Another attempt to con the public?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationw...1&track=rss

Oh...they are trotting that out again are they? *yawns*

I'll bet they find that the image is not Christ after all, but a yeti that was abducted by aliens who were really searching for the Loch Ness monster.

I think this tells us something.

So false the catholics have lost all hope. Must be bad!

Sounds like an attempt to determine whether the prior lab results are valid or flawed owing to potentially incorrect methodology.

It is not as if the University of Colorado physics professor conducted his own secret tests and came up with different results; rather, he requested that the same lab which performed the prior tests conduct another test in light of his potentially viable theory which, if correct, would render the prior test results invalid.

Attempting to discredit the theory advanced by reference to the proponent's personal religious affiliation is a crude logical fallacy routinely resorted to by bigots.

That's pretty much what I saw too.



Do you think they're going to fiddle the figures?



Yes... particularly in context with the rest of the article.

Do you find it strange that a physics professor could be a Christian - or perhaps that a Christian could be a physics professor? The link states that it's his scientific hypothesis that is being tested, but you seem to be seeing it more in terms of his faith.

The link also says science thus far has not been able to explain how the hoax was carried out. The dating of the shroud previously precludes it from being authentic, obviously. But without an explanation of how it was done, there's room for more questions... whichever side of the fence you stand on.

I've always accepted the shroud was a hoax, maybe because it was identified as such when I was growing up. I saw a documentary advertised about it recently but I didn't bother watching it. Some of the points in your link do make me pause though. What's your response to these points in particular, bearing in mind the current radiocarbon date of somewhere between 1260 and 1390?





But anyway, if science is the means by which God will one day be disproved, what's the harm in all of this? If the worst comes to the worst and they do fiddle the figures on the dates, they still won't have proven any real link to Jesus, not without disproving that anybody else could have achieved the effect. And plenty of scientists will be eager to prove their findings wrong as well. Whatever agenda is being pushed, it will be challenged too.

It makes me wonder though, how compelling would evidence have to be before you allowed yourself to consider... well, that it was compelling? Obviously it would have to be scientific, you wouldn't even think about it otherwise.



I'll be really kind and assume you just didn't read the link.

Owing mainly to the researches of Canon Ulysse Chevalier a series of documents was discovered which clearly proved that in 1389 the Bishop of Troyes appealed to Clement VII, the Avignon Pope then recognized in France, to put a stop to the scandals connected to the Shroud preserved at Lirey. It was, the Bishop declared, the work of an artist who some years before had confessed to having painted it but it was then being exhibited by the Canons of Lirey in such a way that the populace believed that it was the authentic shroud of Jesus Christ. The pope, without absolutely prohibiting the exhibition of the Shroud, decided after full examination that in the future when it was shown to the people, the priest should declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ, but only a picture made to represent it. The authenticity of the documents connected with this appeal is not disputed. Moreover, the grave suspicion thus thrown upon the relic is immensely strengthened by the fact that no intelligible account, beyond wild conjecture, can be given of the previous history of the Shroud or its coming to Lirey.

An animated controversy followed and it must be admitted that though the immense preponderance of opinion among learned Catholics (see the statement by P.M. Baumgarten in the "Historiches Jahrbuch", 1903, pp. 319-43) was adverse to the authenticity of the relic, still the violence of many of its assailants prejudiced their own cause. In particular the suggestion made of blundering or bad faith on the part of those who photographed were quite without excuse. From the scientific point of view, however, the difficulty of the "negative" impression on the cloth is not so serious as it seems. This Shroud like the others was probably painted without fraudulent intent to aid the dramatic setting of the Easter sequence:

Dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via
Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes.

As the word sudarium suggested, it was painted to represent the impression made by the sweat of Christ, i.e. probably in a yellowish tint upon unbrilliant red. This yellow stain would turn brown in the course of centuries, the darkening process being aided by the effects of fire and sun. Thus, the lights of the original picture would become the shadow of Paleotto's reproduction of the images on the shroud is printed in two colours, pale yellow and red. As for the good proportions and æsthetic effect, two things may be noted. First, that it is highly probable that the artist used a model to determine the length and position of the limbs, etc.; the representation no doubt was made exactly life size. Secondly, the impressions are only known to us in photographs so reduced, as compared with the original, that the crudenesses, aided by the softening effects of time, entirely disappear.

Lastly, the difficulty must be noticed that while the witnesses of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries speak of the image as being then so vivid that the blood seemed freshly shed, it is now darkened and hardly recognizable without minute attention. On the supposition that this is an authentic relic dating from the year A.D. 30, why should it have retained its brilliance through countless journeys and changes of climate for fifteen centuries, and then in four centuries more have become almost invisible? On the other hand if it be a fabrication of the fifteenth century this is exactly what we should expect.


http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/

I can't see what John Jackson is hoping to achieve, apart from publicity about a possible book!

These "relics" mean nothing. One has to put trust in a living Saviour (Jesus) not a piece of cloth in order to get to Heaven.

