Replies

I'm back from Valleyfair, had dinner, and have been re-reading the thread.

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!

The Shroud Painting Explained
(Sidebar to Vikan Article)
by

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.