Posted on 08/09/2008 1:52:58 AM PDT by Swordmaker
bttt. Thanks for posting.
“Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.”
Exactly! I had an “aha” moment back in about 2003 when I was unable to get an otherwise intelligent young man to concede that there was any possibility that NPR and the rest of the alphabet news outlets lie constantly as a matter of policy.
If he had admitted that, then he would have been admitting that he had been deceived, and he was far too intelligent to be deceived. In effect, my claim was calling him dumb: or, at least, a lot dumber than he thought he was.
Is yours a quotation?
All it proves is that a piece of cloth could have been dusted with Ferrous Oxide to mimic the superficial appearance of the Shroud. it does NOT prove that the Shroud's features that have been scientific determined to not have been created with a dust of Ferrous Oxide or any other man-made pigment was created by "techniques available during the middle ages."
This technique was used 20 years ago by Joe Nickell. The "French Team" did nothing to add to what Joe Nickell did. Nothing. Joe Nickell based his attempt on a scientific paper done in the 1960s about using a dusting of carbon dust with an egg albumin fixer on a bas relief to eliminate the directionality seen in the attempts done by others who had done Bas relief rubbings back in the 1930s and who also claimed to have proved how it was forged. At least Joe added something new... attempting to duplicate the straw yellow/brown color of the image. Other than that all of these bas relief attempts have failed because the substances they use to rub, dust, dab, fix, etc., stand out like a sore thumb on their efforts, easily seen under a low magnification microscope, while the image creating substance on the real Shroud can only really be seen with an electron microscope.
I can make a picture of the Mona Lisa using chalk. That doesn't mean the Mona Lisa was painted using chalk. I can make a replica of the Statue of Liberty out of Papier Maché and it will look just like the real thing... but that doesn't mean that the real Statue of Liberty was made out of paper.
To claim that the French team succeeded in making a Shroud (they actually only created a face image) that meets all of the criteria of duplicating the Shroud is disingenuous. They did not.
Why am I the only one to cite sources and provide links?
bm
You have cited no sources and provided exactly one link to polyglot.com in this thread. On the other hand, counting the link that started this thread I have posted 18 links to sources, 13 of which are links to peer reviewed scientific articles either published in journals or presented at scientific conferences.
I am still waiting for those links to peer reviewed scientific articles that prove the existence of pigments and other artifacts of artiface that you implied exist.
I should also point out the twelve (12) citations to peer reviewed articles from scientific journals that are listed at the end of Daniel Porter’s article.
From one of my characters ...
The tagline was uttered by one of my characters when trying to cite a famous quote of similar expression (by Aristotle).
You are misrepresenting what the article claimed the French did.
The article you posted twice claims NONE of that. They claim they made a Shroud that "looks" like the original. They did not claim that they were able to reproduce any of what Gray=whiskers posted.
Where is the "French teams'" mass-spectrophotmetry showing no Ferrous Oxide? Where is their Electron Microscopy showing the image bearing coatings on the fibers? Where is the wet-bench chemical analysis? Where are the results of micro-chemistry? Where are the X-ray fluorescent studies? Where are the Human imuno-assay reports?
In fact, Soliton, where is the "French Teams'" peer reviewed article in a scientific journal?
Let's review.
Your two main points seem to be the quotes from Science and Vie which speak of attempts by a group to create a Christ-like image on a piece of fabric using die.
The imprinted image turned out to be wash-resistant, impervious to temperatures of 250 C (482 F) and was undamaged by exposure to a range of harsh chemicals, including bisulphite which, without the help of the gelatine, would normally have degraded ferric oxide to the compound ferrous oxide.
So what? Extensive chemical analysis has shown the following about the Shroud itself:
1) Multiple forms of chemical spectroscopy have shown the signals associated with NONE of the known pigments or paints -- including tempura and iron oxide, whether fixed or not. The question is not -- "why haven't the marks made of pigment faded away", but "what are the images made OF"?
The actual answer, verified by multiple independent methods based on different chemical and physical properties, is, "NOT PAINT, NOR PIGMENT, OF ANY TYPE".
The experiments, said Science & Vie, answer several claims made by the pro-Shroud camp, which says the marks could not have been painted onto the cloth.
For one thing, the Shroud’s defenders argue, photographic negatives and scanners show that the image could only have derived from a three-dimensional object, given the width of the face, the prominent cheekbones and nose.
