But the fabricator of the Shroud had to face his own contemporary science, such as it was, and knowledgeable laymen. Though it was a superstitious time, there were still persons capable of rational skepticism. Therefore, I doubt many butchers were taken in by "the bones of pigs".You are making the assumption that no one else, save personages of church and castle were intelligent ( or honest).
If you can't see the significance of that distinction,
You have clarified your definition. When I had a racing shop, I used to "fabricate" copies of English Formula Racing Cars suspensions and even whole chassis's. Though they were "replicas", they were not fakes by virtue that they were mechanically and materially true to the originals that I copied. After a while, my copies became superior to the originals to the point that originals, to the uninitiated, seemed to be poor replicas. Why did I commit this unlicensed forgery? Because the English chassis makers charged $3,000 through their American distributor and I could produce the same or better for $1,800. The doctors and lawyers that bought my parts and chassis' considered themselves astute for saving the money. Later on, they would attempt to sell these cars as "originals". I always remained silent.
I belive the Shroud was manufactured under similar circumstances.
(Ah,Hah! She thinks, now we have the motive for "elbucko's dispute of the shroud, he's a bloody forger his' self").
Not so, I prefer Craftsman and "Replicator". Forgery is dishonest.
You are playing the deconstruction game here...
No I'm not. You present contradictions, such as:..."The fact that the image on the Shroud depicts distinctive wounds that would be either rare or specific to Jesus disputes that particular claim."
The; "that would either be rare", contradicts "specific to Jesus". Furthermore, I doubt that in the long history of the Roman Empire that Jesus of Nazareth was the only person that was ridiculed with a crown of thorns or had his side pierced with a lance and legs left un-broken. Especially if it was late in the day and the crew wanted to go for beers. I believe this treatment was more common than supposed. That the records come down that this was done to Christ is not proof that it was done only to Him.
It's clear that you care more about assumptions than evidence and have no interest in an objective assessment of the details.
I beg your pardon, but the assumptions are that its authentic, whereas objective science, that is science without an interest in the conclusion, suggests otherwise. As well, the Shroud is always in the custody of those who have an interest in maintaining the mystery (and therefore the interest). Would the Catholic Church turn the Shroud over to the National Institute of Science for analysis, the results would be more credible. As it is now, the evidence has the veracity of O.J.Simpson's hunt for the "real killers' of Ron and Nichol.
If the shroud is fake, that doesn't really prove or disprove anything about Jesus.
True, but it will raise many questions about the nature of man and what he is willing, in the name of whatever, to believe. From "Get Rich Quick" schemes to the promise of 72 Virgins.
If the shroud is real, then atheists are sure gonna have a lot of 'splainin' to do.
I am not an atheist, far from it. But I am a skeptic. Sorry to disappoint you.
I think you are assuming a level of scientific knowledge that they simply didn't have. A lot of what we now take for granted is unknown, including the scientific method itself. There wasn't rational skepticism in most cases because there wasn't rationality as we know it. In my Medieval history classes, I heard all sorts of accounts that simply sound absurd by modern standards. Look at how they responded to the plague. Look at other forged artifacts. They have, in fact, found non-human bones that were considered the bones of saints. It's not a matter of intelligence, per se, but understanding how the world works and knowledge. The experiences of most people didn't extend beyond a few miles of their home and even minor things that we take for granted, like exact birthdates, what year it was, and such, were often unknown unless they fell on a major holiday.
Americans are used to questioning everything around them but that's not a given or even the norm throughout much of history. If you want to experience a taste of that today, try going to Japan. In Japan, things happen simply because that's the way they've always been done. And, often, they simply never get questioned seriously. For example, I'd often ask my co-workers a fairly basic question when we went out to eat -- "What's in that?" Often they'd struggle to answer the question becuase exactly how their food is made or exactly what's in it doesn't really matter to them. In fact, the foreigners who ask the most questions are the ones who go crazy in Japan because there often aren't answers readily available to satisfy the rational skeptic.
I belive the Shroud was manufactured under similar circumstances.
I think that's also a possibility. But I think that without an original, the Shroud wouldn't look the way it does. And the presence of an original, even if we don't have it, is also significant. A lot depends on how the image was placed there. If it's paint, then I think it's a copy. If it's not paint, and there is plenty of evidence that it isn't, then I think it could very well be legit.
(Ah,Hah! She thinks, now we have the motive for "elbucko's dispute of the shroud, he's a bloody forger his' self").
Not so, I prefer Craftsman and "Replicator". Forgery is dishonest.
