Evidence for God from Science

NUCLEAR MEDICINE AND ITS RELEVANCE
TO THE SHROUD OF TURIN
August D. Accetta MD, Kenneth Lyons MD, John Jackson PhD.
Hypothesis: If indeed a corpse created the image we see on the Shroud, then the source for the
energy received by the cloth may be from the molecular bond energy and/or nuclear forces within
the body in some way interacting with the cloth. The closest practical tool we have to study this
today is nuclear medicine.
Keywords: STURP: Shroud of Turin Research Project, Tc-99m MDP: Technesium-99 metastable
methylene diphosphate, V-P-8: Vertical projection photodensitometer.
Introduction: The Turin Shroud bears an image of an apparent crucified man, chemically the
result of some dehydrative, oxidative, and subsequent carbonyl conjugative process of cellulose,
the origin of which is heretofore enigmatic.
1
Many properties of the Shroud are however under-stood quite well. For example, it is clearly understood through the work of STURP and others
that the Shroud did in fact wrap someone at some point in time and that it is not the product of
some medieval artist.
2
The Shroud image suggests quite strongly the presence of many skeletal details e.g. carpal and
metacarpal bones, some 22 teeth, eye sockets, left femur, left and possibly right thumbs flexed
under the palms of the hands, as well as soft tissue and soft tissue injuries; all presumably originat-ing from some form of radiation emitted from the body enshrouded.
3
No scientific human model has been satisfactorily utilized to offer elucidation of the origin of this
quality an image. Many have postulated image formation theories e.g. Pellicori-Germans “latent
image” and Jackson et al direct contact experiments which he concluded had quite negative
results and have effectively been ruled out.
4
Others have suggested diffusion.
5
Schwalbe and
Rojers however, failed in the properties not limited to sharpness and clarity of the image.
6
Later
researchers such as Giles Carter and Thaddeus Trenn have studied radiation biology in a theoreti-cal framework and have achieved promising results in terms of image superficiality and clarity.
7
The human radiation model seems to offer the greatest application to the Shroud image thus far.

PaulSacramento wrote:Facinating stuff, truly.
I must say that the more I read up on this the more I am becoming a believer.
Can I ask something?
Is there a detailed website to pdf or anything that I can get that shows the skeptics issues and what they are using to show that it is a fake and how these viewes and "evidence" have been shown to be false?
In other words, a detailed summary of answers to the critics?

bippy123 wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:Facinating stuff, truly.
I must say that the more I read up on this the more I am becoming a believer.
Can I ask something?
Is there a detailed website to pdf or anything that I can get that shows the skeptics issues and what they are using to show that it is a fake and how these viewes and "evidence" have been shown to be false?
In other words, a detailed summary of answers to the critics?

PaulSacramento wrote:Truly Bippy, this is facinating stuff.
Is there any reading that I can download or buy to get all this info in one place?
I would love to have this to read and do further research on.
I thank you deeply for all this info you are passing on.

Icthus wrote:I must admit, Blippy, I was very skeptical of the Shroud before I discovered this thread a while back and decided to look into it a little more. At first, when I heard claims that the Shroud of Turin was purported to have been Jesus' burial cloth, I mostly just laughed it off as obviously false. I suppose I was, though Christian, strongly predisposed to doubt that anything miraculous could be found in the twenty-first century. I dismissed the Shroud without looking at any of the evidence or even really considering the possibility that it could be authentic. The furthest I bothered to study it was reading a characteristically poorly researched article on Cracked.com (comedy site), and though I'm loathe to admit it, I ate up the tired arguments it brought up as if they were lethal evidence against it. Things have changed, however, and though I'm not yet a firm believer in the Shroud (which I won't deny owes mostly to a lingering bias), looking at the evidence has helped strengthen my faith.

Of course, I'm also a sucker for peer-reviewed evidence and long lists of credentials. The scholar in me can't help but squee like an insane fangirl at the dropping of a good source or a highly respected name. I appreciate the work you've gone through, and I hope that more people stop being like me and actually take a look at the evidence before making conclusions about it.

