Evidence for God from Science

Again it is Gary Habermas and Kenneth Stevenson (our baptist contingent) that provide the bulk of the answers to the burial cloth objections that skeptics have with a special thanks to Stephen E Jones (you guys should visit his site as he has been debating teh shroud for a very long time) for providing the links from from Habermas's and Stevensons collaboration in their book "Verdict on the shroud:Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ". I would HIGHLY recommend this book .

1/05/2007

"Jewish Burial Customs. The first point of comparison is the cloth itself. The gospels say that Jesus was
buried in a cloth (or cloths); the Shroud of Turin appears to be a burial cloth which medical experts say once
held a dead body. The image reveals a man lying on his back with his feet close together. His elbows
protrude from his sides and his hands are crossed over the pelvic area. We can ascertain that the linen sheet
was wound lengthwise up the front and down the back of the corpse. ... Is this kind of burial compatible with
the New Testament reports? It is at least compatible with Jewish customs as we know them from extrabiblical
sources. Recent archaeological excavations at the Qumran community found that the Essenes buried their
dead in the way represented on the Shroud. Several skeletons were found lying on their backs, faces
pointing upward, elbows bent outward, and their hands covering the pelvic region. The protruding elbows
rule out an Egyptian-type mummified burial. Also very instructive is the Code of Jewish Law, which
discusses burial procedures in its `Laws of Mourning.' It instructs that a person executed by the
government was to be buried in a single sheet. This is another parallel with the Shroud." (Stevenson, K.E.
& Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ,"
Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, p.46. Emphasis original)

1/05/2007
"Although the New Testament's description of typical first-century Jewish burial customs is not overly
detailed, it does give the general features. The body was washed (Acts 9:37) and the hands and feet were
bound (John 11:44). A cloth handkerchief (Greek, sudarion) was placed `around' the face (John 11:44;
20:7). The body was then wrapped in clean linen, often mixed with spices (John 19:39-40), and laid in the
tomb or grave. The Code of Jewish Law adds that the Jews usually shaved the head and beard completely
and cut the fingernails before burial. However, the gospels tell us that Jesus' burial was incomplete. Because
the Sabbath was about to begin, he was removed from the cross and laid in the tomb rather hurriedly. This is
why the women returned to the tomb on Sunday morning. They had prepared spices and ointments for
Jesus' body, and they went to the tomb to apply them (Luke 23:54-56). It is not often noticed why the women
went to the tomb. They certainly did not expect Jesus to rise (Luke 24:3-4; John 20:12-15). Rather they came
in order to finish anointing Jesus' body with the prepared spices (Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1). They were worried
about who would help them to move the stone from the entrance of the tomb so that they could finish the
job begun before the Sabbath (Mark 16:3)." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud:
Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.46-47)

1/05/2007
"McDowell and some others detect a problem in John's word to describe the `binding' of the body.
[McDowell, J. & Stewart, D., "Answers to Tough Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith," Here's
Life: San Bernardino CA, 1980, pp.165-166] They suggest that Jesus' body was wrapped tightly like an
Egyptian mummy, a procedure which would not have yielded an image such as the one on the Shroud.
However, the mummy idea largely rests on variant readings in the extant manuscripts of John's Gospel. One
late manuscript uses a verb in 19:40 which suggests a tight binding of the body. The accepted verb,
however, is edesan; a verb which means to `wrap' or `fold' and which is quite compatible with the
synoptic verbs. The idea that Jesus was tightly bound like a mummy is also incompatible with John's earlier
description of the way Lazarus emerged from the tomb after Jesus raised him from the dead (John 11:44).
Lazarus, who was buried according to Jewish custom, was able to proceed from the tomb by his own power,
although he was impaired and had to be `unbound.' He had his hands and feet bound, as was the custom,
but he was not completely wrapped up. [Wuenschel, E.A. "The Shroud of Turin and the Burial of Christ,"
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vols. 7 & 8, 1945 & 1946] In other words, the type of wrapping depicted in the
Shroud is compatible with Jewish burial technique. In particular, the burial methods depicted both in the
Essene cemetery and described in the Code of Jewish Law favor the Shroud. Along with the Lazarus
account, these sources convince us that the type of wrapping demanded by the Shroud was at least
practiced in Israel in Jesus' time, and may even have been the most popular practice. At any rate, it cannot
be asserted that Jesus must have been buried as a mummy." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on
the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981,
pp.47-48. Emphasis original)

