The Shroud of Turin: What's Your Opinion?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TheOldColonel
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
If the dates had been reported by the Museum as they had been received from the labs, the news to the public would have been 1193 to 1448. Mr Antonacci has a valid criticism here. The fact is that the Museum went to the trouble of asking the Arizona lab to rework their data rather than just reporting it as received. They obviously had an agenda here.

You said that Oxford reported an age of 795, but you haven’t addressed my observation that 1988 minus 795 equals 1193 and not 1260.
 
Focusing on the carbon dating ignores the other evidence that shows it is authentic.
 
The shroud if Turin has an amazing history and shows the pain that a man such as Jesus went through. All that is true even if it is fake. Even if it is fake I would drive a long distance to see it due to that.
 
Last edited:
buffalo said:
Focusing on the carbon dating ignores the other evidence that shows it is authentic.
Click to expand...
If one considers the actual dates obtained (instead of the abridged ones) and if one notes that those dates become younger as the sample tested becomes closer to the Image, then one can make the hypothesis that the the vanishing of our Lord’s corpse somehow affected the C-14 content of the linen.

And we do know that our Lord’s corpse did, in fact, vanish. The 1978 STuRP found that the linen fibers under the blood stains were completely undisturbed. If the body had been physically removed from the Shroud that it lay in, then the coagulated blood on the wounds would have torn away some of the linen fibers.

The 1978 investigation also found that the Image was unlike a photograph in that it had no “directionality,” meaning that there was no light source as in a photograph. It is as if the corpse itself was the source of the image. And if the vanishing body left a radiation that produced the Image, then it could also have left a neutron radiation that caused some of the nitrogen in the linen to convert to C-14.

So, if viewed as it should be, the 1988 C-14 date testing actually confirms the Shroud’s authenticity.
 
Last edited:
But it might be relevant to the people that you teach. There are articles in the news and on the internet that try to say that Jesus never actually existed, or that His corpse did not vanish from the inside of a locked tomb, or that Christianity was actually a Roman invention. Our Lord’s miraculous Image on His burial cloth contradicts these insidious ideas.

The Image on the Shroud is a gift left to us by our Lord, Jesus Christ. To ignore it and to fail to employ its usefulness is a tragedy.
 
This shows:

[It is as if the corpse itself was the source of the image.]

 
With all due respect to the Catholic Church, it is being overly cautious. (How long did it take for the Church accept the evidence that the sun and not the earth is a the center of the solar system?) My feeling is that before signing off on the Shroud’s authenticity, the Church waited for a final confirmation by C-14 dating. When the British Museum misrepresented the results of that dating, the Church was left in a quandary and has been unable to proceed with its intended confirmation.

The 1978 STuRP investigation proved conclusively that the image on the Shroud is miraculous. The only reason that the STuRP scientists did not come right out and say that the Shroud was the burial cloth of Jesus was that, as scientists, they have very strict standards for reaching any conclusion. And in that regard, they did not have any test that would indicate the identity of the corpse that the Shroud wrapped. What they did say was that they found nothing in their intensive five day data gathering and subsequent two years of analysis that would preclude the Shroud from being the burial cloth of Jesus.

Sir, the Image on the Shroud is miraculous, and it will never be proven false. That the Catholic Church has not yet signed off on that reality does not change it.
 
Yet, there is much more recent compelling evidence than was known back then.
 
Last edited:
You have to remember that the British Museum did not have a duty to report anything to the public.They were commissioned by the owners of the Shroud to date it, which they did, and no doubt returned their full results to those who commissioned it. The paper published in Nature was a comprehensive account of the process, with the same calculations being carried out for the Tucson results as the other two universities, as I explained.

When assessing the range of results from an experiment statistically, the range is theoretically infinite, regardless of the highest and lowest result. The best one can do is to assess the probability of any particular result being the true one. This concentrates around the middle, while the outer ones are increasingly unlikely. The range quoted in Nature report, was two standard deviations away from 1325 AD, which is a standard way of giving the most likely probability. All the measurements, including the Tucson one of 540 BP, fall within three standard deviations of from the mean.

