Is the Turin Shroud a genuine artifact or a fabrication?

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@Vinnie

The problem here is the context of my statement which precludes incidental details in everyday life. There is debate over the shroud of Turin. This thread is a debate over the shroud of Turin. If this were a thread where we were legitimately debating the existence of your Honda or whether or not you actually owned one or whether or not your vehicle was actually a Honda, and not mistaken for another model, it’s not my job to solely prove you don’t own one or are mistaken. That is absurd.

If this were a thread devoted to debating whether my head is actually a giant turnip, I think it would be entirely appropriate to point out that having that debate is absurd and that the burden of proof is not symmetrical. Even in that thread.

[Terry_Sampson]

• Given a hypothesis that the image on the Shroud of Turin was “created” by Ancient Aliens and a hypothesis that the image was the intentional product of human hands sometime in the 14th century, the latter would seem to me to be a reasonable Null Hypothesis. The former hypothesis? Not so reasonable.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@Terry_Sampson

Given a hypothesis that the image on the Shroud of Turin was “created” by Ancient Aliens and a hypothesis that the image was the intentional product of human hands sometime in the 14th century, the latter would seem to me to be a reasonable Null Hypothesis.

Yes, that’s my view. In a Bayesian framework, a similar starting point could be expressed in the prior probabilities for the two possibilities. These are both common ways that actual debates are framed.

[Jay313 (Jay Johnson)]

@Terry_Sampson

the intentional product of human hands sometime in the 14th century, the latter would seem to me to be a reasonable Null Hypothesis.

Yeah. And I’ve yet to see an account of the Shroud that takes into account the spices (are they detectable?) and “strips” of linen in John 19:40 or John 11:44. Lazarus couldn’t have walked out of the tomb if he was wrapped in the manner of the Shroud of Turin. Horizontal strips makes way more sense.

[Terry_Sampson]

From the Shroud Website:

• A Brief Comparison between the Study of the Shroud and the Philosophical Inquiry on God, by Br. Luis Eduardo Rodríguez Alger, LC; Rome, June 15, 2016.
  • “Trying to summarize, we want to note that the scientific research on the
    Shroud has always started with an outstanding discovery: Secondo Pia’s
    photograph, the VP-8 image… This has led the scientific community towards
    investigating its origin or cause. After extensive examination and research, we know what the Shroud is not, but we still ignore what it is. We can only make assumptions. Probably the only way to know this, would be to witness the formation process of the image, which is, as we know, impossible due to “small” timing difficulties.”

[heymike3]

Another possibility Terry, it could be that whoever produced the image utilized a technology we are unaware of. To this day, the composition of Greek fire and the manner of its deployment is still a topic open to debate.

[Terry_Sampson]

@heymike3

Another possibility Terry, it could be that whoever produced the image utilized a technology we are unaware of.

• Are you suggesting that someone can say “The image on the Shroud has a human origin, I just can’t prove it?” Or are you saying that someone can say “The image on the Shroud has a human origin, but nobody knows how it got there?”

[heymike3]

Just saying it’s a possibility that there was technology then that we are not aware of. I saw some of the video you provided and heard something about this years ago from James Kennedy who believed it was genuine. It’s all incredibly fascinating. I just see the picture and it looks like a manmade rendering.

[Terry_Sampson]

@Jay313

I’ve yet to see an account of the Shroud that takes into account the spices (are they detectable?)

• Although I admit to being a Shroud fan, I readily confess that I am not an authority on it’s details. “Detectable spices” has not been at the top of details that I am familiar with. I have read that Ian Wilson reported long ago, that there was debate over whether or not the body of Jesus was washed before closing the tomb.
• When I enter the word spices in the Shroud Website search engine, I get the following list of 36 references, to wit: 36 total results for spices. I have briefly scanned two of the references and beg off giving my opinions; although I wouldn’t mind following a private thread discussion of any reference or more in the list that I’ve linked to above.
• I do believe, however, that detectable spices associated with the Shroud have been reported.

