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Who cares, anyway? What's the point? Ooooh, it's Christ's sweat, it's holy! Not.

This is from an article I read yesterday.

Excerpt

A research paper published in Thermochimica Acta suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old.
The author dismisses 1988 carbon-14 dating tests which concluded that the linen sheet was a medieval fake.
The shroud, which bears the faint image of a blood-covered man, is believed by some to be Christ's burial cloth.
Raymond Rogers says his research and chemical tests show the material used in the 1988 radiocarbon analysis was cut from a medieval patch woven into the shroud to repair fire damage.
This was responsible for an invalid date being assigned to the original shroud cloth, he argues.
"The radiocarbon sample has completely different chemical properties than the main part of the shroud relic," said Mr Rogers, who is a retired chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, US.
"The sample tested was dyed using technology that began to appear in Italy about the time the crusaders' last bastion fell to the Mameluke Turks in AD 1291," said Mr Rogers.
"The radiocarbon sample cannot be older than about AD 1290, agreeing with the age determined in 1988. However, the shroud itself is actually much older."
Some now hope the Vatican will give approval for samples of the shroud to be re-tested.
But, says Mr Minor, "the church is very hesitant, very reluctant for that to be done, because they've been given so many conflicting opinions". LINK

In other words, there is no conclusive evidence that the shroud is a fake, thus I would trust the opinions of those with professional expertise in this area far more than our armchair freeper experts.

"there is no conclusive evidence that the shroud is a fake"

You seem to have listened to the OJ trial. The same folks that said "there was no conclusive evidence to convict Scott Peterson" and OJ might buy that there is no conclusive evidence that the shroud is a fake--but carbon dating IS CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE.

Stating that the shroud is believable because they're putting forward this new theory that "aw, gee, maybe they carbon dated the wrong threads," that's right up there with deciding that it's PROVEN the sun revolves around the earth because "aw, gee, maybe they were using the wrong slide rule when they did the calculations for the orbit of the sun and moon."

There needs to be more than legend to prove it's Jesus's burial cloth. There needs to be provenance, and the carbon dating removes that possibility. If legend is all we need to prove something in the face of tangible evidence to the contrary, I got a fire-breathing dragon in my backyard I want to sell you. Sure, I know, no animal exists on the planet that breathes fire according to every taxonomist and biologist, but gee, I read about them in some storybooks, so they must be real.

More to the point, the article doesn't merely suggest that the shroud may have been older, it demonstrates that it was. Radoicarbon analysis works by measuring the ratios of heavy carbon (C16) to light carbon (C14). By demonstrating that a portion of the fabric came from the 16th century, and considering that the test result pointed to the twelfth or thirteenth century, we then know that the later carbon source had to be balanced by an older carbon source to yield a test result in between the two dates.

While it may not be possible to test a new patch of cloth, it would seem quite simple to expose the lie, if it were a lie that the sampled patch conatined two different sets of fibers. Preposterously simple. And that exposed lie would discredit what is a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal, Thermochimica Acta. The publishers would certainly not publish something which could be so easily disproven.

LIE, please do also note the way VDS refused to respond to your sarcasm in kind, and learn from it. It makes her much more persuasive.