Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn celebrates Mass at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin in 2000, the last time the Shroud of Turin was on public display. (CNS)
Posted on 10/06/2009 1:55:37 PM PDT by NYer
That’s right, an Italian scientist whose work was funded by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics has undertaken some experiments that he claims “prove” the Shroud of Turin isn’t really the burial cloth of Jesus, but rather a fraud created in medieval times.
What is the conclusive research that the scientist has conducted, that allegedly refutes the substantial body of scientific findings that suggest the cloth was indeed wrapped around the body of Jesus following his crucifixion?
According to this Reuters article, it consists of nothing more than the fact that the scientist has managed to come up with a complicated technique to create an image on a linen cloth that looks like the one on the Shroud. He hasn’t demonstrated, in any way, that this technique is in fact the one that actually created the image on the Shroud — merely that you can create a similar image using his procedures.
Obviously it remains altogether possible that the actual image on the Shroud was created in a quite different way, by coming into to contact with the battered and broken face and body of Christ as he lay in his tomb in the hours following his brutal torture and subsequent execution by crucifixion.
But for some reason, this Italian scientist (and, one assumes, the religious disbelievers who paid for his research) has proffered this research as compelling evidence of the Shroud’s inauthenticity.
The Church, for its part, has always adhered to a far more judicious approach to assessing whether the Shroud is indeed Christ’s burial cloth. Since there is no authoritative tradition attesting to that fact, the Church stresses this is not an article of faith that any Catholic is required to believe.
Moreover, Church authorities continue to make the Shroud available to scientists in order to assess its possible authenticity with the best means available. To date, those tests have yielded conflicting results. But some of the data strongly points in the direction of a supernatural explanation for the generation of the image of Christ on the cloth. Other evidence, such as the fact that the weave of the Shroud is consistent not with medieval weavers but rather with the techniques employed in the Holy Land in the first century, supports the conclusion that the cloth was indeed created in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus.
In any event, as the Reuters article notes, the Church insists that the most important lesson to take away from any contemplation of the bruised countenance and broken body that is represented on the Shroud of Turin is this one: That whether or not the Shroud is the actual burial cloth of Jesus, it serves as a powerful reminder of the brutal suffering and the cruel death that Our Lord endured in Jerusalem at the end of his earthly life, as a loving sacrifice for the salvation of all humanity.
Speaking during a May 1998 visit to the Shroud in Turin, Pope John Paul II stressed the Church does not regard the Shroud’s authenticity as a matter of Christian faith. “As it is not a matter of faith, the Church has no specific competence to pronounce itself on these questions,” he said. “It entrusts the task of research to scientists, to arrive at appropriate answers for questions related to this cloth.”
Emphasized John Paul, “What really counts for believers is that the holy shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.”
There were several threads posted yesterday, on this topic. I am posting this one today which provides some insight into how and who funded the research.
There have been several ‘alternative’ images created over the years, and none have come close to duplicating the multitude of features the shroud has. This ointment/pigment type rub off has been tried and failed before. It will be interesting to see how well this latest attempt comes out.
This fits in with Satan’s strategy, which is to try and convince people that he does not exist, and to cast doubt on the Divinity of Christ, i.e., “Jesus was a good man and a good teacher but NOT the Son of God”.
And millions upon millions will swallow that poison with a smile.
What really proves it to me, is the notion that anyone would conceive of such a fraud with such characteristics in the first place.
One would have to:
a) Be hip to the phenomenon of a negative image, created as in a camera photo, and
b) Assume that the public would understand it, and be dazzled by it as proof of some miracle.
And then to painstakingly devise a method in which to emblazon said image in a manner completely alien to any manner of art or chemistry or what-have-you would be simply mind-boggling overkill. One would have merely needed to reproduce a vague positive image with some blood spots in the appropriate place in order to cause a stir on the order of a hoax. But this level of complexity, detail, and technique utterly inconceivable to some schmoe in his Medieval art studio - calling this a hoax is utter hilarity.
And there is there question: why would a medieval forger WANT to produce a negative?
It is fascinating to me that no one has, up to now, been able to duplicate the shroud. The shroud is an interesting story whether "real" or "fake". It is either Christ's burial shroud, or one of the cleverest hoaxes of all time. Either way, it gets my attention.
Bingo, see my post at 6
Obviously some one had access to a time machine :-)
The precursur question to that is did they even have the conceptual knowledge of what a negative was in that era?
In order to see most of the detail, you would have to see the shroud in its negative image via photography. I highly doubt that the shroud was that much more detailed when it was first seen. It probably looked a little bit more defined back in the day, however to truly see it in detail it must be viewed as a negative image.
So how do they explain that.
Honestly, I do not hang my faith on a cloth that shows the possible image of our Lord. I do think that the shroud is real, but if it were not to be, I would still believe anyway.
This is just the atheists and agnostics trying to shake our faith as usual.
Nice try though(not really).
He's been at it since the Garden of Eden ... why stop now ;-)
And millions upon millions will swallow that poison with a smile.
The very same ones for whom our Lord died on the cross uttering the words: "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".
The technology did not exist in the Middle Ages to perpetrate such a fraud.
The 'authentic' shroud also contains pollen and images from plants that are indigenous to that part of the world where Jesus died and was buried. Got to wonder how the forgers reproduced those elements ;-)
If there were no God, there could be no atheists.