1/05/2007
"The Grave Clothes. Another issue concerns the difference in the words chosen by the gospel writers to
describe the grave clothes that Jesus was wrapped in. The synoptic evangelists say that he was wrapped
in a sindon, a Greek word meaning a linen cloth which could be used for any purpose, including burial.
John, on the other hand, says Jesus was wrapped in othonia, a plural Greek word of uncertain meaning.
Othonia is sometimes translated as `strips of linen,' a meaning that would seem to be incompatible with a
fourteen-foot-long shroud covering the front and back of the body. However, it is likely that othonia
refers to all the grave clothes associated with Jesus' burial-the large sindon (the shroud), as well as the
smaller strips of linen that bound the jaw, the hands, and the feet. This interpretation of othonia is
supported by Luke's use of the word. He says (23:53) that Jesus was wrapped in a sindon, but later (24:12)
that Peter saw the othonia lying in the tomb after Jesus' resurrection. Luke, then, uses othonia as a
plural term for all the grave clothes, including the sindon. Furthermore, as seen earlier, Jewish burial
customs do not support the idea that John's othonia refers to the wrappings of a mummy. Jews did not
wrap up their dead like mummies, but laid them in shrouds, as indicated by the Gospel of John, the Essene
burial procedures, and the Code of Jewish Law. John himself insists that Jewish customs were followed
Jesus' case (19:40). Thus, there is good scriptural evidence that Jesus was laid in the tomb wrapped in a
shroud. Therefore, the gospels refer to the grave clothes in both the singular and the plural. When a single
cloth is spoken of, it is obviously the linen sheet itself. However, since Luke (or early tradition) had no
difficulty in using the plural (24:12) to describe what he earlier referred to in the singular (23:53), the term
`clothes' may still refer to a single piece of material. On the other hand, if more than one piece is meant,
`clothes' is most probably a reference to both the sheet and the additional strips which were bound around
the head, wrists, and feet, as indicated in John 11:44 (cf. John 19:40).

PIERSON and KBCI remember this info as I wont go through it again, as this is the most IMPORTANT answer to the Skeptics Burial Objections.

Interestingly enough, bands in these
same locations can be discerned on the Shroud of Turin. At any rate, it is a reasonable conclusion that at
least one major linen sheet is being referred to in the gospels." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict
on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI,
1981, pp.48-49. Emphasis original).

Sorry about the long response folks but I had to put this here to completely answer the bulk of the skeptics questions so that they wont repeat these objections again and make me go through another winded search

I have a few more links that I will put in my next post.

http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/sorensen2.pdf
Another Good link to answer the shroud skeptics (hint hint Paul)

Bippy more discussion. This is the same guy who thought the scorch theory was plausible. But conceded on it when he see evidence was contrary

Here's what he said to another poster

"But the patch has never been shown to be there. It is, bizarrely, an invisible patch. With no clear or even vague beginning, middle, end. No border, no drawing to described its position. Even though thousands of photos of the shroud, close up, never revealed this patch, before 1988, during the 1988 investigations, during further examinations in 2002 or when the shroud was cleaned and the backing removed in 2010. Zero evidence of a patch. Yes, yes. Because it was an invisible patch.

And yes, we know that invisible mending was possible in the middle ages. But on the Shroud? After the fire of 1532 (I'm too lazy to check the date) the nuns fixed the shroud with a number of absolutely obvious, clear-as-day, socking great totally-in-your-face patches, and made no effort to even vaguely hide their work in any way, or subtly blend the colours with dyes, or twine threads together to make it all invisible. There are burn marks all over the thing, and no-one felt a need even to repair these at all. Yet we are asked to believe that someone went to the trouble of painstakingly creating an invisible patch in this particular and none too significant position at the bottom of the shroud. And - and wait for it - at the same time they didn't bother about a huge chunk of shroud that was missing in the corner, right next to it. So they seem to have squared off a bit of the shroud invisibly, yet left a gaping sqaure missing corner right next to it. It makes no sense whatsoever. Totally counter-intuitive. Bonkers.

More sensible is the idea that there may have been some sort of a patch over the missing corner itself, which for some reason, was removed and wasn't replaced when the shroud was given its Holland cloth backing. However, when it was removed (cut away?) remains of it may have been left against a long seam or fold that runs up the entire length of the shroud, and it is this that could have contributed some irregularities in the makeup of the Raes fragment which abutted the seam at this torn corner. But there is every reason to believe that the portions that were used in the three tests were carefully cut to exclude thes anomalies, despite Ray Rogers' and others' claims.

See here: http://www.one-episcopalian-on-faith.co ... aesco21.jp g

The test pieces, and a reserved piece were taken from the top and right side of the 1988 rectangle. The left edge and bottom was excluded from the test and reserved material. But it was precisely It was from the bottom left hand corner of this rectangle that the Raes fragment had been taken in 1973. It's left margin was right up against the large missing area to the left, and it is very possible that the left edge contained remnants of the seam of a patch in that corner. But, to repeat, the test samples were not taken from the left side, they were taken from the right, and there was a clear "safety margin" that was not used. Was it from this ambiguous area that the other threads that Rogers examined were taken? Where else if not? And if so, then some of these threads must also have abutted the seam on the left edge of the cloth (ie the right margin of the missing area), and may also have been "tainted".

But the key issue is that there is no strong argument for insisting that the threads that Rogers tested were representative of the samples used for radiocarbon testing. Everything suggests that the test material was from parts of the cloth that STURP intentionally excluded from the C-14 test fragments, being unsuitable for testing because of their compromised position and nature.

However this argument will rage and rage until another C-14 test is done. Which won't happen in the near future.

Swimmy wrote:Bippy more discussion. This is the same guy who thought the scorch theory was plausible. But conceded on it when he see evidence was contrary

Here's what he said to another poster

"But the patch has never been shown to be there. It is, bizarrely, an invisible patch. With no clear or even vague beginning, middle, end. No border, no drawing to described its position. Even though thousands of photos of the shroud, close up, never revealed this patch, before 1988, during the 1988 investigations, during further examinations in 2002 or when the shroud was cleaned and the backing removed in 2010. Zero evidence of a patch. Yes, yes. Because it was an invisible patch.

