Posted on 08/09/2008 1:52:58 AM PDT by Swordmaker
My friend, aren't we all? You are now on my good guy list.
Thanks.
I could relate to you my unfortunate experience at the Alltel store last year.
It was my first realization that my memory isn’t what it once was. My wife loves to remind me about it when things go missing around here.
My wife re minds me of things too. When I remind her that she has already reminded me, she denies it.
My wife reminds me of things too. When I remind her that she has already reminded me, she denies it.
Still waiting for you to address the Bronze serpent issue
God can violate his own directives. Thou shall not kill? Thou shall not commit adultery?
No, you didn't. You merely cut-and-pasted a portion of the article published in Nature 337 from February 1989.
A proper link to the article would be done like this:
Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin, by P. E. Damon, D. J. Donahue, B. H. Gore, A. L. Hatheway, A. J. T. Jull, T. W. Linick, P. J. Sercel, L. J. Toolin, C.R. Bronk, E. T. Hall, R. E. M. Hedges, R. Housley, I. A. Law, C. Perry, G. Bonani, S. Trumbore, W. Woelfli, J. C. Ambers, S. G. E. Bowman, M. N. Leese & M. S. Tite., Nature 337, February 1989, pps 651-657.
That would allow people to really read what was reported.
I critiqued your conclusions from that article that you asserted "proved" the sample was taken from a non-patch area. They did not know at that time that the sample area was patched. Had they known, it would not have been used.
In science, it is not unusual for research to be disproved in later years. Entire science text books are worthless today because the "Facts" they presented as true have been disproved.
However, they did violate their own protocols... which came out in peer reviewed books and articles, such as this one: Radiocarbon Measurement and the Age of the Turin Shroud: Possibilities and Uncertainties by archaeologist William Meacham, that were very critical of the violation of procedures and pointed out the very real potential for problems which have now surfaced.
In the study of the Shroud, many early conclusions have been falsified by later research. For example, Dr. Pierre Barbet's studies on cadavers claiming that a nail through the palm would not support the weight of a body, published in peer reviewed journals in France, have been proven wrong by more modern research: Peirre Barbet Revisited by Dr. Frederick T. Zugibe. Therefor, the conclusions published by Dr. Barbet have been discarded in favor of better science.
In the case of the Nature article, other critiques of the Shroud's reported age started to rise almost immediately. Over the years, more and more discrepancies were noted. Radiocarbon Dating The Shroud: A Critical Statistical Analysis" by R Van Haelst, a chemical statistician, noted in 1997 that there were serious problem with the variation of ages reported not only by the three labs but also with the variation in ages reported by the tests done on sub-sub-samples done within each lab. This was a red flag that was totally ignored which should have indicated that the samples were not homogenous. In fact, statistical analysis proves that even the 8 tested pieces that the Arizona lab tested were NOT FROM THE SAME POPULATION. In this paper, Van Haelst reveals that the Oxford managers of the 1988 Shroud C14 tests, dissatisfied with the variation of ages from the Arizona lab, arguably the most sophisticated lab on the list, admitted that they decided to massage the data to make it more in agreement! Van Haelst's work has not been refuted.
The proper statistical analysis of the raw data from the three labs shows that the tested samples were less and less related to each other the farther away from the edge of the Shroud the tested sample had been located. The master sample was not the same, homogenous, from one end to the other.
This prompted scholarly researchers Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford, hypothesize that the non-homogeneity of the samples was due to a renaissance era patching by a little known technique known as French invisible Reweaving which was used to patch valuable wall hangings, tapestries, and arrases. They published Evidence for the Skewing of the C-14 Dating of the Shroud of Turin Due to Repairs by Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford, in 2000. They followed it with Textile Evidence Supports Skewed Radiocarbon Date of Shroud of Turin", Historical Support of a 16th Century Restoration in the Shroud C-14 Sample Area, and New Historical Evidence Explaining the ‘Invisible Patch’ in the 1988 C-14 Sample Area of the Turin Shroud.