Fact is, of course, these guys have not an inkling of how the people of the middle ages saw the world. An automotive engineer with access to a time machine could have used the resources of a blacksmith shop of the time to produce a working automobile. But it would have seemed like magic, almost, to the smithies he hired to do the work. Of course, one they got the basic ideas down, they would have thrown themselves into the work and maybe produced better stuff than he could. Skilled craftsmen raftsmen have magic in their hands and they would know the limits of the material they had better than he.
I assume by the term “these guys” you are referring to the ones claiming to have successfully duplicated the shroud. In essence I would agree with your assessment. If you are talking about the mystery craftman who ‘created’ the shroud, I would be skeptical. This is a one of a kind artifact (even if middle age) and there should be similar artwork that paralled it recorded in history somewhere.
Well, of course. “Art” always came out of a shop, and it was always for a public purpose and almost always it was like something else. If someone did come up with something new, it would quickly have imitators. I can’t think how it would enter the mind of some medieval artisan to fabricate something like the shroud. And for whom?
I became Christian before I knew of the Shroud of Turin. It’s genuineness has no bearing on my faith. I’ve traveled Europe extensively, mostly in Bavaria and Austria, where I saw score of containers allegedly holding bones or organs from hundreds of saints. The authenticity of those artifacts don’t have any bearing on my faith either. However I know those whose faith could be shaken by accusations, baseless though they may be.
If the Shroud is genuine, the image could have appeared miraculously at any time, whether the cloth dates back 800 years, 80 years, or even 8000 years.
However putting so much effort into trying to disprove this is a LOT like the Titanic guy trying to show how Jesus was buried next to the other Mary and had kids with her. These guys are only after the money. The only relation this “investigation” has to Jesus is 1 Timothy 6:10; The love of money is the root of all evil.
Yes, these guys trying to make money by scandalizing any aspect of religion they can, are consumed by none other than the root of all evil.
The Roman Catholic Church makes how much money by promoting this outrageous fraud and others like it? So they slander decent atheists.
The Roman Catholic Church stops short of actually endorsing it. Why?
How much does the Church collect by exploiting a superstition they won't even officially endorse?
Follow the real money, and stop slandering "debunkers" just because they get paid for their work.
Let’s start by begging the question, shall we? It is mere “superstition,” or bigotry to assume that your personal experience is the sole determinant of what is true. That is your faith, and you hold to it as tenaciously as the most ardent religious person. As to the shroud: it IS real. We just can’t be sure when or how it came to be, or what it truly signifies.
It's not for unbelievers to disprove the shroud, it's for believers to prove it. And it's not even an article of faith of your religion, so you don't have that excuse either.
You prove it. Not just that it "could" be true either.
All you have is the usual blowing of smoke.
I’m not making any claims at all here. I just note the existence of the Shroud, which has mysterious origin and is unique among religious relics in inviting atheists to disprove it. Don’t forget, also, it was pretty much ignored until about 1900 when someone discovered that the image was a negative. Until the invention of photography, no one was even aware such things existed, and to find it on a piece of cloth. God’s little joke on his unbelieving critters? Atheists seldom have a sense of humor, and a sneer is not really humorous.
It's absurd because there is no evidence.
And what we have isn't evidence, because the whole thing is absurd.
Nice try.
What we have is an image corresponding to a photographic negative (unknown in medieval times) of a dead, crucified body. It contains traces of various pollens from Jerusalem and environs, human blood, where the serum has separated (as seen in post-mortem bleeding), linen cloth treated in a way that is consistent with the way linen was treated at the time of Jesus (but not after the 12th century), traces of travertine aragonite (found near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem) on the Shroud; and the body image on the Shroud does not correlate with the presence of the iron oxide (component of the red ochre ostensibly used to form the image); further, no discernible traces of manganese, nickel, or cobalt were found on the shroud, despite the fact that the red ochre (from medieval or older sources) would contain these elements in concentrations of greater than 1%. Furthermore, visible, IR, and UV-Visible reflectance spectroscopy on the Shroud show a general band with no specific peaks; controls of hematite (Fe2O3 on linen, show strong absorption from 350-550 nm and an abrupt increase in reflectance between 550-560 nm, which was NOT seen on the Shroud. By contrast, traces of old acid methemoglobin (breakdown product of hemeglobin) were found on the Shroud in the bloodstained areas.
All of these are *inconsistent* with a medieval hoax, and indicative of the Shroud as a genuine image of a crucified man, formed by mechanisms unknown.
Before accusing people of blowing smoke, and demanding "proof" it is geniune, you might want to back up a bit.
The only reason atheists up and down is that you have jumped to the conclusion that the image is either a fake or "supernatural". This is exacerbated by the fact that the Church has identified the image with Jesus -- given the fame of Christ, that's no surprise: and it is probably the only thing which has kept the cloth preserved since its discovery. But I bet if the image were purportedly of Septimus the Centurion, instead of Jesus the Nazarene, you wouldn't be nearly so eager to discredit it.
Why not work on studying the thing to find they physical mechanism by which the image was formed, taking care to be able to replicate the physical, chemical, and spectrographic characteristics of the object actually in hand...? This isn't "In Search Of..." where one has legends of a myth, but no evidence available, so that any "plausible" explanation wins by default. This is one of those rare cases where something mysterious is right there where it *can* be physically examined, by all the methods and apparatus of modern science. Why not take the opportunity to do so, and see what the physical results themselves *say*?
Finally, online translators render the text on your homepage as the following:
"I would like to die rather than live under free Islam"
It sounds from your comments that you have atheist leanings. How about going over to Afghanistan in person to perform missionary work, spreading the good news that there is no Allah, so the Taliban can give up their erstwhile fusion of Church and State?
Cheers!
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