And yes, we know that invisible mending was possible in the middle ages. But on the Shroud? After the fire of 1532 (I'm too lazy to check the date) the nuns fixed the shroud with a number of absolutely obvious, clear-as-day, socking great totally-in-your-face patches, and made no effort to even vaguely hide their work in any way, or subtly blend the colours with dyes, or twine threads together to make it all invisible. There are burn marks all over the thing, and no-one felt a need even to repair these at all. Yet we are asked to believe that someone went to the trouble of painstakingly creating an invisible patch in this particular and none too significant position at the bottom of the shroud. And - and wait for it - at the same time they didn't bother about a huge chunk of shroud that was missing in the corner, right next to it. So they seem to have squared off a bit of the shroud invisibly, yet left a gaping sqaure missing corner right next to it. It makes no sense whatsoever. Totally counter-intuitive. Bonkers.

More sensible is the idea that there may have been some sort of a patch over the missing corner itself, which for some reason, was removed and wasn't replaced when the shroud was given its Holland cloth backing. However, when it was removed (cut away?) remains of it may have been left against a long seam or fold that runs up the entire length of the shroud, and it is this that could have contributed some irregularities in the makeup of the Raes fragment which abutted the seam at this torn corner. But there is every reason to believe that the portions that were used in the three tests were carefully cut to exclude thes anomalies, despite Ray Rogers' and others' claims.

See here: http://www.one-episcopalian-on-faith.co ... aesco21.jp g

The test pieces, and a reserved piece were taken from the top and right side of the 1988 rectangle. The left edge and bottom was excluded from the test and reserved material. But it was precisely It was from the bottom left hand corner of this rectangle that the Raes fragment had been taken in 1973. It's left margin was right up against the large missing area to the left, and it is very possible that the left edge contained remnants of the seam of a patch in that corner. But, to repeat, the test samples were not taken from the left side, they were taken from the right, and there was a clear "safety margin" that was not used. Was it from this ambiguous area that the other threads that Rogers examined were taken? Where else if not? And if so, then some of these threads must also have abutted the seam on the left edge of the cloth (ie the right margin of the missing area), and may also have been "tainted".

But the key issue is that there is no strong argument for insisting that the threads that Rogers tested were representative of the samples used for radiocarbon testing. Everything suggests that the test material was from parts of the cloth that STURP intentionally excluded from the C-14 test fragments, being unsuitable for testing because of their compromised position and nature.

However this argument will rage and rage until another C-14 test is done. Which won't happen in the near future.

All I have to say to this guy is hahahahahahahahaha.

The problem with him is that Ray Rogers chemically tested both the c14 sample and the rest of the shroud and he found them to be completely different chemically from each other. He even hit an end of even splice in which he found cotton on it. He even found red matter dye on the c14 sample which he didnt find on the rest of the shroud. He is only posting half truths to support his skeptical position. All he has to do is read rogers peer reviewed research. The clincher on top of this is that when Ray Rogers (an agnostic) did the Vanillin tests on both the c14 sample and the rest of the shroud, the c14 sample came back positive for vanillian which makes it much more recent than the rest of the shroud image, and concluded correctly that the rest of the shroud image is between 1300 and 3000 years old and teh c14 sample was much newer. This guy isstill behind on his shroud research or intentionally doesnt want to know the truth about it.

The cotton on the end to end splice was the key to the c14 sample being from an invisible patch because of the cotton found. there was an expert textile company brought in to confirm this and they did in fact confirm it.

and hes wrong about the rogers samples , all of the samples were taken from one side of the shroud, a side that the sturp team said was teh worst possible area that was handled the most and was a great candidate for contamination. the older dated part of the shroud was from stick tape samples taken from the shroud not from a piece of it.

He also is ignorant of the fact that the sturp team had nothing to do with the c14 testing because the secular atheist scientists politically maneuvered to take them out of it.If teh sturp team were allowedto manage teh c14 dating none of the 13 protocals that were violated would have happened and we would have had a more accurate sample indiciative of the whole shroud that would have been tested. The secular Atheists would have had a nightmare if they would have allowed a more indicative sample of the shroud to be tested, because every other evidence found on the shroud points to it being much older then the c14 testing. Why do u think the catholic church is paranoid of another c14 test.

Im glad that at least one of the skeptics now knows that the scorch theory was debunked a long time ago.
Swimmy Good work again

Rogers Vanillin Tests show the shroud to be more compatible agewise with relics such as the dead sea scrolls which also show a negative test for vanillin.

He fires back bippy

The threads Rogers examined, while conceivably unrepresentative of the shroud as a whole, were also unrepresentative of the C-14 test samples, and that (2) the scenario of invisible patch (absolutely unique, we are told, found nowhere else on the shroud at all) right next to a gaping missing corner, unlike the overt repairs elsewhere, is inherently ridiculous.

As regards the latter, you can sometimes look at a thing from too far, and see nothing; and you can sometimes look from too close... and also see nothing. You need to position yourself somewhere in he middle to see something important. And the important thing is that the invisible patch scenario - which isn't itself a scientific issue, but a particular interpretation of scientific evidence derived from a number of threads - makes no sense in the context of the nature and history of the shroud.