@Jay313

I’ve yet to see an account of the Shroud that takes into account the … “strips” of linen in John 19:40 or John 11:44. Lazarus couldn’t have walked out of the tomb if he was wrapped in the manner of the Shroud of Turin. Horizontal strips makes way more sense.

• A Shroud Website query for “othonia” yielded 28 total results for othonia. [“Othonia” is the Greek word for linen bandages or wrappings.]
• A number of the “references” may be skipped because they link to Othonia an international organization. The first reference,
  however, is The Identification and the Disposition of the Funerary Linens of Jesus’ Burial According to the Data of the Fourth Gospel by Rev. Andre Feuillet, an 11-page tour of the various uses of Greek words for funerary linens.

[Vinnie]

I don’t think we can legitimately have that debate. If people did I wouldn’t participate in that thread. Pushing the burden of proof to another in a specific debate, on the very idea in question and all relevant and related assumptions/premises that aren’t agreed on by all, is to be avoided

Do you think the shroud of Turin is innocent until proven guilty? Have your studies shown you it can only have been made by supernatural magic? This is the gap that proves a miracle? Or at least it’s a gap so wide since it’s origin is so supernaturally obvious the onus is solely on those who think the shroud is fake to demonstrate such?

Do you have anything to add on the shroud of Turin from a scientific standpoint? Or are you simply going to defend the idea of presumption in limited cases to which no one disagrees with as far as I can see.

Vinnie

[Terry_Sampson]

• Map of both sides of the Shroud of Turin:

• The Shroud is sheet of linen about 4.4 m [ long and 1.1 m wide, in which the front and back body images of a man are visible.
• The Authentication of the Turin Shroud: An Issue in Archaeological Epistemology
  • by William Meacham - Archaeologist, CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY - Vol. 24 - N° 3 - (June 1983), Published by the University of Chicago Press
  • "There can be no doubt that early forgers could not have attained such precision and that it was unnecessary in any case for the simple production of a bloodstained cloth for a gullible public.
  • “There are numerous other difficulties with this hypothesis: (1) The major demand for relics came after the state establishment of Christianity, by which time crucifixion had been abolished. (2) Stains, dyes, oils, or other materials likely to have been used by early forgers in an attempt to imprint the cloth are completely lacking on the Shroud. (3) The victim appears to have been Jewish, with the correct burial posture, chin band tied and eyes covered, yet the legs were not broken as was the practice in Palestine. (4) A successful imprint of Christ’s likeness made in this era would have been trumpeted as another great relic “come to light.” (5) An image of the nude and unwashed body of Christ would have been considered offensive, lessening or destroying its economic and ceremonial value. Based on the already shaky premise that forgers accidentally and spectacularly succeeded in their task, this hypothesis is hopelessly fraught with difficulties. It can be unequivocally rejected, and with it any possibility that the Shroud is the product of a forgery attempt. As Donald Lynn (quoted in Rinaldi 1979:14) of STURP concluded, ‘it would be miraculous if it were a forgery.’”
• After the announcement of the Shroud’s “restoration” earlier in the year, a group of scientists and Shroud scholars joins together in an internet group, Yahoo ShroudScience, to discuss the scientific issues surrounding the Shroud. In 2005, the group publishes a jointly authored compilation of known scientific facts about the Shroud’s image, titled, “Evidences for Testing Hypotheses About the Body Image Formation of the Turin Shroud."
• January 20, 2005: A peer reviewed scientific paper by Raymond N. Rogers, retired Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is published in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Volume 425, Issues 1-2, Pages 189-194. Titled “Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin,” the paper concludes: “As unlikely as it seems, the sample used to test the age of the Shroud of Turin in 1988 was taken from a rewoven area of the Shroud. Pyrolysis-mass spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the Shroud.”
  • Rogers’ paper is extremely important as it provides a credible scientific argument for redating the cloth to determine its actual age, and is widely reported in the media, but to a far lesser extent than the coverage given to the 1988 c-14 dating that declared the cloth a “medieval fake.” Almost immediately, Shroud scholars and skeptics alike begin debating, agreeing and disagreeing with Rogers and each other.*
• How did the Turin Shroud get its image? Published 19 June 2015