As for your query, I did address it. A date of 795 BP (Before Present) does not represent a calendar date. It is a straight mathematical conversion of a ratio of C14 to a number of years of decay, from 1950. (Not 1988 - for convenience and uniformity, all BP dates are ‘as from’ 1950). In order to convert it to a calendar date it must be referred to a calibration graph, such as the one used by OxCal, the online version. 795 BP is equivalent to about 1240 AD.

The British Museum did not misrepresent the results of the dating, and the STuRP investigation did not prove that the Shroud was miraculous,
 
Last edited:
Sir, I must point out that your dates are not adding up to a 130 year variance as reported by the Museum. You have noted a “540 BP” for Tucson and a “795 BP” for Oxford. That subtracts to a 255 year variance. The Museum certainly did not give the whole story about the dates obtained. I call that a “misrepresentation.” If you want to call it something else, that’s your privilege.

After five 24 hour days using state of the art equipment and two years of data analysis, the STuRP team was in agreement that they could not explain how the Image came to be on the Shroud. If it was a painting or primitive photograph, they would have found that out. Sir, I don’t know what your definition of the word “miracle” might be, but as for myself it is something normally impossible that is unexplainable by scientific investigation. That would be a human being walking on water, a dead person coming back to life after several says, or a corpse vanishing from a locked and guarded tomb.

Dead bodies do not leave images with perfect focus and expose on their burial sheets. Their is only one reported instance of that happening. It has been investigated quite thoroughly and found not to be the work of a human hand. That’s a miracle.
 
That’s understood, sir. But I must point out that you were not shy about injecting your opinion that there is a “real possibility that it is shown to be false at some point.” There is no such possibility.
Some of us look to this miracle to reinforce our faith. Not everyone needs this of course, but you have done a disservice to those who do.
 
“Sir, I must point out that your dates are not adding up to a 130 year variance as reported by the Museum. You have noted a “540 BP” for Tucson and a “795 BP” for Oxford. That subtracts to a 255 year variance. The Museum certainly did not give the whole story about the dates obtained. I call that a “misrepresentation.” If you want to call it something else, that’s your privilege.”

Thank you. I’m sorry you haven’t understood how radiocarbon dating works, but I don’t suppose it would make much difference if you did. Never mind then.

As for the rest, the STuRP team did some excellent investigations and achieved some interesting results. However, they are in places directly contradictory, and the leading scientists ended up disagreeing with each other profoundly as to how the image was formed. The picture has been made even more complicated by recent Italian researches which also throw doubt upon the STuRP findings.

There is nothing wrong in believing the Shroud to be a miracle. However, there is also nothing wrong in believing it to be medieval. In the unlikely event that it is ever proven authentic, no one would be more delighted than myself, but I’m afraid I think it more likely that proof will fall the other way.
 
Last edited:
Hugh_Farey said:
… . . the leading scientists (of STuRP) ended up disagreeing with each other profoundly as to how the image was formed.
Click to expand...
This statement is not true. The STuRP team was unanimous in their finding that they were unable to postulate a mechanism that would account for the formation of the Image. Now if you are referring to the late Dr. Walter McCrone, he was not an original member of the team and never in his lifetime actually laid his eyes on the Sacred Cloth. He formed his opinion on the basis of just a few samples from the STuRP team. His findings were all self-published, and he refused to attend STuRP conferences to defend them. No one these days takes his work on the Shroud seriously.
 
I have never seen a statement by any Bishop of Rome that states or even implies that there is a “real possibility that it is shown to be false at some point,” Every homily directed towards the Holy Shroud shows it the utmost reverence. Reading between the lines, one can see the Popes’ opinions that the Shroud is authentic. I understand that the Church is cautious on these matters, but in this case I feel that the Church has been unnecessarily upended by the misrepresentations made by the British Museum.
 
undead_rat said:
This statement is not true. The STuRP team was unanimous in their finding that they were unable to postulate a mechanism that would account for the formation of the Image.
Click to expand...
Perhaps your reading of the STuRP team’s material ends with their papers of the early 1980s, when a consensus of sorts was published. However subsequently John Jackson and Ray Rogers, in particular, came to entirely different conclusions about the image formation mechanism. Rogers said that Jackson “completely ignores some important laws of nature”, while Jackson said that for Rogers to “disregard a hypothesis solely on the grounds that it, or parts of it, may run against the current scientific paradigm” was “not science”. At least two of the STuRP team have decided that the Shroud is medieval.