As regards some of the other issues, the vanillin test is problematic. You (and/or your friend) say: "Rogers (an agnostic) did the Vanillin tests on both the c14 sample and the rest of the shroud" but Roger's didn't do vanillin tests on the rest of the shroud: he stated that vinillin was found nowhere on the rest of the shroud, without citing which tests, on which spots of the shroud, how exhaustively the shroud was sampled for this test, whether the tests on similar full threads... or what. This is particularly important because he himself argued that if the fire of 1532 had affected the readings, he would have expected the vanillin results to have been variable. It simply may be that his sample is precisely that sort of variation! Unless, he could show with certainty that the vanillin tests on the rest of the shroud had been exhaustive and every single one negative. And even that wouldn't help a lot because the vanillin test, as he acknowledges, is seriously affected by temperature change. His calculation of the date of the cloth based on vanillin levels assumed an average contextual temperature that was absolutely arbitrary and didn't sufficiently take into account the intensity of the fire of 1532. Mark Antonacci, who believes the shroud is the genuine shroud of Christ and gives evidence of his resurrection (so not one of your "secular atheist scientists") comments:

STURP physicist Dr. John Jackson and chemist Dr. Keith Propp write that if the temperature incurred by the Shroud was just 200 oC that it would lose 95% of its vanillin in a mere 6.4 seconds. (http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/debate.pdf)



The existence of a couple of spliced threads does not an entire hidden patch make. Others have, by the way, interpreted those splices quite differently - as ad hoc anomalies in the manual spinning process, though I'd need to check out my references for whether we are referring to a linen/cotton splice or just two linen thread splices. Either way, a couple of threads - some of them dubiously provenanced (Prof. Gonella nicked them in 1988 for his own use and may not have been rigorous about what threads were what) is a very flimsy basis for a significant "invisible patch".

But then we are still talking nonsense. The 1988 rectangle cut from the shroud was 81 x 21mm. How big was this invisible patch? I presume it was supposedly smaller than the rectange, otherwise ecvidence of it would remain in the shroud now. So very very small. But why bother, when it was right next to a large missing chunk 20+ times larger? Think about it... seriously. It makes no sense. However, imagine the remains of another patch, not invisible but attached at precisely the edge of the missing corner... (from which the Raes sample was taken, and a 6mm strip "showing coloured filaments of uncertain origin" discarded for testing purposes), and the anomalies are explained without doing violence to common sense.

Yes, it's true that the C-14 samples were not taken from an ideal position, and it would have been better that it had been away from this corner and its seam. The fact that there weren't examples taken from multiple sites was also unfortunate, but the Vatican didn't want lumps taken out of the shroud all over the place, and were therefore only prepared to cut this bit from next to the missing corner. This was not a Secular Atheist Scientist plot. And it is quite wrong to insist that only secular atheists with agendas argue against Rogers: two of his most vociferous critics - Antonucci & Jackson - beleive the shroud is authentic, and that the C-14 dates were skewed for reasons other than this imaginative invisible patch.

Swimmy wrote:He fires back bippy

We sunk their battleship!!!!!!!

It seems that there was an unofficial c14 test done on the shroud in 1982!!!
You guys will be intrigued by the results

http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/textevid.pdf

In 1982 an unauthorized Carbon-14 dating test was conducted on a single thread
from the Raes sample. The experimental thread was provided by Dr. Alan Adler and
given to Dr. John Heller. At the time, Adler was unaware that an agreement had been
signed by STURP members not to do further testing on Shroud samples. Heller delivered
the thread to the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) for dating by world-
renowned mineralogist Dr. George R. Rossman. Adler informed Rossman that one end
of the thread contained, what appeared to be, a “starch contaminate.” Thus, Rossman cut
the thread in half and, using what Adler described as Fourier-transform ion cyclotron
resonance mass spectrometry (FTMS), dated each end of the thread separately.
According to the Scripps Center for Mass Spectrometry in La Jolla California, “FTMS

offers two distinct advantages, high resolution and the ability to tandem mass

And now lets see the results of this c14 test from 1982. Ill post some more links later which show that the people in charge of the now debunked 1988 c14 testing did not want this 1982 testing to be publicized. Not only that but the people in charge of the 1988 c14 testing told the church that if they werent allowed total control of the c14 testing that they would publicly say that they wouldnt except the tests as legitimate. They were in essence blackmailing the church. The 26 point recommendations of the sturp team were also discarded which would have insured that the testing go smoothly without the many protocols that were violated (intentionally or unintentionally).


http://www.shroud-enigma.com/resources/ ... on-ENG.pdf

In 1982 another proposal came informally from the laboratories of Tucson (AZ, USA),
Oxford (UK) and Harwell (UK); the response, only verbal, was interlocutory, but it was
specified that it was desirable perform the dating in a multidisciplinary-research context that
could give valuable contributions to the conservation issue as well
14
. In that year physician
and biophysicist John Heller of the New England Institute for Medical Re search in Ridgefield
(CT, USA) sent to the University of California a thread of the Shroud extracted from the area
of the Raes sample. The thread was divided into two parts and dated: one half turned out to
date back to 200 A.D. and the other half to 1000 A.D. It should be pointed out that one of the
two halves was starched

1

Lets use the same link to also show you the pressure that the people in charge of the 1988 testing put on the Church.
http://www.shroud-enigma.com/resources/ ... on-ENG.pdf I would also read the whole pds article to get a true understanding of the pressures the Church was facing during the time leading up to the 1988 c14 testing.