This is true. And not only that -- the photographic negative of the image is there *without* turning the actual Shroud inside out at all. So having to turn the fake inside out is irrelevant to what the real Shroud is like.
In addition, they say, there are no signs of any brushmarks. And, they argue, no pigments could have endured centuries of exposure to heat, light and smoke.
This is a strawman argument. The actual physical composition of the image itself *is* known, and it is the chemical byproduct of reactions between gases from a decomposing corpse, with residue of materials used to prepare the linen for weaving, long before it was used as a burial cloth. And the actual physical thickness of the layer making the image has been measured, to be on the order of the wavelength of visible light, 200-600 nm.
Thus again, the work quoted in Science and Vie is irrelevant.
And what of "pigments wouldn't have endured centuries of exposure to heat, light and smoke?" We already know, indpendently, that the image is NOT MADE OF PIGMENT ANYWAY.
For Jacques di Costanzo, of Marseille University Hospital, southern France, who carried out the experiments, the mediaeval forger must have also used a bas-relief, a sculpture or cadaver to get the 3-D imprint.
Yes, this is consistent with the Shroud being a burial cloth, as such items are often found in proximity to cadavers.
The faker used a cloth rather than a brush to make the marks, and used gelatine to keep the rusty blood-like images permanently fixed and bright for selling in the booming market for religious relics.
Faker is right. The image on the actual Shroud is not of blood, but something else. So painting an erstwhile image which looks like it was painted in blood, has nothing to do with the real Shroud. And in this case, it's even worse, since multiple lines of study have excluded the possibility of pigment (by spectroscopy) -- rendering the painting of the image invalid -- AND confirmed the presence of breakdown products of blood; and moreover, the blood reacts with antibodies. This renders the presence of the iron-oxide-based pigment irrelevant as the source of iron on the Shroud.
So why the fixation with the idea of iron pigment anyway?
To test his hypothesis, di Costanzo used ferric oxide, but no gelatine, to make other imprints, but the marks all disappeared when the cloth was washed or exposed to the test chemicals.
Has anyone ever said that the real Shroud was washed or exposed to test chemicals? The problem in hand is not "what happened to all these beautiful marks which used to be on the Shroud" -- the Shroud still has its image.
So why is the inability to wash away a substance not found on the Shroud, used to imitate the *wrong stains on the Shroud*, supposed to be indicative of *anything*?
He also daubed the bas-relief with an ammoniac compound designed to represent human sweat and also with cream of aloe, a plant that was used as an embalming aid by Jews at the time of Christ.
What is that supposed to do? Has he performed any control groups with *actual* human sweat to find its actual chemical composition, or concentration? And what is the basis he has for assuming that sweat was the primary material important in a *real* Shroud?
He then placed the cloth over it for 36 hours — the approximate time that Christ was buried before rising again — but this time, there was not a single mark on it.
OK, so let's recap.
This guy uses a pigment which has been shown, prior to his work, to be absent from the Shroud.
He then uses the pigment to dab on a shape, on the outside of a cloth, which then has to be turned *inside out* to look like the Shroud, even though the Shroud is right-side-in.
He also screws up by using a pigment meant to represent blood, when it has been well established by all parties concerned, that the mysterious and interesting image on the actual Shroud is NOT of blood; and that there IS real blood, and not pigment, elsewhere on the Shroud.
He then shows that washing this daubing in certain chemicals, or heating it, leaves the image.
But the actual Shroud he is attempting to imitate hasn't had any problems with disappearing images anyway.
Finally, he uses an imitation of human sweat, rather than real sweat, on top of a bas-relief, not even a real corpse, without controlling either for the corpse, nor checking to see if the sweat was important in the first place.
No image appears.
His conclusion: the Shroud must be a fake.
Your other main contention seems to be the Oxford C-14 studies.
Unlike the crevo threads, the people here are not quoting old Jack Chick booklets about C-14 being unreliable for dating fossils. They have been pointing out problems in *the sample itself*. Chain-of-custody issues during the testing are one thing; violation of agreed on protocols for how and where samples were to be taken are another; exclusion of anomalous results prior to summation and reporting of the C-14 tests are yet another; and inability to control for "chain of custody" of the Shroud in the long years before anyone ever thought of testing it, are still another.
Re-read the last 3 paragraphs of post 35 again.
