Furstentum Liechtenstein wrote:Philip wrote:So just what is THAT supposed to mean???!!!
It means that the Shroud is nothing more than a religious icon. It is a genuine religious icon but is no more a portrait of Jesus than Eastern Orthodox iconography accurately portray the various saints. Moreover, the Shroud doesn't square with Isaiah's revelation of Jesus being a physically nondescript man, not to mention that the Shroud is usually dated to the Middle Ages.
People willingly believe in all manner of foolishness: the Loch Ness & other submarine monsters, sasquatch, the Bermuda Triangle, palmistry, horoscope, flying saucers piloted by little green men. The list is endless!
Philip wrote:And there are many important reasons to consider it may likely be authentic.
Yeah, right. There is a rack full of magazines at a newstand near my place devoted to horoscope. Maybe I'm wrong about astrology as well...
Philip wrote:...making comments like that makes you come off like the idiots on so many atheist forums - as they are constantly striving to be seen as cynically clever and funny, with relentless sarcasm over just about every topic related to Christianity - and often concerning topics that they are woefully ignorant about.
If I were not a Christian, I would say that atheist forums are for dummies. Since I
am a Christian, I'll say that the atheist forums I've visited are filled with filthy talk, bad spelling and poor grammar. People who don't seem to have much education congregate there.
I think there is a type of personality that
needs mystery or magic...I don't understand why. Both unbelievers and those who believe in God can be prone to such unsubstantiated beliefs.
So...listen, if you
want to believe that the Shroud is the real thing, go ahead. As for me, the Shroud is in the same category as Tongues, being
slain in the Spirit, KJV Onlyism and so on.
FL
Furstentum, its obvious that you either haven't studied the shroud at all or you have chosen to ignore all the evidence that's been presented on this forum and other forums like Stephen Jones forum.
Stephen is not only not Catholic but hes a Calvinist and he believes that the shroud is authentic.
Now if you have an emotional problem with the shroud's authenticity then why not say it. No one is forcing you to believe in it but at the same time to ignore all the evidences that point to its authenticity isn't very realistic. If the shroud is the real McCoy, wishing it not to be isn't going to change that.
You also claimed that the shroud is usually dated to the middle ages. This usually comes from atheists who want to ignore the massive amounts of evidences against a middle age date.
The only evidence that gioves it a medieval date is the 1988 c14 test which has been invalidated by AGNOSTIC thermal chemist ray rogers in his peer reviewed chemical analysis thermochimica acta in which rogers clearly found cotton interwoven with regular shroud material as well as madder dye. Rogers took sticky tape samples from all the other areas of the shroud including the image areas and found no cotton or madder dye. He also did a vanillin test that dated the shroud to between 1300 and 3000 years old.
http://www.shroud.it/ROGERS-3.PDF
and I found out recently from digging around that Ray rogers work was confirmed by 9 other scientists including microscopist John L Brown formerly of Georgia tech who Rogers sent some of his samples to to confirm his findings
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/brown1.pdf
and you also have the head of the oxford lab from the 1988 c14 dating Christopher Ramsey saying this.
http://www.innoval.com/C14/
There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow, and so further research is certainly needed. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information. –Christopher Ramsey, head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit which participated in the 1988 Carbon 14 Dating of the Shroud. (Mar 2008)
and the scientists at los Alamos labs also confirmed Rogers findings
[T]he [1988 carbon 14] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case. –Robert Villarreal, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist who headed a team of nine scientists at LANL who examined material from the carbon 14 sampling region. (Aug 2008
Then you have to deal with the Hungarian pray codex of 1190 that is most likely copied from an even earlier original from 70 to 100 years earlier which clearly shows the L shaped poker holes, the 3way herringbone weave and the unique folding of Christs arms just as the shroud does.
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/20 ... cript.html
Then you have to deal with the sudarium of oveido .
when Overlaid on top of the head image of the shroud the sudarium has a total of 125 congruent matching points in the blood stains with the shroud which clearly shows us that the sudarium and shroud were on the same body within close time intervals , which also then means that the shroud is at least as old as the shroud, and the history of the sudarium is undisputed by any historians and it dates back to 614ad where it was said to be hidden in the cave of saint mark.
https://www.shroud.com/guscin.htm
Next we have the Christ pantocrator of the early 6th century
maybe u can describe to me how the Christ pantocrator of 526ad has about 250 congruent matching points with the shroud? This cant rationally be called a coincidence, and you cant say that the shroud was copied later from the Christ pantocrator because the shroud is the only one that matches different aspects of the Christ pantocrator and other moasaics and roman coins of the 7th and 8th centuries that had Christ depicted on them.
https://www.shroud.com/bsts4704.htm
The better Byzantine coins showing the head of Jesus have between 140 and 185 points of congruence, and the best icon, the Christ Pantocrator from St. Catherine's Monastery , has about 250 points of congruence. Again we have done control studies with both actual faces and various unrelated art works, and found from about 10 to 35 points of congruence to be typical, which is statistically and forensically insignificant.
so again 10 to 35 is the norma and insignificant yet these icons here have way too many matches with the shroud to just be dismissed away.
Then you have the mandylion which if it shown to be the shroud takes us all the way back to the time of Christ and attributed to Christ himself.
But is there any evidence that says the mandylion is in fact the shroud?
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/20 ... turin.html
The mandylion's folding pattern is described as a tetradiplon which means doubled 4 times and no where is tetradiplon used in all of ancient koine greek literature but to describe the mandylion.
In 1978 Physicist John Jackson through his light raking experiment fold major fold lines that correspond to the tetradiplon folding pattern used to describe the mandylion. This is strong evidence that the mandylion is in fact the shroud of turin.
If you want to try to explain away all of this please be my guess. Now if you want to say based on your emotional feelings that you don't feel its authentic then that is certainly your free will choice, but there is almost no evidence that it is from the medieval ages or that its a forgery. No 21st century scientist can replicate it. This is a fact