Gonella accuses the laboratories of “intoxication by success” and adds: “Misconducts there
were tons. The colleagues of the
14
C behaved in a disgusting manner. Those scientists have
hatched a true plot to discredit the Shroud. At first, when they did ask us to examine a sample
of the Shroud, assured us of the utmost seriousness and completeness of the analyses, along
with the collaboration with the Custodian of the Shroud, that is the Bishop of Turin, and his
scientific advisor, i.e. the undersigned. Driven by celebrity fever, those scientists began to turn
their backs on their own commitments: no more interdisciplinary examinations, only
14
C. They
flooded even Rome with pressures so that Turin had to accept their conditions. They used the
then president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, professor Chagas, to get the
undersigned out of the way and go their own way”.

It is natural to ask Gonella: then why did the Holy See and Cardinal Ballestrero accept it?
“Because Chagas - the professor of the Polytechnic says - acted alone, bypassing other
academics. The Vatican was continually threatened by the laboratories themselves, who went
on repeating: if you don’t leave it to us, only to us, the results will not be acceptable. So, in the
end, Ballestrero had to surrender, though suffering badly. And I to submit. Also because these
gentlemen did everything to support the argument that the Church was throwing a spanner in
the works of science”
141.

Gonella explains: “It was blackmail. They put us up against the wall just with a blackmail.
Either we accepted the test of
14
C on the terms imposed by the laboratories, or it would break
out a campaign of accusations saying the Church fears the truth and is an enemy of
Science”

And here are the many protocols violated by the 1988 c14 testing, which is inexplicable since these labs are supposed to be experts in c14 testing. Why would they bungle this test so badly in a very amateurish way?

In the statement of the scientific committee of the International Symposium, held in Paris in
1989, it is written that there are strong reserv es on the statistical analysis of the results,
especially on the value of chi-squared ( χ
2
) 6.4 for samples of Shroud, which have provided not
homogeneous radiocarbon dates. Therefore, the Scientific Committee requested the release of
all raw data obtained by the three laboratories and of the commentary written by professor
Bray of the “Colonnetti”
144
. During the International Sympos ium, held in Rome in 1993,
statistician Philippe Bourcier de Carbon listed fifteen points of failure in the radiocarbon
history of the Shroud
145
:
1. absence of a formal report of the sampling;
2. absence of a video archive on the final steps of the samples packaging;
3. in the official reports, contradictions about the cutting and the weight of the samples by
people in charge of sampling;
4. breaches of the protocols initially planned for the operation of dating;
5. rejection of the usual procedure of double-blind test;
6. refusal of the interdisciplinary documentatio n, which is usual in the procedures for
radiocarbon dating;
7. exclusion of acknowledged specialists in the Shroud, particularly American scientists who
participated in previous works of STURP;
8. communication to the laboratories, most unusual, of the dates of the control samples prior
to testing;
9. intercommunication of results among the three laboratories during the job;
10. disclosure to the media of the first results before the delivering of the findings;
11. refusal to publish raw results of the measurements (requested also with insistence in its
official statement by the Scientific Committee which prepared the Symposium in Paris in
1989);
12. non-explanation of the unique isolation of the confidence interval of the measures
performed by the Oxford laboratory compared to those made by other laboratories;
13. unacceptable value of 6.4 published in the journal Nature for the chi-squared statistical
test on the results of the radiocarbon dosage on the Shroud;
14. rejection of any cross-debate on the statistical measures performed;
15. rejection, absolutely uncommon, of the publication of the statistical expertise of this
operation, officially entrusted to professor Bray of “G. Colonnetti” Institute of Turin
(requested also with insistence in its official statement by the Scientific Committee which
prepared the Symposium in Paris in 1989).
Bourcier de Carbon concludes: “Such a remark of deficiencies remains completely unusual
in the context of a truly scientific debate, and one can only deplore this exception to the usual
ethics”

Swimmy wrote:He fires back bippy

The threads Rogers examined, while conceivably unrepresentative of the shroud as a whole, were also unrepresentative of the C-14 test samples, and that (2) the scenario of invisible patch (absolutely unique, we are told, found nowhere else on the shroud at all) right next to a gaping missing corner, unlike the overt repairs elsewhere, is inherently ridiculous.

As regards the latter, you can sometimes look at a thing from too far, and see nothing; and you can sometimes look from too close... and also see nothing. You need to position yourself somewhere in he middle to see something important. And the important thing is that the invisible patch scenario - which isn't itself a scientific issue, but a particular interpretation of scientific evidence derived from a number of threads - makes no sense in the context of the nature and history of the shroud.

