpoint of the average a date of 50 A.D. (plus or minus 200 years) with a 96% confidence level.
  • Dr. Max Frei’s pollen grains – Judea origin.
the presence of pollen grains dating back to First Century Palestine
and the presence of Tiberian coins minted in Judea in 29 AD
– on the eyes of the man in the Shroud indicated an origin of the
Shroud around the time of Jesus’ death
  • Dr. Alan Whanger’s and Robert Haralick’s digital photographic analysis of the roman coins on the eyes of the man in the Shroud–minted by Pontius Pilate in 29 A.D. in Judea.
  • Sudarium Christi (facecloth of Christ) has similar pollen grains.
 
jan10000 said:
The most obvious response to the Pray Codex/Shroud connection is that IF the artists did want this cloth to be the shroud, why didn’t he or she paint Jesus body on it?
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The Chris image is almost invisible to the naked eye. The most prominent feature would be the poker holes. In any case, arguments of silence applied to iconography are not that compelling.
 
  1. This story seems misleading because of #4
  2. The Sudarium is the sister cloth that was wrapped around the head.
  3. Partially true. A shroud with the image of Christ is mentioned throughout history. We only have provenance for the Shroud of Turin from the 1300’s
  4. False. The STURP team found no paints or dyes on the shroud
  5. The image has 3 dimensional relief and a 3d subject. This will cause distortions collapsing it to a 2 dimensional plane.
  6. False. The STURP team found no paints or dyes on the shroud
  7. False. The shroud does not reveal ethnicity or skin color.
  8. Yes, but irrelevant as to whether this one is fake.
  9. False. The pattern does match 1st century linen. Leading expert testimony is on film.
  10. Highly speculative conclusions built on many assumptions about the positioning and translation of the body during and after the crucifixion.
  11. I do not propose to know how it cant be produced.
  12. Do you have a link to the details?
  13. This is not evidence it is fake.
  14. This is not evidence it is fake.
  15. This is not evidence its is fake. They should protect it. Science needs to figure out some non destructive ways of dating.
You are citing McCrone who makes the claim about the existence of paint on tape samples. He never had direct access to the shroud. The STURP team did have direct and up close access. The STURP team concluded in their report that there were no dyes, and no paints.
 
An interesting discussion. If I may…
  1. Impugning Bishop d’Arcis is a popular authenticist tactic, but there is no evidence to suggest he was duplicitous, jealous or mendacious.
  2. The Gospel accounts differ, but are not necessarily inconsistent with the Shroud being authentic.,
  3. Both shrouds and miraculous images are mentioned in historical literature, but never a shroud with an image on it until the 14th century. Many accounts clearly state that the shroud/s and the image/s are separate objects.
  4. The image today seems to have resulted from a stain discolouring the outer surface of the flax fibrils. The world’s leading microscopist, examining sticky tapes which had been placed on the Shroud, identified copious granules of iron oxide. The STuRP team extracted individual fibres from the tapes by thoroughly washing away the glue, and found nothing sticking to them. These observations are not inconsistent with the idea that the image was ‘painted’.
  5. The lack of neck causing a low position of the head on the shoulders, the very long arms and the inconsistent blood flows can be explained as artistic imperfections, but with sufficient recourse to rigor mortis and careful disposition of the cloth, can be partially reconciled with the idea of a dead body giving rise to the image.
  6. As 4, above. Actually numerous paint particles were found, even by STuRP, on the sticky tapes, but they are all attributed to copies of the Shroud being laid on top of it to sanctify them. Further, although their examination of the washed fibres showed minimal particulate matter, they did not eliminate ‘stains’ or ‘dyes’, which are not particulate. Some of their observations are consistent with an iron acetate stain, for example.
  7. Judgments as to the 'Shroud man’s race, height or age are entirely subjective and have never been supported by compelling evidence.
  8. Fake relics indeed abounded, and mostly relied not on what they looked like, but on their provenance for verification. As the Shroud had no provenance, it was not described as the actual burial cloth of Jesus for a hundred years after it was first exhibited (although at the very beginning there does seem to have been an abortive attempt to do so).
  9. Confusing weave patterns is a popular bone of contention. The fact that both twill and herringbone can be found on some first century, and earlier, Middle Eastern cloth does nothing to support the particular 3/1 herringbone sheeting of the Shroud. None of the four leading experts on the subject think that there is evidence for such manufacture.
  10. Many experiments have been carried out to try to match both the blood flows on the body, and how the blood was transferred to the Shroud. None have come close to matching it, whether by authenticists or medievalists. It can, however, be closely matched simply by dribbling it from a pipette onto a cloth.
 
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  1. Attempts to explain the image ‘naturally’ from a dead body have conspicuously failed, mostly due to the necessary collimation of the transfer mechanism. Attempts to demonstrate it artistically have been more successful, without, yet, achieving an indisputable method.
  2. Remains of only two Roman crucifixion victims have been recovered, and only a few bones of those. Their details do not match the Shroud. However so little is known about crucifixion that we cannot say whether any particular method must have ben used for Jesus.
  3. 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.
  4. Indicative flower images, pollen, coins and geographically locatable stone are evidence that the Shroud is authentic, and must be credibly discredited before rejection. This has been very satisfactorily achieved.
  5. The Church keeps its ideas to itself. It may well allow further testing, once satisfied that the results will be definitive.
Actually, there is no evidence that Shroud research fell off dramatically, or at all, after the radiocarbon results were published. However Jan10000 is correct that 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.

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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Hi Hugh,

The original post said:
  1. Carbon dating places the Shroud exactly when skeptics said it would
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My response said:
  1. This is not evidence it is fake
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Just so I am clear. My response to the above wasn’t saying C14 is not evidence. It is. I was saying skeptics/authenticists opinions/bets on its dating are not evidence.

I wasn’t being purposely obtuse. I thought C14 as evidence was already covered in the first half of his original post so I misread the onus of the sentence as being a different kind of argument.
 
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I agree with all that. An opinion, however forcefully expressed, is not evidence of anything but itself.
 
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