Bippy wrote: "As soon as I got hold of the first few peer reviewed articles, the curiousity started growing and it became almost an obbsession with me."

Philip wrote:

Bippy wrote: "As soon as I got hold of the first few peer reviewed articles, the curiousity started growing and it became almost an obbsession with me."

Bippy...ALMOST an obsession???!!!

Seriously, though, I wish all Christians had your passion for seeking the truth of things. Many just seem to think that God called us to a BLIND faith, as if He didn't leave an unfathomable abundance of His fingerprints all over this world and universe. And one just has to be determined to ignore and deny these and their own sense of Him, to not see evidences of both Him and His majesty.

"Yet He did not leave Himself without witness..." (Acts 14:17);

"Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:19-20)

Bippy wrote: "Amen to that my friend. It looks like you got the bug also."

PaulSacramento wrote:Bippy,
Thanks for all those links

Bippy, indeed I have! But what frustrates me is that most Christians have a total lack of understanding of the importance and power of knowing how God can work in an unbeliever's mind and heart through exposure to apologetics. And not just unbelievers - just think of how apologetics can build one's faith and can always refocus you when doubts creep in - and it WILL, and to all of us, from time to time.

Unfortunately, so often other Christians think of apologetics as being just intellectual pursuits for Christian geeks. Well, call me a geek! It was through studying apologetics materials that I first came to understand that the Bible (in the original autographs) was God's inerrant message to man, and also that the scriptures that have come down to us through history have provided reasons for having an extremely high confidence in what those originals included. That changed EVERYTHING for me. That meant instead of having doubts about scripture, that I needed to examine myself in light of it - a real game changer, that was!

Next, what about any possible pointers from the shroud to Jesus’ resurrection? Actually,
there are a few interesting implications regarding this possibility. First, the body wrapped in the
shroud apparently did not decompose. Numerous medical investigators have argued that the man
is dead, due to several indicators like the presence of rigor mortis. Yet, scientific testing has not
discovered any evidence of decomposition on the cloth. The implications here seem clear: the
absence of bodily decomposition means that the body was not in contact with the cloth for a
prolonged period of time.

In a Middle Eastern environment in Jesus’ time, a significant amount of bodily
decomposition would occur even after four days (see Jn. 11:39). So the body was separated from the material after a
comparatively short period of time.36

As Robert Bucklin states, “None of the research done on
the Shroud image has produced any evidence that there has been cellular changes such as might
be expected as the result of a long postmortem interval.”
37[/b

The second intriguing implication concerns the body’s removal from the cloth. We just
noted that the lack of decomposition indicates that the body did not remain in the cloth very long.
However, the body does not appear to have been moved by conventional means, either, due to
the condition of the bloodstains, which are anatomically correct, including precisely outlined
borders, with blood clots intact. If the cloth had been pulled away from the body, the blood clots
would have smeared or broken.
38

Third, the nature of the image on the shroud now comes prominently into focus. While it
may be said that no image-creating technique has been clearly established, the leading candidate
still seems to be that it is most similar to some kind of radiation. In a little-publicized survey by
Robert Wilcox
39
of 26 of the 1978 scientific investigators, most did not give a specific answer
concerning the cause of the image. Of the seven who did, five said that they thought it fit into the
category of radiation.40

41
This and other tantalizing suggestions over the years add to the
possibility of radiation being the best suggestion concerning the cause of the shroud image.
42
Some would go a step further and relate such a scorch to the resurrection of Jesus, as
well, although comparatively few have published these views. Robert Bucklin is an exception.
He said, “a few of us have openly expressed our opinions that there is support for the resurrection
in the things we see on the Shroud of Turin.”
43
Elaborating, Bucklin added, “When this medical
information is combined with the physical, chemical, and historical facts, there is strong evidence
for Jesus’ resurrection.”

This speaks for itself. Habermas is so cool