As regards some of the other issues, the vanillin test is problematic. You (and/or your friend) say: "Rogers (an agnostic) did the Vanillin tests on both the c14 sample and the rest of the shroud" but Roger's didn't do vanillin tests on the rest of the shroud: he stated that vinillin was found nowhere on the rest of the shroud, without citing which tests, on which spots of the shroud, how exhaustively the shroud was sampled for this test, whether the tests on similar full threads... or what. This is particularly important because he himself argued that if the fire of 1532 had affected the readings, he would have expected the vanillin results to have been variable. It simply may be that his sample is precisely that sort of variation! Unless, he could show with certainty that the vanillin tests on the rest of the shroud had been exhaustive and every single one negative. And even that wouldn't help a lot because the vanillin test, as he acknowledges, is seriously affected by temperature change. His calculation of the date of the cloth based on vanillin levels assumed an average contextual temperature that was absolutely arbitrary and didn't sufficiently take into account the intensity of the fire of 1532. Mark Antonacci, who believes the shroud is the genuine shroud of Christ and gives evidence of his resurrection (so not one of your "secular atheist scientists") comments:

STURP physicist Dr. John Jackson and chemist Dr. Keith Propp write that if the temperature incurred by the Shroud was just 200 oC that it would lose 95% of its vanillin in a mere 6.4 seconds. (http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/debate.pdf)



The existence of a couple of spliced threads does not an entire hidden patch make. Others have, by the way, interpreted those splices quite differently - as ad hoc anomalies in the manual spinning process, though I'd need to check out my references for whether we are referring to a linen/cotton splice or just two linen thread splices. Either way, a couple of threads - some of them dubiously provenanced (Prof. Gonella nicked them in 1988 for his own use and may not have been rigorous about what threads were what) is a very flimsy basis for a significant "invisible patch".

But then we are still talking nonsense. The 1988 rectangle cut from the shroud was 81 x 21mm. How big was this invisible patch? I presume it was supposedly smaller than the rectange, otherwise ecvidence of it would remain in the shroud now. So very very small. But why bother, when it was right next to a large missing chunk 20+ times larger? Think about it... seriously. It makes no sense. However, imagine the remains of another patch, not invisible but attached at precisely the edge of the missing corner... (from which the Raes sample was taken, and a 6mm strip "showing coloured filaments of uncertain origin" discarded for testing purposes), and the anomalies are explained without doing violence to common sense.

Yes, it's true that the C-14 samples were not taken from an ideal position, and it would have been better that it had been away from this corner and its seam. The fact that there weren't examples taken from multiple sites was also unfortunate, but the Vatican didn't want lumps taken out of the shroud all over the place, and were therefore only prepared to cut this bit from next to the missing corner. This was not a Secular Atheist Scientist plot. And it is quite wrong to insist that only secular atheists with agendas argue against Rogers: two of his most vociferous critics - Antonucci & Jackson - beleive the shroud is authentic, and that the C-14 dates were skewed for reasons other than this imaginative invisible patch.

Swimmy, I just went through that link u gave me from that guy.
If he's arguing from mark antonacci's view then he's arguing from the view of a lawyer, and not a chemist, especially not a chemist of Rogers caliber who is well known from his field. In that paper antonacci is claiming that there is no way an expert reseated could have made an invisible reweave that could have filled the labs.

All antonacci is doing is claiming hearsay where Rogers is talking from peer reviewed work. I'll take science over hearsay any day. I would think that this skeptic is probably an atheist , and he is taking the opinion of a lawyer with no peer reviewed work over a world renowned chemist who did get his research to pass peer review? Apparently atheists don't value science as much as they claim to hehe.

As far as Jackson, while I highly respect his view in his field (physics), he is not a world renowned chemist and while he does have peer reviewed work on the shroud, none if it is in chemistry. Plus if this guy want to argue on antonacci and jacksons side then they both say that there was an influx of neutrinos that hit the shroud adding extra c14 to it. If he wants to use their theories his case collapses even more and this atheist is actually arguing that the radiation from the  resurrection process itself caused the extra c14 to be added lol. He can't just pick and choose the opinions of antonacci and Jackson and leave the rest out.

As far as the vanillin tests, this guy is again not doing his homework. The reason why Ray Rogers boldly stated that none of the other areas of the shroud tested positive for vanillin is because Rogers had 32 sticky tape samples taken from all areas of the shroud, and this is all from his peer reviewed research paper in thermochimica acta. This guy needs to reread the research a bit more.

As far saying vanillin can burn fast upon contact, let's let Rogers himself answer this question as this is his field of expertise.

http://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html

"The fire of 1532 could not have greatly affected the vanillin content of lignin in all parts of the shroud equally.  The thermal conductivity of linen is very low... therefore, the unscorched parts of the folded cloth could not have become very hot."  "The cloth's center would not have heated at all in the time available.  The rapid change in color from black to white at the margins of the scorches illustrates this fact."  "Different amounts of vanillin would have been lost in different areas.  No samples from any location on the shroud gave the vanillin test [i.e. tested positive]."  "The lignin on shroud samples and on samples from the Dead Sea scrolls does not give the test [i.e. tests negative]."

"Because the shroud and other very old linens do not give the vanillin test [i.e. test negative], the cloth must be quite old."  "A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old.  Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years."