There are factual, peer-reviewed, indpendent issues with the swatches taken for C-14 testing: and these issues have been confirmed by photomicroscopy [subtle differences in the weaving itself at the microscopic level, thickness of the threads], and by chemistry [presence of alum and dye contaminants, differences in vanillin].
Further, it is not just a bunch of fanatics who have pointed these things out as a last ditch measure.
Post 47 contains links to peer-review work by a Ph.D. (now deceased), whose professional position was at Los Alamos, to conclude that there were systematic *sampling errors* with the C-14 tests, in the article from Nature which you have placed so much reliance on.
And in post 31, it is pointed out that the inventor of the C-14 sampling method has agreed that the tests on the Shroud on which you place so much reliance, were flawed. Not the C-14 is invalid, as you might read on a crevo thread, but that these particular tests were all screwed up:
Harry Gove, the inventor of the C14 testing technique used in the 1988 tests on the Shroud has agreed that the samples were compromised and included materials of a different date than the main body intended to be tested, thereby invalidating the tests.
In other words, the work you rely on has been "superceded".
You know, the "self-correcting" mechanism of science at work.
So it is not another example of Liars for God in action -- but of you (as well as the original C-14 testers) being careless, and getting caught at it.
But, here's the thing -- and I have already pointed this out in post 52 -- You had already been given a list of peer-reviewed scientific articles on the Shroud. But you cherry-picked ONE, which supported your pre-conceived point of view...and ignored all the other articles on the site *YOU* quoted from.
And now you expect nobody to notice when you accuse them of supplying no links?? See posts 47, 66, and 68.
You are coming across like a newbie YEC on one of the old crevo-threads.
For someone who claims respect for science and the scientific method, that is not a very good showing.
It would be ONE thing if all of the people disputing you on this thread were insisting on an essentially miraculous origin for the Shroud, and you were standing firm on principle that "IT has to be scientifically proven!" (much as a newbie YEC might say "God did it by a miracle, it is not mine to ask how!" from the other direction, on a crevo thread).
But on this thread, you are given repeated independent links to peer-reviewed journal articles which both refute your points AND directly answer your questions, and moreover, directly addressing the questions *SCIENTIFICALLY* -- without resorting to miracle.
and you resort to ad hominem.
Is this really the reputation you want to build for yourself?
Cheers!
Excellent recap.
“(much as a newbie YEC might say “God did it by a miracle, it is not mine to ask how!” from the other direction, on a crevo thread).”
Haven’t been on one of those in a while.
Are they still denying that there could be such a thing as a “big bang creationist?”
“The tagline was uttered by one of my characters when trying to cite a famous quote of similar expression (by Aristotle).”
It is a very succinct expression of a concept I had been taking paragraphs to get at.
Oh, btw, this is another demonstration of the truth of Ecclesiastes: there is nothing new under the sun.
Every time I think I’ve had a significant insight, I discover that someone was there hundreds (or thousands) of years ago.
Talk about late to the party.
Never regret having a great thought... again.
Repetition does not devalue it.
The Shroud Painting Explained
(Sidebar to Vikan Article)
by
Walter C. McCrone
Reprinted from Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1998
Volume 24 Number 26 - Copyright 1998 - All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by permission
I beg to differ with the recent statement in BAR (and in Time magazine) that “no one has been able to account for the image” on the Shroud of Turin.
Nearly 20 years ago the Catholic Church invited me to determine chemically what the image is on the Shroud of Turin.
I obtained 32 samples from the shroud: 18 from areas where there are images both of a body and of bloodstains) and 14 from non-image areas (some from clear areas that served as controls, others from scorch and water stains caused by a fire in 1532). The samples were taken with squares of sticky tape, each of which exceeded a square inch in area and held more than 1,000 linen fibers and any materials attached to the shroud. They were excellent samples. I used standard forensic tests to check for blood. I found none. There is no blood on the shroud.
To determine what substances are present in the shroud images, I conducted tests based on polarized light microscopy. I identified the substance of the body-and-blood images as the paint pigment red ochre, in a collagen tempera medium. The blood image areas consist of another pigment, ver-milion, in addition to red ochre and tempera. These paints were in common use during the Middle Ages.