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@Vinnie

don’t think we can legitimately have that debate. If people did I wouldn’t participate in that thread. Pushing the burden of proof to another in a specific debate, on the very idea in question and all relevant and related assumptions/premises that aren’t agreed on by all, is to be avoided

Why? Scientists conduct debates like that literally every day. In fact, all scientific debates are structured that way, explicitly or implicitly. If particle physicists are looking at scattering data and they see a small bump at some energy, they do not argue, ‘Well, the probability of a statistical fluctuation this large at precisely this point is only 10%, while the probability of getting a bump here is much higher than that if there’s a new particle with this specific mass, so we must have discovered a new particle.’ They don’t argue that way because they know there are far more statistical fluctuations than there are new particles.

It’s not just in science, either. If a murder has been committed and you know the murderer has type B negative blood, you can’t convict someone you picked up at random just because he has that blood type, even though only 2% of the population does. (Well, you shouldn’t – there’s a reason this is known as the prosecutor’s fallacy.) There are far more people with B negative blood type than people who committed this murder. (It’s even worse if you pick up people at random and then charge the first one who happens to have the right blood type, which is pretty nearly what’s going on here, given all of the other claimed relics that are out there.)

This doesn’t mean that assessments of prior probability shouldn’t be debated or that presumptions shouldn’t be challenged. What I’m saying is that your assertion that the prior has to be treated as identical for ‘Shroud real’ and ‘Shroud fake’ is unjustified. In other words, it’s precisely your assumption that I’m challenging, and you’re the one trying to dismiss the challenge as illegitimate by arguing, what exactly?

@Vinnie

Do you think the shroud of Turin is innocent until proven guilty?

I think, given the much larger number of fake relics associated with Jesus (something that is agreed by all parties, I think), the importance of this one to the early church if it were real, and the complete silence about its existence from that period, that the prior probability of the Shroud really being the burial cloth of Jesus is very low. As a result, strong evidence should be required before concluding that the Shroud is likely real.

@Vinnie

Do you have anything to add on the shroud of Turin from a scientific standpoint?

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. From a scientific standpoint, attempting to draw inferences based on evidence without considering prior probabilities is methodologically unsound.

[Terry_Sampson]

@glipsnort

As a result, strong evidence should be required before concluding that the Shroud is likely real.

• Indeed!
• Because you and I are not debating anything and because I suspect that I have a whole lot more time than you to post in this thread, I won’t hope for–much less expect–more than what you’ve said already. But here are a couple of comments:
  • Earlier, @pevaquark asked for clarification of Shroudies’ claim. Whether or not I satisfied his curiosity, I’d say the claim is that “the Shroud of Turin” is Jesus’ burial shroud". You think the probability that it is is very low; I think it’s very, very high. But I’m sure that you and I agree that the probability of proving that the cloth was somebody’s burial shroud at one time is 0. As a general rule, keeping burial shrouds just is not commonly done.
• Because you recognize that an inability to prove that the Turin Shroud is Jesus’ burial shroud does not prove that it has never been anybody’s burial shroud, there’s an opportunity to discuss the Nay-sayers’ evidence that "the Shroud has never been “a used burial shroud”.
• But a “knee-jerk” acceptance of (1) a refuted 14th century Bishop’s rejection of the Shroud’s authenticity, (2) a strong repudiation of Walter McCrone’s analysis, and (3) the case against the 1988 Team’s radiocarbon testing seems to rule out their use as “evidence” for the Shroud’s man-made fabrication. That acceptance will, however, stop further civil discussion.