I was not referring to Walter McCrone at all, as it happens, although he was, and is, hugely respected in the world of microscopy. It is certainly true that authenticists reject his work, but to claim that “no one these days takes his work seriously” is to ignore the large number of non-authenticists who think he was absolutely correct in all he saw. In some respects his work is beginning to be confirmed by recent researches by the Italian scientists, and they are convinced authenticists.

As for the radiocarbon dating statistics, it is quite possible that Mark Antonacci doesn’t understand them at all, but Bob Rucker certainly does, and could not disagree with anything I have written.
 
Last edited:
undead_rat said:
Some of us look to this miracle to reinforce our faith.
Click to expand...
I think this is a key element to the whole issue. Everyone looks to different things for inspiration. David Anders says that it is conceivable that there may come a time in a person’s life when they are so closely aligned with God that they no longer need even the Rosary. When the miraculous is no longer thought to be unusual or unexpected, our faith is outgrowing our humanity. The shroud is a prime example.

However, I also need to caution myself that to put too much emphasis on something which will inevitably decay and disintegrate can imply that our faith may be vulnerable. The shroud, after all, is not Jesus. But I’m sure I’m not saying anything here that is not already understood. 🙂
 
Had been on a trip to the Holy Land while renovations were being done on Christ’s tomb. While there in the Holy Sepulchre Church (where Christ’s tomb is located), I had left my camera on but it was hanging on my wrist. My hand was not on the camera. The camera kept flashing and taking photos. Yes, the photos were a bit odd, such as lovely photos of ceilings, floors, unknown people, etc. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:.

God is in charge.

wdtprs.com

Just Too Cool: Measuring instruments altered by electromagnetic disturbances when placed on Christ’s tomb

I just finished writing a brief piece about technology (for the Catholic Herald) and I ran across this from EWTN UK. You may have read that restoration work and scientific examination of the Edicule which encloses the Christ's empty tomp was undertaken in October. ... Astonishing discovery at Chr
wdtprs.com wdtprs.com
 
Last edited:
Hugh_Farey said:
As for the radiocarbon dating statistics, it is quite possible that Mark Antonacci doesn’t understand them at all, but Bob Rucker certainly does, and could not disagree with anything I have written.
Click to expand...
So Prof. Rucker collaborated an a recent book in which he disagrees with that book’s basic premise. And you can say this for certain without even speaking to him? I really don’t know what to say to that idea!

Sir, you maintain that I and Mr. Antonacci have a failure of understanding. I would say that the failure of understanding lies with those who refuse to accept the mountain of evidence that the Image on the Shroud is not a human product. Mr. Antonacci together with Prof. Rucker have provided a plausible explanation of the C-14 dating results that is consistent with the virtual avalanche scientific findings on the Shroud. Your so-called “radiocarbon dating statistics” fail in that regard.

(Given the prestige of the British Museum, it is not surprising that a scientist has been persuaded to pretend to go along with their pronouncements. People have careers to protect and families to feed. As for the unfortunate disagreement between Prof. Rogers and Jackson, we all know that Rogers bought a little too heavily into the now dis-proven “reweaving” hypothesis, and his related theory on the image formation was also incorrect. It is no wonder that Jackson took issue with it.)
 
  1. “I would say that the failure of understanding lies with those who refuse to accept the mountain of evidence that the Image on the Shroud is not a human product.” If you would care to be a bit more particular as to some of this mountain, I will be pleased to explain why I, for one do not find it as convincing as you do.
  2. “Mr. Antonacci together with Prof. Rucker have provided a plausible explanation of the C-14 dating results.” Well, no, obviously. Medieval C14 results are best explained by the object being tested actually being medieval. A miraculous explanation, even if true, is not a scientific one.
  3. “As for the unfortunate disagreement between Prof. Rogers and Jackson…” Ah, so my remark about the leading scientists of STuRP disagreeing with each other was true after all! Thank you.
  4. Who disproved the reweaving hypothesis?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top