"A gum/dye/mordant [(for affixing dye)] coating is easy to observe on... radiocarbon [sample] yarns.  No other part of the shroud shows such a coating."  "The radiocarbon sample had been dyed.  Dyeing was probably done intentionally on pristine replacement material to match the color of the older, sepia-colored cloth."  "The dye found on the radiocarbon sample was not used in Europe before about 1291 AD and was not common until more than 100 years later."  "Specifically, the color and distribution of the coating implies that repairs were made at an unknown time with foreign linen dyed to match the older original material."  "The consequence of this conclusion is that the radiocarbon sample was not representative of the original cloth."

"The combined evidence from chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, cotton content, and pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry proves that the material from the radiocarbon area of the shroud is significantly different from that of the main cloth.  The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud."

Now as far as his claiming there was no secular-atheist conspiracy then the alternative is even worse because the seculars that had rested total control of the c14 testing away from the multidisciplines sturp team and the church, didn't believe in proper science and c14 testing procedures because not only did they not do s chemical analysis test on the samples they received but they also violated many protocols as my quote from my previous post shows, but let's show this again.

Lets use the same link to also show you the pressure that the people in charge of the 1988 testing put on the Church.
http://www.shroud-enigma.com/resources/ ... on-ENG.pdf I would also read the whole pds article to get a true understanding of the pressures the Church was facing during the time leading up to the 1988 c14 testing.

Gonella accuses the laboratories of “intoxication by success” and adds: “Misconducts there 
were tons. The colleagues of the 
14
C behaved in a disgusting manner. Those scientists have 
hatched a true plot to discredit the Shroud. At first, when they did ask us to examine a sample 
of the Shroud, assured us of the utmost seriousness and completeness of the analyses, along 
with the collaboration with the Custodian of the Shroud, that is the Bishop of Turin, and his 
scientific advisor, i.e. the undersigned. Driven by celebrity fever, those scientists began to turn 
their backs on their own commitments: no more interdisciplinary examinations, only 
14
C. They 
flooded even Rome with pressures so that Turin had to accept their conditions. They used the 
then president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, professor Chagas, to get the 
undersigned out of the way and go their own way”. 

It is natural to ask Gonella: then why did the Holy See and Cardinal Ballestrero accept it? 
“Because Chagas - the professor of the Polytechnic says - acted alone, bypassing other 
academics. The Vatican was continually threatened by the laboratories themselves, who went 
on repeating: if you don’t leave it to us, only to us, the results will not be acceptable. So, in the 
end, Ballestrero had to surrender, though suffering badly. And I to submit. Also because these 
gentlemen did everything to support the argument that the Church was throwing a spanner in 
the works of science”
141. 

Gonella explains: “It was blackmail. They put us up against the wall just with a blackmail. 
Either we accepted the test of 
14
C on the terms imposed by the laboratories, or it would break 
out a campaign of accusations saying the Church fears the truth and is an enemy of 
Science”




And here are the many protocols violated by the 1988 c14 testing, which is inexplicable since these labs are supposed to be experts in c14 testing. Why would they bungle this test so badly in a very amateurish way?  


In the statement of the scientific committee of the International Symposium, held in Paris in 
1989, it is written that there are strong reserv es on the statistical analysis of the results, 
especially on the value of chi-squared ( χ
2
) 6.4 for samples of Shroud, which have provided not 
homogeneous radiocarbon dates. Therefore, the Scientific Committee requested the release of 
all raw data obtained by the three laboratories and of the commentary written by professor 
Bray of the “Colonnetti”
144
. During the International Sympos ium, held in Rome in 1993, 
statistician Philippe Bourcier de Carbon listed fifteen points of failure in the radiocarbon 
history of the Shroud
145
: 
1. absence of a formal report of the sampling; 
2. absence of a video archive on the final steps of the samples packaging; 
3. in the official reports, contradictions about the cutting and the weight of the samples by 
people in charge of sampling; 
4. breaches of the protocols initially planned for the operation of dating; 
5. rejection of the usual procedure of double-blind test; 
6. refusal of the interdisciplinary documentatio n, which is usual in the procedures for 
radiocarbon dating; 
7. exclusion of acknowledged specialists in the Shroud, particularly American scientists who 
participated in previous works of STURP; 
8. communication to the laboratories, most unusual, of the dates of the control samples prior 
to testing; 
9. intercommunication of results among the three laboratories during the job; 
10. disclosure to the media of the first results before the delivering of the findings; 
11. refusal to publish raw results of the measurements (requested also with insistence in its 
official statement by the Scientific Committee which prepared the Symposium in Paris in 
1989); 
12. non-explanation of the unique isolation of the confidence interval of the measures 
performed by the Oxford laboratory compared to those made by other laboratories; 
13. unacceptable value of 6.4 published in the journal Nature for the chi-squared statistical 
test on the results of the radiocarbon dosage on the Shroud; 
14. rejection of any cross-debate on the statistical measures performed; 
15. rejection, absolutely uncommon, of the publication of the statistical expertise of this 
operation, officially entrusted to professor Bray of “G. Colonnetti” Institute of Turin 
(requested also with insistence in its official statement by the Scientific Committee which 
prepared the Symposium in Paris in 1989). 
Bourcier de Carbon concludes: “Such a remark of deficiencies remains completely unusual 
in the context of a truly scientific debate, and one can only deplore this exception to the usual 
ethics”

Swimmy I think at this point this guy will just try to nitpick himself into an infinite regression of silly arguments.
I'm talking science here and hes actually talking heresay and opinion.
We are starting to confuse the atheists with science and facts . Wait a minute, don't atheists claim to love science and facts? Looool hehe

Tell the guy he struck out and next time to bring his facts Joe nickel and water mccrone. Or maybe we should discuss something that matches the incomplete and shotty research he did on the shroud... Like maybe an image of Jesus on a peanut butter sandwich lol. I know that's the classical atheist argument against Christians hehe.