This prompted the late Raymond N. Rogers (who had done micro-chemical analysis of the nature of the actual image mechanism, which he reported in The Shroud of Turin: An Amino-Carbonyl Reaction (Maillard Reaction) May Explain The Image Formation by Raymond N. Rogers and Anna Arnoldi, Melanoidins Vol 4., Ames J.M. ed., Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 2003, pp.106-113) to attempt to disprove Benford's and Marino's contention that the samples were a patched area and were not consistent with the main body of the Shroud which he believed to be unsupportable. He did the research and reported his findings in Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin by Raymond N. Rogers [January 2005], Thermochimica Acta, Volume 425, Issues 1-2, 20 January 2005, Pages 189-194. His tests proved that Benford's and Marino's hypothesis was actually correct. The 1988 C14 Study sample was NOT the same as the main body of the Shroud.
Incidentally, Rogers findings on the samples were independently confirmed in Microscopical Investigation of Selected Raes Threads From the Shroud of Turin by John L. Brown, who had in his custody threads from the Raes sample taken from the Shroud in 1973 from an area immediately adjacent and closer to the left edge than the 1988 samples. These were found to be 100% non-original Shroud material, homogenous to the interloping linen on the 1988 samples but not to any main body threads.
For further proof that Ferrous Oxide has nothing to do with the image on the Shroud, read A Detailed Critical Review of the Chemical Studies on the Turin Shroud: Facts and InterpretationsBy Thibault Heimburger. You might also want to read Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) By Raymond N. Rogers (2004), that, in several of the answers, lays out why your pet theory of Ferrous Oxide creation is not viable.
Are these links sufficient? I assure you that there are hundreds more that I could post. Note that ALL of these post-date yours Nature article and directly demolish your Science et Vie article with real science, not twaddle.
In answer to your question about why no further C14 tests have been done, the answer is simple. The Vatican, the owner of the Shroud, has declined permission for any authorized C14 tests.
Since I have put so much work into responding to you, I have decided to ping the members of the Shroud of Turin Ping List to this reply. I think they will find it useful.
Thanks for the ping!
You are always welcome, Alamo-Girl.
Thank you for the ping and the info.
I can tell by the scholarship and depth of detail you and the others here present that my foggy brain is way out of its depth, but I do find it very interesting. I don’t believe all of the mumbo-jumbo that organised religion has built around the Man, but I believe there was a Christ, that He was crucified, that He did rise, and that we are not fully privy to the mysteries surrounding His life. The Shroud is one of those mysteries, one I choose to believe.
I note with approval that you appear to have gone to Barrie Swortz's website as noted earlier in the thread, and have quoted a peer-reviewed journal, Nature, in your post #25. But did you note the following?
a) It is now about 20 years old.
b) The site you quote from contains many other links which dispute / and or refute the article from Nature. Since they are also on the same site, why didn't you even make a passing reference to their presence *on* that site?
c) The passages which *you* quoted in bold in post #25 read as follows:
The strip came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas.
That's fine, but some of the other articles on this site contest or contradict this contention: in particular, there is photomicrographic (and other) evidence that the area tested in the 1988 tests was actually a portion partially re-woven (not "patched") at a later date.
Since homogeneity of the sample is of vital importance to any analytical chemistry, this alone renders any studies done on those areas "inconclusive" *until* any differences in the composition of the tested areas to the remainder of the Shroud can be quantified.
Because the distinctive three-to-one herringbone twill weave of the shroud could not be matched in the controls, however, it was possible for a laboratory to identify the shroud sample.
Did you stop to reflect that this sentence, which you yourself have emphasized, made it possible to completely break down the "double-blind" status of the protocol?
Two other thoughts.
Another FReeper has stated on a crevo thread, "Confidence comes from consilience" i.e. multiple independent approaches giving the same answer makes one all the more confident that one is on the right track.
The fact that multiple different approaches -- optical examination, mass-spectrophotometry, electron microscopy, 'wet-bench' chemical analysis, computer analysis, all converge to say that the image on the Shroud is not that of paint, that there are *real* bloodstains which do NOT comprise the image, that the image contains three-dimensional information not visible to the naked eye (and at that, not "National Treasure type pseudo-mythical hokum, but anatomical details) -- should indicate that the image is not merely a forgery.
The obvious counter-answer is, "Well, I don't believe in fairy tales or magic images. The thing *can't* be miraculous."
It is the same logic found in Isaac Asimov's short story "Button, Button". A scientist finds a way to not only convert energy to matter, but to do it in such a way that (for small mass, of course) he can re-create historical artefacts atom-for-atom. He chooses to bring back the signature of Button Gwinnett’s from the Declaration of Indenpendence.