The paint on the shroud was dilute (0.01 percent in a 0.01 percent gelatin solution). I made up such a paint and an artist friend, Walter Sanford, painted an excellent shroud-like image (see photo at right and my book Judgement Day for the Shroud [Chicago: Mccrone Research Institute, 1996]. pp.145.149). Known as grisaille, the style of the painting, with its very faint, monochromatic image, was also common in the 14th century.
Based on the complete absence of any reference to the shroud before 1356, Bishop Henri of Poitiers’s statement that he knew’ the artist, the 14th-century painting style and my test results, I concluded in two papers published in 1980 that the shroud was painted in 1355 (’to give the paint a year to dry”). A third paper in 1981 confirmed these results with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray determination of the elements present (iron, mercury and sulfur) in the two paints. Eight years after my published results, the carbon-dating results were reported as 1325 ± 65 year - thus confirming my date of 1355.
An expert in microanalysis and painting authentication, Walter C. McCrone is director emeritus of the McCrone Reaearch Institute in Chicago, Illinois.
http://www.shroud.com/bar.htm#sidebar
If you would like me to take you seriously, and I usually do, please provide support and links for your assertions.
1. McCrone has been pwned so many times, it's not worth mentioning him.
A high-level summary of this is in the article at the top of the thread; his name was even in boldface. A little gem you missed, from the article which started this thread:
Mark Anderson, who worked for McCrone, did not agree with him (a little known fact). Anderson used laser-microprobe Raman spectrometry to demonstrate that what McCrone thought was hematite was in fact an organic compound.
2. The article you just posted has been riddled full of holes -- e.g.
The samples were taken with squares of sticky tape, each of which exceeded a square inch in area and held more than 1,000 linen fibers and any materials attached to the shroud. They were excellent samples.
Get Shroudie or Swordmaker to buy you a clue -- I'm getting ready for work -- about McCrone's mis-handling of the sticky tape.
I used standard forensic tests to check for blood. I found none. There is no blood on the shroud.
Did you notice he doesn't mention with any specificity *which* tests were performed; he doesn't quantify the results; he does not mention the presence of any controls; and that other workers, using multiple different methods, have all found blood? And again, that they blood is not what makes the image?
The paint on the shroud was dilute (0.01 percent in a 0.01 percent gelatin solution).
How does he know the original composition of the non-existent paint? (The image is due to Maillard reactions with the cloth, not paint.)
And again, re-read posts 47 and 69 for links.
And again, why are you cherry-picking from the sites you quote, and ignoring more recent studies also linked in those sites, which contradict the links you quote?
Finally -- and this is important:
(see photo at right and my book Judgement Day for the Shroud [Chicago: Mccrone Research Institute, 1996]. pp.145.149).
I concluded in two papers published in 1980 that the shroud was painted in 1355 (’to give the paint a year to dry”). A third paper in 1981 confirmed these results with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray determination of the elements present (iron, mercury and sulfur) in the two paints.
That's great. Did you happen to scroll down the VERY PAGE YOU JUST LINKED TO YOUR ARTICLE??!!!
One of the outstanding attributes of BAR is the airing of both sides of controversies. I am an archaeological chemist and a professor emeritus who has carried out research related to the shroud, and I would like to make several points. (1) The carbon 14 test: I accept the test date of 1325 A.D. +/- 65 years as having about a 95 percent probability of being correct. However, 5 percent uncertainty for an object having the potential importance of the shroud is intolerably large. More testing must be done. In any chemical analysis, if the sampling is faulty, then the results are highly questionable. Such is the case for the shroud because careful procedures for sampling and testing were ignored in favor of sampling the shroud from its most contaminated area, where it had been handled frequently and where threads from a side panel were woven into the sample. Add to this the possibility that previous attempts at conserving the shroud may have included the application of organic materials. Linen fibrils are hollow, and if organic material diffused slowly into the fibres over a long period of time, a thorough cleaning just before C-14 testing would not remove the interior contamination. However, a large amount of contamination would be necessary to skew the date from about 30 A.D. to 1300 A.D. (2) According to "The Shroud Painting Explained," by Walter McCrone, (November/December 1998), "There is no blood on the shroud." Professor Alan Adler, a chemist highly skilled in this area of testing, states that the stains on the shroud were from blood. Do you believe a highly skilled microscopist (McCrone) or a highly skilled chemist (Adler)? McCrone found the presence of mercury (from the pigment vermilion) by X-ray fluorescence. XRF happens to be my specialty, and I wrote to McCrone years ago