Along with many other problems, this author points out:

"There are serious anatomical problems with the image. Jesus' face, body, arms, and fingers were unnaturally thin and elongated (like figures in Gothic art), his left forearm was longer than his right, and his right hand is too long. The man is impossibly tall, being 6ft 8in (2.03m). The head is disproportionately small for the body, the face unnaturally narrow and the forehead foreshortened, and ears lost. The front and back images, in particular of the head, do not match up precisely, and the back image is around 2 inches (5cm) longer than the front. The back of the head is wider than the front of the head. The Shroud image is, in fact, so unusually very long and narrow that one pro-Shroud pathologist suggested that Jesus must have had Marfan's syndrome! "

http://www.sillybeliefs.com/shroud.html

You'd think the Apostles might have mentioned that Jesus was an extremely odd-looking skinny giant with a small head and a short left forearm.

Oh ye of little faith.

See! I said it was a yeti

No offence meant but how many more times are you going to trot out the...

We must put our trust in Jesus or end up in hell bit

Wouldn't it be easier just to put it on your signature.

It's hard not to bash when something proven to be a fake is still revered as if it is something "Holy". And actually all religions get a rough ride here. The UK is the world center for non-belief.

So you are saying they are pretty intelligent in this country then?

Interesting choice of quote.


So you don't think he believes it himself.



It's not hard to work out how you got to that page.



Sorry, I just can't resist quoting from pladecalvo's I See Dumb People link. The words just convey so well what I've often thought in the Religion Bashing section...




If you say so.

I have no idea whether he believes it or not, but there is almost certain to be a book published about it by Jackson irrespective of the outcome of the experiments. People have been making money out of the shroud for centuries.

How has it been proven to be fake? Some evidence makes it look false, yet other evidence makes it look genuine, Whether its false or genuine depends on who's evidence you believe surely, no?

The last program i saw on the shroud, was saying that the accuracy of Radio Carbon dating in this case could be flawed because of contamination over the years, and the Radio Carbon dating as a technique, has been described as possibly wildly inaccurate by various people over the years in any case.

So surely it is a matter of what you choose to believe, which kinda makes Bobs suggestion of faith, a credible possibility. Although Bob was referring to faith in Jesus, as opposed to faith in the testing procedure, either way, it is as i see it, purely a matter of Faith.

Surely the jury is still out regarding the shroud, NO?

The whole scientific community believes the Shroud is an medieval copy & the Catholic Church has believed the same thing for centuries. The jury has been out, come back in & gone home for a nice cup of tea!

I'd seriously love there to be some truth in the Shroud, it'd be nice for there to be something supernatural going on...but it's just a rag with a clever painting (evidently a not very good painting at that).

The jury isn't out...because the case itself has been throw out of court. The guy is on a book selling mission.

And since when has the British legal system ever traded in facts, pray tell?

The Lord works in mysterious ways, and i will pray for your soul. WOW bugger me, i just got a dose of the Bobs,

Repent you bugger, or big G, will kick your heathen aris.

Some times dear old H, one has to make a great big leap of faith, doesn't one?


I dont know if its because ime desperately in need of something to believe in, but i have this feeling that given time, this will be the real Mcoy.

Nothing scientific, just a great big leap of faith. I can sort of feel it in my water....or is that cystitis?

No...not really. Not when there's no point anyway.

How do you mean, no point anyway? Of course there is a point, at least as far as i see it. If the Shroud is a genuine piece of kit, it proves at least that Jesus did exist, and that is the main part of our Religious beliefs.

I know your a not a Christian, but you can not tell me, that you know for a fact that God does not exist, can you?

So there may or may not be a God, if the shroud were proven to be a Genuine bone of fido Jesus shroud, would that alter your lack of belief, even if only slightly?

That could never be proven. The best you could get would be that the shroud came from 1st century Palestine and was used to cover the body of a man who was crucified. Crucifixion was a common form of execution in those days and in that location..... so unless you have the DNA of your man-god, so that you can match it to any DNA you could find on the shroud, you're just left with a 1st century burial shroud that was used to cover the body of 6ft 8in tall man who had one arm longer than the other and who suffered from Marfan's Syndrome..... who was crucified.

Ah but, it could definitely tie it down to a specific group of people, in a DNA sense, and it could tie it down to a certain time period, thats just looking at things from to days Science and technology? And we must bare in mind that Science and technology (mainly thanks to America as zoro would remind us) is advancing at a fantastic pace.

And of course if Jesus Christ did have a son or even more than just one child, the DNA from the shroud could be matched to the person claiming to be Jesus's descendant.

Yes i do accept there are a lot IF's there., but given time.

Well you could pin it down to originating from 1st century Palestine I suppose....but not much else surely!

Wow! Just wait until Eric/bob gets hold of you for suggesting that his Jesus indulged in sexual acts!!!!

Another 2000 years??

You know the DNA could lead to a section of society, showing that Jesus was Mortal (if there is a a much wider descendants than one pair of breeders in 30 BCE)