This is the fallacy of modern education... that ALL opinions have equal value. . . and should be given equal weight. Not true. Some are informed opinions and others are uninformed opinions... or prejudiced opinions. Strange, but I find nothing "Socratic" about Drammach's comments. He made an uninformed statement of fact (which was untrue) and expounded on his opinion. That does not meet the Socratic method to my mind.
Oh? Do tell! You mean to guarantee that ALL of the "evidence" that you proffer for the shrouds authenticity is factual and completely error free?
No, but it is UP TO DATE... and based on the latest peer-reviewed research.
Have mercy, Sir! I yield! One more time, real slow: My....first....introduction....to....the....existence.....of....the ....Shroud....was....during....service college research....regarding....the...military....leadership....during......the Hundred Years War. I was not researching the Shroud. At the time, I thought the Shroud nothing more than a Medieval "Relic", used to sucker poor pilgrims and not worthy of any further regard.
Then... why... do... you... keep... repeating... it... when... we... have... repeatedly... shown... you... it... is... untrue???
And that's according to the following scientific "evidence": "According to Dr. Walter McCrone and his colleagues at McCrone Associates, the 3+ by 14+ foot cloth depicting Christ's crucified body is an inspired painting produced by a Medieval artist just before its first appearance in recorded history in 1356.".. (works for me)
Well, it DOESN'T work for me. . . because I know the problems with McCrone and his work. It also doesn't work with any of the members of the Shroud of Turin Research Project because they knew it was not true. They, not McCrone, had hands on experience with the Shroud doing far more tests than mere optical microscopy and knew there was no paint. It was the FIRST thing they tested for.
You know, that is extremely funny. You again choose an un-peer-reviewed, and now discredited, "scientific" study done by a guy looking through an optical microscope in 1979 instead of ALL of the rest of the studies in the next 26 years that disprove it. That is NOT following the science. McCrone was not the final word. That is "cherry picking" for the preconceived and prejudicial conclusion you want.
Walter C. McCrone is the ONLY researcher of the Shroud who REFUSED to have his work peer-reviewed despite his agreement to do so in order to be given samples. His ONLY publications on the Shroud were in his own vanity press magazine The Microscopist published by McCrone Research Inc., and sometimes edited by Walter C. McCrone. His findings (the shroud was painted with vermilion [HgS] and red ochre/iron oxide [Fe2O3] paint in a dilute egg albumin solution) have been completely DISPROVED in peer-reviewed scientific journals by scientists using far more sensitive instruments that McCrone's optical microscope.
NOT ONE other researcher looking at what McCrone looked at has seen what McCrone claims to have seen. While there are scattered Fe2O3 and HgS particles on the shroud, they are randomly scattered, contaminating both image and non-image areas. At no time are there sufficient concentrations of either to rise to visibility.
McCrone sees "paint". This cannot possibly be in agreement with what we now KNOW forms the image:
The substance is a dried carbohydrate mixture of starch fractions and various saccharides (sugars). It is as thin (180 to 600 nanometers) as the wall of a soap bubble. It is thinner than the invisible glare proof coating on modern eyeglasses. . . In some places the coating has turned a golden brown. This is the result of a chemical change: the formation of a complex carbon-carbon double molecular bond within the coating. There are two ways this could have happened chemically: 1) caramelization, whereby heat caused molecular breakdown into other volatile compounds and 2) a Maillard reaction in which a carbonyl group of sugars reacted with an amino group producing N-substituted glycosylamine. An unstable glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangement, forming ketosamines, which then form nitrogenous polymers and melanoidins. Voila, pictures of Jesus.There is a problem with caramelization. The amount of heat required for browning would also heat the cellulose fiber sufficiently to change its crystalline structure and cause it to change color as well. That has not happened. Where a picture bearing bit of coating is removed, either with adhesive or with a reducing agent such as diimide, the fiber beneath is clear and un-ablated.
A Maillard reaction seems more promising because of the presence of amines needed for a Maillard reaction. Of course, it didn't need to be Jesus; at least chemically. It could have been any recently deceased person.
Ergo, NO paint! This alone discredits McCrone.