I'm a "he", by the way. That's fine. A lot of ancient "craftsmen" weren't trying to be dishonest, either. But I think you should look at the relicas that are known to exist from that period to see the sorts of replicas that Medieval craftsman would normally produce.
No I'm not. You present contradictions, such as:..."The fact that the image on the Shroud depicts distinctive wounds that would be either rare or specific to Jesus disputes that particular claim."
The; "that would either be rare", contradicts "specific to Jesus".
I wrote, "that would either be rare or specific." Where is the contradiction. These wounds are either specific to Jesus or, if they happened to others, would be rare.
Furthermore, I doubt that in the long history of the Roman Empire that Jesus of Nazareth was the only person that was ridiculed with a crown of thorns or had his side pierced with a lance and legs left un-broken.
I don't. Those wounds are explained to the circumstances of his death.
Especially if it was late in the day and the crew wanted to go for beers. I believe this treatment was more common than supposed.
Again, we are back to belief. Do you have any evidence to support your belief?
Remember, the purpose wasn't to hang them on a piece of wood and have them die quickly. The whole purpose was a slow death. That Jesus was speared and taken down quickly had to do with the Jewish holidays and the circumstances of that particular corner of the Roman Empire. There were plenty quicker ways to kill people if speed was the objective.
That the records come down that this was done to Christ is not proof that it was done only to Him.
I agree and I've said as much. But I don't agree they were common, either. Basically, the Shroud was either Jesus or someone crucified like Jesus. Jesus received a quirky crucifiction so then we're left having to explain why someone else received a similarly quirkly crucifiction. At some point, Occam's Razor starts to rear its head.
It's clear that you care more about assumptions than evidence and have no interest in an objective assessment of the details.
I beg your pardon, but the assumptions are that its authentic, whereas objective science, that is science without an interest in the conclusion, suggests otherwise.
Objective science, so far, has been inconclusive. If there were any slam-dunks, we'd know about it. Science doesn't claim that we have to assume it's fake or real. Science says that we should come up with a thesis and test it. One can't do that without looking at the details and you aren't dealing with the details. You are dealing in guilt by association.
As well, the Shroud is always in the custody of those who have an interest in maintaining the mystery (and therefore the interest). Would the Catholic Church turn the Shroud over to the National Institute of Science for analysis, the results would be more credible. As it is now, the evidence has the veracity of O.J.Simpson's hunt for the "real killers' of Ron and Nichol.
They won't turn the Shroud over to be chopped up and dated for the same reason the Egyptian Museums won't allow them to chop up Tutankhamen's mummy to find out if he's been murdered or not. That doesn't mean that either group is tryign to hide something. If the Shroud was so important to the Church, they'd certainly utilize it a lot more. To the contrary, they've pretty much kept it under lock and key. There were also plenty in the Church who seemed more than happy to accept the Medieval dating and the Church isn't what's driving continued interest in it. Looking for the same sort of suspicious self-interested angle that you are, I'm just not seeing it.
I am not an atheist, far from it. But I am a skeptic. Sorry to disappoint you.
I'm not disappointed. I'm also what would probably be considered a heretic by many of the Christians here and have spent plenty of time looking at historical Jesus literature, including the skeptical sort. I can appreciate skepticism. But there is an interesting book by Timothy Luke Johnson about the Historical Jesus search called The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels in which he makes a fairly important point. Discussing the skeptics who claim that Jesus was just a human (with plenty of variations on that theme) he points out that if you automatically discount all of the miracles in the Gospels as an embelishment or lie, don't be surprised if you find a Jesus that is just a man. You've basically excluded all of the evidence, out of hand, that could prove otherwise.
Similarly, if you start with the assumption that the Shroud can't be the product of a miraculous event, you'll of course be left with the conclusion that it's a fake. But even if I do that thought experiment, the idea that it's a wholly original fake (i.e., someone simply decided to create a fake shroud without anything to work from other than the Gospels) just does not fit with what I know about Medieval science, craftsmanship, and relic forgeries. Contrary to what you seem to think about the Medieval mind, they weren't rational skeptics in the modern sense. If they were, they wouldn't have believed the Earth was flat, that bleeding people with leeches could cure them, or believed that throwing a suspected witch into the water to see if she'd drown after having stones sewn into her clothes was a good way to tell if she was a witch or not. They simply didn't question the world around themselves the way we do and a Medieval forger would not have had to do such a good job, if they wanted to fake the burrial shroud of Jesus, that it contains features not readily explainable even with modern science.
Actually, no it is not contradictory. Why? Because some things we see on the shroud are common to most crucifixion victims, some are rare, and some, as near as we can tell, are unique to the crucifixion applied to Jesus. There are many aspects of crucifixion... the combination of what we see compounds the likely-hood that this crucifixion was unique.