pointing out a misinterpretation of the mercury lines. There is far less mercury present than McCrone believes. Mercury is probably present due to artists touching their paintings with the shroud. (3) McCrone believes that the image of the body is primarily iron oxide in a collagen tempera medium. Adler and others have shown that at least 90 percent of the iron present on the shroud is bonded to cellulose and is not present as colored iron oxide. Further, Adler has explained the coloration of the body image as due to dehydrative oxidation of cellulose. If even very low concentrations of iron are present in water that is used to ret linen (soaking to decompose the nonfibrous materials), linen will react chemically with this iron, and the iron will be bound to the cellulose. Other scientists and I have found that iron catalyzes the dehydrative oxidation of cellulose, producing a coloration similar to that found on the shroud. Certain highly colored threads, and in particular one outstanding dark thread, run vertically in the shroud and are colored much darker than surrounding threads. The obvious explanation is that these threads probably contain relatively high concentrations of iron (this could be tested may) compared with their neighbors, and iron caused these threads to darken more when the image was formed. Certainly these dark threads were not painted by an artist. Also the body image penetrates only a minute distance into the linen. It seems impossible that a painter could reproduce this, particularly because the image is fuzzy and vague and can only be recognized from a distance of several feet. (4) One of McCrone's shroud paintings was tested by a chemist in my presence, and several tests proved this painting to be unlike the Shroud of Turin, thus debunking the debunker. (5) Swiss and Israeli scientists have found pollen particles on the shroud from plants found only in the region of Israel. It is most unlikely that these particles could have been transferred by wind from Israel to France or Spain, where the shroud was 'made" according to Gary Vikan ('Debunking the Shroud: Made by Human Hands, November/ December 1998). (6) Some correct three-dimensional information is present in the shroud image. When artists tried to make sketches containing three-dimensional information, only grossly distorted 3-D images resulted when tested with special instrumentation. An artist in the 14th century could not even conceive that a painting could incorporate 3-D information, let alone be able to produce such a painting. 7) McCrone claims there is a complete absence of any mention of the shroud before 1356. The Mandylion, a relic showing the face of Jesus Christ on a cloth, was famous for centuries and was displayed many times to the public. Many believe that the Mandylion, which disappeared when Constantinople was sacked in 1204, is indeed the shroud (this is the hypothesis of the British historian Ian Wilson). if so, then the shroud was mentioned frequently throughout history. (8) Vikan writes, "The shroud is in no way unique in appearance among its object type." Other art historians vehemently disagree with Vikan. It is my understanding that the others feel the concept and style of the shroud are unique. If Vikan does not agree with this, he should produce photographs of the other shrouds or objects that he talks about. (9) Of the 14th-century bishops' letters to the Pope claiming the shroud was a fake, Vikan says, 'The competition for [relics and pilgrimages] ... was intense. And stealing and forgery were both part of the business." Perhaps false reports that a competitor's relic was a fake was also "part of the business." (10) There are icons predating 1300 A.D. and coins made before 1000 A.D. that have the same details as the facial image of the shroud; these could have influenced a later painter. But if the shroud were copied from some previous representation of Christ, why is it unique in showing nail holes through the wrists and a totally naked figure of Christ, both front and back? In fairness to both sides of this controversy, I believe that BAR should have an article written by some of the "pro- shroud" experts, and I think that it would be great if BAR would fund a project by McCrone to reproduce the image of the Shroud of Turin (the face only would be sufficient, plus some bloodstains). Then let others, such as Professor Adler, test the McCrone shroud and publish the results. Finally, I hope that BAR will lend its weight toward convincing the Vatican that the shroud must be tested further. Incidentally, in 1978 some scientists who studied the shroud thought they would make short work of it and prove it was a fake. They failed. Giles F. Carter Clemson, South Carolina
If you want to scroll down and read the rest of YOUR OWN PAGE, you might learn something. (Even McCrone's attempted refutations, which lead to further controversies elsewhere, with more experts than he can keep up with, so he resorts to ad hominem as opposed to the patient, systematic, specific, reproducible, converging lines of evidence of everyone else. Along the way, note the credentials of those, and the widely differing specialties, of those who have examined the Shroud critically and found it to be genuine from their own specialties.
Why did you leave out (or worse, suppress) their comments on your own page?
Cheers!
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