Microscopist McCrone claims "No Blood on the Shroud" McCrone goes further and baldly states the "blood stains" are merely a Vermillion (HgS) and Iron Oxide paint mixture. He also states categorically that the Iron Oxide is "earthen" in nature and could not come from blood. Yet world renowned experts on blood, blood fractions, blood remnants, and forensic blood disagree.
Let's look at other tests done by scientists who don't rely on what they can see through a microscope, say the pyrolysis mass spectrometer tests, much more discriminating that what can be seen through a light microscope, that show that what vermillion (HgS) exists on the shroud is again, random, insufficient to be visible, and not associated with the blood stains.
Instead of discredited McCrone, take the testimony of chemist Dr. Alan Adler and biophysicist Dr. John Heller, experts on blood and blood fractions, who state categorically in peer-reviewed scientific Journals, that the blood stains consist of hemoglobin and its derivatives. Aside from light microscopy, Heller and Adler tested for hemochromagen (positive), cyanmethemoglovin (positive), bile pigment bilirubin (positive), and proteolytic enzymes (positive), human specific protein albumin (positive), presence of serum halos around stains (positive), and immunological determination that the blood is of primate origin. Perhaps we should look at Yale University's Dr. Joseph Gall's spectrophotometer tests that showed the blood absorbing light in 410 nanometers... a test that he states is "specific" for blood as "nothing in nature that absorbs light at four hundred ten nanometers that strongly". Or perhaps we should accept the word of Dr. Bruce Cameron, whose "double doctorate is dedicated to hemoglobin in all its many forms", who on reviewing the test results stated "You both should know what it is. It's old acid met-hemoglobin." (a remnant compound of aged blood.)
Ergo, according to some of the world's top experts on blood, the blood stains on the Shroud of Turin, are exactly that... blood stains. Again McCrone's bald statements are refuted. I could also go into McCrone's attempts to sabotage other researcher's work including preventing his own colleagues from having access to the samples of Shroud threads he had.
You want sources?
Adler, Alan. "The origin and nature of blood on the Turin Shroud" in Turin Shroud - Image of Christ? William Meacham, ed. (Hong Kong: Turin Shroud Photographic Exhibition Organising Committee, 1987), 57-9.Adler, Alan." Updating Recent Studies on the Shroud of Turin" Archaeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic, and Biochemical Analysis, American Chemical Society Symposium Series No. 625, Chapter 17 (1996), 223-8.
Ford, David. "The Shroud of Turin 'Blood' Images: Blood or Paint? A History of Science Inquiry" University of Maryland Baltimore (2000), PDF file, "http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf", 2/17/2005. Heller, J.H. and A.D. Adler, "Blood on the Shroud of Turin", Applied Optics 19:2742-4 (1980).
Heller, J.H. and A.D. Adler, "A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin", Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal 14: 81-103 (1981).
Porter, Daniel. "The Chemical Nature of the Shroud" http://www.shroudstory.com/faq-chemistry.htm/ (2005), 2/17/2005.
Rogers, Raymond N. "New Tests Prove 1988 Carbon 14 Dating Invalid: Shroud of Turin Shown to be Much Older". Thermochimica ActaVolume 425: 189-194, (2005).
There are a lot more but these should be sufficient.
No, I would say: "Dear Lord, I apologize for the abused condition of your shroud. It would seem that there were those more interested in proving that it belonged to you, than they did in continuing doing your work here on Earth. Please forgive them."
Again, you impute motives to people you do not know. Assumptions. Judgemental.
Just a preliminary hint about something that is coming out soon. This is rough html. More will follow on the website soon. Read in order:
Hands: http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/grouponly01.htm
Face: http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/grouponly02.htm
Back: http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/grouponly03.htm
Align: http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/alignbig.jpg
Dan Porter
Actually no. You're free to believe what you want to believe and so am I. The "evidence" (?) and "provenance" (?), regarding the Shroud, both in the affirmative and the negative, is sufficient to cause you to believe, or reinforce your prior belief, that the Shroud is genuine. Yor're welcome to it.
The exact opposite holds true for me. The history of and the results of various examinations of the Shroud, such as it is, reinforce my opinions and skepticisms that the Shroud is, indeed, a Medieval fake.
I don't think either of us will move from our respective positions.