Furthermore, I doubt that in the long history of the Roman Empire that Jesus of Nazareth was the only person that was ridiculed with a crown of thorns or had his side pierced with a lance and legs left un-broken. Especially if it was late in the day and the crew wanted to go for beers. I believe this treatment was more common than supposed. That the records come down that this was done to Christ is not proof that it was done only to Him.
The crowning with a crown of thorns was because he had been called KING... so they crowned him. How many other criminals would have been mocked in that manner? Breaking the legs to hasten the death of a crucifixion victim was such a standard thing they had a word for it... "crucifragium"... and even crucifragium was unusual because the vast majority of crucifixion victims were left to suffer and die of exposure - many of them lasted for days. The Romans did not care whether their victims were dead before they went home for beer. The three crucified men on the particular day that Jesus was executed were granted a degree of leniency in consideration of the upcoming Jewish holy day. The two thieves, being still alive had their legs broken... Jesus was already dead, but to assure that, Longinus stabbed him with his lancia.
Let's say for the sake of argument that, yes, there were a couple of other crucifixions that duplicated the torture exacted on Jesus... The odds that ANY other crucified man was even buried are slim to none (we know of only one other than Jesus... Jehohannon) because the bodies were left on the crosses as examples of what happens to people who flout the Empire... it was NOT ALLOWED except in special circumstances. Now we have to have the John Doe crucifixion victim, having been treated exactly the same as the Biblical record of Jesus of Nazareth, being most unlikely buried according to Jewish funereal rites IN a TOMB with Travertine Aragonite Limestone (which only is found outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem) in an expensive cloth that probably represented a month's worth of individual labor, AND the body removed from the cloth prior to any important putrefaction occurring AND this bloody (Read ritually unclean) cloth is saved for some unknown reason... all so that the Shroud of this John Doe comes down to us today to astound us and confuse us. You know, Bucko, there comes a point at which the concatenation of improbables becomes so drawn that THEY, THEMSELVES, constitute a miracle. Just as if we agree the Shroud IS a 14th Century fraud, the creation of such a hoax by an unknown genius demonstrating polymath abilities in numerous disparate fields, to include so many inexplicable things, that is unduplicatable 700 years later is ALSO miraculous. In fact, it may be even MORE miraculous to ascribe the Shroud to an unknown artist of the medieval world than to ascribe it to a man already associated with miracles.
At some point Occam's famous razor just won't cut anymore...
I beg your pardon, but the assumptions are that its authentic, whereas objective science, that is science without an interest in the conclusion, suggests otherwise. As well, the Shroud is always in the custody of those who have an interest in maintaining the mystery (and therefore the interest). Would the Catholic Church turn the Shroud over to the National Institute of Science for analysis, the results would be more credible.b
Elbucko, EXACTLY what "objective science" suggests otherwise? Discredited and totally outdated McCrone? The the now discredited 1988 Carbon 14 tests? AGAIN you refuse to follow the science, ignoring peer-reviewed research in favor of "science" that WAS done with an agenda (McCrone) or "science" that at the last minute discarded the agreed and accepted protocols, ignored their own criteria, ignored "red flags" in the results (results from four tests from a single sample, none of which were within the degrees of confidence of any other result), and which has now been proven to have sampled THE WRONG THING (the C14 test).
You accuse the Catholic Church of not "turning over the Shroud to the National "Institute" of Sciences" yet the did essentially that on October 8 - 13, 1978, when they allowed an international team of top scientists including atheists, Jews, Protestants, Agnostics, and Catholics to have unfettered access to the Shroud for a total of 120 hours, taking samples, photographing (visible, ultra-violet, infra-red) , X-raying, spectroanalysing, and a host of other tests. YOU choose to ignore ALL of the findings brought about by this team of scientists... in favor of what? McCrone???? PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE OF THIS "OBJECTIVE SCIENCE", Elbucko... and McCrone is not acceptable. Nore is non-scientist Joe Nickell.
As it is now, the evidence has the veracity of O.J.Simpson's hunt for the "real killers' of Ron and Nichol.
And what exactly do you FAIL to understand about peer-reviewed science? The evidence has been checked. Its veracity is not in question. The findings are true. You would have voted with the OJ jurors and ignored the DNA... irrefutable evidence that showed OJs blood on Ron Goldman... and acquitted.
Why not admit that you do not have an open mind. It has become quite apparent that regardless of the scientific or historical evidence, if it doesn't fit with your prejudices, it will be totally ignored.