He is unable to sell the relic however, as the experts know that the image *must* be fake: "If Button Gwinnett has been dead for two hundred years, how can his name on a new piece of parchment be found?"
But there is a perfectly well-known, *naturalistic* phenomenon which comports both with a genuine image on the Shroud, and not with medieval forgery. Have you considered Maillard reactions? The basic idea is that the outgassing of various by-products of decay from the body, react with the linen and/or fine molecular layers on the fibers of the fabric of the burial cloth. (These are the same classes of chemical reactions which happen in cooking -- try here from the New York Times for more on the cooking angle. The image was preserved here, because the process was interrupted for whatever reason. If it *was* the burial cloth of Jesus, then take your pick, Resurrection or "Passover Plot" conspiracy -- the body was still separated from the cloth after a short time, so the image was not obliterated by subsequent chemical reactions. It would remain a further fascinating question as to whether the formation of the image depended on the state of the deceased, whether they had been beaten and or dehydrated before death, and the temperature and humidity of the place of burial...
I suspect that much of the attitude towards the Shroud comes about because it is at least the (purported) burial cloth of Jesus, and as such has the taint of 'legitimizing' either religion, or even worse, superstition, as self-proclaimed brights like to refer to the Resurrection.
We have all heard of the willingness, nay, gullibility, of believers, and how they have been fooled time and time again for financial gain, whether by relics in the past, or TV preachers today.
But this cuts both ways -- if Christians are gullible, many areligious are overly skeptical. If this image had appeared on another piece of cloth from that era, and had not been associated with Jesus, all kinds of scientists would be intensely interested in characterizing the specific physiochemical processes and conditions necessary to create such an image. And instead of Christians drawn to the image like a moth to a flame, you'd probably have New Age types and and UFO fans, and probably a guest appearance by the Shroud on the X-Files.
Cheers!
(...off to Valleyfair to ride roller coasters tomorrow.)
None of these attitudes for or against brings anyone any closer to a specific characterization of the actual composition or provenance of the image.
I have seen claims that the samplw was from a patch. No one has provided a link to any proof. The article I posted was peer reviewed and stated the actual protocol.
The fact that the sample had the 3 to 1 weave means it was original cloth and not a piece of the patch. Yes it meant that double blind breaks down as stated in my article, but the ages for all of the smples agreed very well. If someone wants to refute the C-14 tests, they need to do new c-14 tests otherwise it is simply creating doubt to allow room for a claim. It is the same method used by IDers and AGW proponents. Do another C-14 test.
All of which was reproduced by the French team in their forgery.
No seriously address the issue, don’t just make it up as you go along
which issue?
I'm going to Valleyfair with the kids all day, so I won't be able to respond in detail right now.
But your statement is quite literally point-by-point *wrong*.
The only explanation for such unwillingness to consider any of the points on this thread, is -- quite literally -- bigotry and stereotyping. "There go those gullible Christians again, blathering on about miraculous images. Let's go debunk it. See, here's an image we made by fakery. Therefore the Shroud is a fake. QED."
The only problem is, it is not being insisted by all those interested in the Shroud, that miracle had *anything* to do with it. There is a perfectly naturalistic mechanism for the formation of the image; and you need not even posit the Resurrection, since a theft of the body in order to further a conspiracy (as in Passover Plot) could separate the body from the linens.
The French were able to address some of the faults of prior attempts at forgery of an image on linen.
It can only explain in a hand-waving way "maybe if the image *were* a forgery, here's a guess as to how this kind of thing might have been done".
The French work is such that it does not pass any serious independent analysis -- it is fit only to deceive the easily-led. It does NOT mimic the actual physical and chemical characteristics of the Shroud as determined by rigorous scientific analysis.
So it doesn't even rise to the level of error. It is a mere non-sequitur.
Cheers!
The French work proves that the shroud could have been produced by forgers using techniques available during the middle ages when the shroud first appeared.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear grey_whiskers!
“God can violate his own directives. Thou shall not kill? Thou shall not commit adultery?”
Not an ancient languages scholar myself, but I have it on good authority that the original is correctly translated as, “Don’t commit murder,” with implications that “murder” refers to the unjustified killing of a male member of one’s own tribe.
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