Ok now the battleship is sunk

Great work bippy. Still have to read the up on the test from 1982

Swimmy wrote:Great work bippy. Still have to read the up on the test from 1982

Thanks Swimmy, Yea the 1982 test was interesting by itself. but you will never see the 1982 test on skeptic sites, and the 3 labs from the 1988 testing asked the church not to bring it up during the 1988 testing. There was also another lab technician or scientist (cant remember what he was exactly) that was either involved with the 82 test or another one that was found dead of an apparent suicide, yet he was married and didnt have a history of depression. Cant find the name and I dont remember how I found it on google.

Anyways, back to more evidence, This pdf shows that most of the experts (chemist and textile experts), felt that the 1988 c14 sample was from an invisible reweave.
This 40 page pdf file will help you to be thoroughly familiar with not only how hard it is to spot an invisible reweave, but it details how it was done by the experts in that era. It will also give you many fine details on why this was accepted about the c14 test samples.

http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/chronology.pdf
This is also a great arsenal if you want to defend the reweave against any nitpicking skeptic who will ramble senselessly against the experts who studied the shroud

Swimmy what most shroud researchers forget about is that there was also a more faint second image of the face and hands on the backside of the cloth. We talked about that Professor John Jacksons cloth collapse theory a few pages back , but on http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com.au ... ional.html there is a very vivid debate on this below Stephen Jones main post.

Check it our Swimmy, and anyone interested in Jacksons cloth collapse theory which does seem to account for many of the characteristics of the shroud image.

Seems like the 1997 fire wasnt the only recent time someone tried to destroy the shroud. In 1972 an unknown individual tried to set fire to the shroud. I wonder who would want the shroud destroyed so badly

http://www.shroud.com/history.htm

October 1, 1972: Attempt to set fire to the Shroud on the part of an unknown individual who breaks into the Royal Chapel after climbing over the Palace roof. The Shroud survives due to its asbestos protection within the altar shrine.

Guys, I just found an excellent 2 part video from the Colorado shroud research center where physicist and Sturp team scientist Professor John Jackson goes over the blood stains and also how the shroud was wrapped around the body. This also contains crucial information on the shroud's side strip and how it was used in the burial.
Awesome video

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmYuI1qJ ... ata_player

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJBQ896x ... ata_player

Ok guys, lets try to tackly the Professor John Jackson cloth collapse theory of the shroud. Feel free to jump in anytime guys.
Ill try to do this in parts, and since Stephen Jones does a good JOb in explaining some of it we will use the post from his blog. This is probably the only theory put forth that comes close to explaining all of the unique characteristics of the shroud image.

http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/20 ... ional.html

"Cloth Collapse theory" to explain the origin of the Shroud's image is, in my opinion, one of the most important things ever written about the Shroud of Turin. This is because it claims to, and I agree that it does, "explain all image characteristics found on the shroud image." Yet, it has never been published online and can only be found in a comparatively obscure, out-of-print book: Berard, A., ed., 1991, "History, Science, Theology and the Shroud," Symposium Proceedings, St. Louis Missouri, June 22-23, 1991, The Man in the Shroud Committee of Amarillo, Texas: Amarillo TX. However, you can see Dr. Jackson's presentation of his theory at the St. Louis Symposium in the video, "What is Missing? "

part 2 coming up


The 2 videos I just posted show that the shroud enveloped a real body, Plus lets add a few points here.

We should not overlook the fact that it was only through ultraviolet fluorescence photography that the "scourge" marks were observed to contain many finely spaced lines or scratches, consistent with what would be expected from a flogging of real skin.

These fine details could not have even been seen by a forger, and needed very technical tools that werent available back then.

In addition, on the dorsal foot imprint, the 1970 examination discovered an abundance of microscopic dust or dirt, atypical of the rest of the image. This, of course, was likely transferred to the Shroud from the feet of a barefoot man. These subliminal details cannot reasonably be ascribed to a hypothetical artist because (1) he himself could not see them and (2) there was no reason to put them there since no one else could see them either. Therefore, these particular details, including the blood features, are consistent with the concept that the Shroud enfolded a wounded and dirty corpse, as opposed to a statue, who had been scourged and crucified.

Again, the forger himself couldnt see the microscopic dirt found by the sturp team and no one else in the middle ages or until the 20th century could see this dirt, unless its with very technical equipment.

As a final demonstration that the Shroud covered a human body, I would like to refer to my own studies of the body image. These studies show that the intensities of the frontal Shroud image can be calculated using a single mathematical relationship of intensity versus distance between two surfaces. These surfaces correspond geometrically to an anatomically reasonable body shape and a cloth draping naturally over that shape.

Figure 2 shows how the image intensity on the Shroud can be converted to a three-dimensional plot of cloth-body distance by a single mathematical function.

Now that we have know that it enveloped a real body we have to tackle how the image could have possible been formed.