Posted on 03/26/2013 8:14:48 PM PDT by NYer
Are y’all neighbors?
As someone who can spin and weave flax into linen, just the cloth itself is fascinating to me. All that I have read over the debate of the cloth never responded to someone who knows the nature of the ancient ways of manufacturing cloth. Yet everything is about the image.
We take the cheap ($$, not shoddy, but inexpensive) fabric in all our clothes and homes very much for granted. We don't have a clue how difficult and time consuming is the making of a single yard of hand-spun and hand-loomed fabric.
How wide are the woven sections of cloth in the shroud, before accounting for the seams? The wider the cloth from selvedge to selvedge, the more valuable. Remember the line "his robe was without seam"? It could mean that it was so wide that there was no seam in his robe, or for experienced weavers this could also mean that the seam of Jesus's robe was what we call "double-warp" weaving, where two warps are on the loom and the weaver puts in the weft in such a way that the fabric is essentially folded length-wise as it is woven. I have sometimes speculated that this shroud might also be his "robe" that the Roman's cast lots to steal. But that's just a fancy of mine, not any kind of assertion or argument.
Linen is a fiber that does not decay easily, so it could easily last 2000 years. Silk and wool start to rot and shred quickly, and even cotton won't last hundreds of years.
Fabric before our era was very valuable, as I wrote before. That this length of fine linen was not cut up to be used for clothing before now is miraculous in and of itself.
If just the fabric truly, really dates this far back, it goes a long way towards persuading me that the image is authentic.
OK, you have an entire Shroud to work with. There are two sections of it that are known to have been sewn into it in the Middle Ages—there is no disputing that. So, you want to find the age of the Shroud. Where do you take your sample from?
I have said now over and over again that I understand and am sympathetic to the argument that newer material could have been spliced into the 1988 sample, possibly skewing the result. I am not sympathetic to claims that smoke impregnation somehow caused a 1300-year discrepancy in test results.
It has been 25 years, so why hasn’t the test been redone? IMHO, because neither the Vatican nor Shroud researchers are afraid to hear the results of a second C-14 dating.
Yet you consider the matter closed.
It has been 25 years, so why hasn’t the test been redone?
You'd have to ask the folks who maintain it. I'm guessing they don't want any more holes cut in it by dopes who don't do their homework first.
I'd be curious to see some proper testing done that can also account for the various other bits of evidence (like the pollen). Even if it is somehow proved to be fake, it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I don't get upset due to "zealotry" as you so ineloquently put it; I get upset by people opening their mouths when they don't know what they're talking about. Dr. D'Mahala specifically debunked the carbon test done in 1988, and he knows a HELL of a lot more about the Shroud than you and I, yet you consider the matter closed.
THAT is closed-minded zealotry.
You can dispute the test results for the C-14 dating, but the date is there and on the record, and that date will necessarily stand as the only C-14 date on record until the test is redone.
Pollen and other tests are interesting evidence but cannot overturn C-14 dates. Now, if the C-14 test is redone and shows a First Century origin for the Shroud, then the case that the Shroud is the burial shroud of Christ is bolstered.
Note that even the Vatican do not represent the Shroud as the actual burial shroud of Jesus.
This is scientific method, not zealotry.
So that's it? A test is done with laughable inaccuracy as to sample collection, but since they did it, then it's settled? That sounds like the pseudo-science equivalent of an "'A' for effort."
Note that even the Vatican do not represent the Shroud as the actual burial shroud of Jesus.
How could they? It's impossible to prove that it is.
Read my post again, and pay attention. “That date will necessarily stand” because THERE WAS NO LATER TEST! As soon as there is another carbon-dating test performed, its results can replace or augment the existing results.
Very few of those techniques were available OR used in the 14th century. . . But the big question would be WHY, to what purpose? Any blood daubed shroud would garner just as many donations as a relic of the crucifixion to gullible pilgrims. . . And many did. This one is different. When the scientist say there is no trace of pigment associated with the image, they mean that down to the electron microscopy level and the level of analysis that can detect what kind of inert vinyl baggy the sample was stored in, what type of stainless tweezers took the sample out of the baggy, etc. that level of detection found NO pigment traces. So, dinodino, none were ever there to leave any traces associated only with the image. That is the science, not the speculation of your non-scientist, or skeptical scientist working outside their fields of expertise.
Secondly, the 'shroud' that was produced by this technique did not meet the multitude of requirements to really reproduce the Shroud we see in all the specifications. It is only superficially like the original, matching only a couple of obvious criteria. Like all previous attempts, it fails.
I would say the tests performed on the Shroud were done by people who knew as much about its history as YOU do. Are you aware that there is apparently no record of the Shroud’s existence prior to the 1300s?
No, I'm not aware that there is no evidence of the Shroud's existence prior to the 1300s because your claim is simply wrong. There are lots of references to the existence of the Shroud prior to the 1300s, including drawings, written description, inventories, mentions in literature, etc. there is NO accurate dating method that currently places the Shroud long after Jesus' death because that test has been invalidated independently by legitimate, peer-reviewed science times three. THAT is what stands as of now. You keep raising a NON-FACT, as do skeptic sites, choosing to publish false data they now know have been proved invalid because they refuse to follow the science instead choosing their—and apparently your—agenda, rather than the truth! Even the editor of Nature, the Journal that published the 1988 C-14 results, has agreed the age of the Shroud is back into an unknowable, questionable state because of the bad science that was done in the sampling. Yet YOU prefer to hang your hat on invalid results. Do you also accept the totally invalidated pigments seen by McCrone under his Polarized light microscope that no one else ever saw, despite the science described above? Most Skeptic sites, in fact, DO trot out the false data, the LONG disproved, non-peer-reviewed and totally DISPROVED falsehoods of McCrone and publish them as facts. . . Because they prefer their agenda to real science. You reveal yourself to be of their ilk by repeating that argument repeatedly after you've been told the C-14 test has been reliably proved invalid. You, sir, are no scientist.
In this instance, we are in agreement. To skew the date so much requires the mass tested to be as much newer material as old. But I've told you WHY the C-14 test was invalid. . . and that was found to be exactly the case, which YOU CHOOSE TO IGNORE, despite absolute proof provided by three independent scientists in three peer-reviewed published articles.
Look, Dino, carbon dating assumes that the sample being dated is homogenous with main body being dated. Cleaning removes any added extraneous materials that are not intimately attached or part of the sample, but WILL NOT affect anything that is MIXED IN THE SAMPLE.
What part of the sample was NOT HOMOGENOUS with the main body of the Shroud do you simply fail to grasp???? The sample was contaminated with between 40% to 60% cotton threads from the sixteenth century depending on which sub sample was tested by which lab. The main body of the Shroud is demonstrably 100% Linen made of Flax and contains zero cotton! Ergo, the sample tested is NOT THE SAME AS THE SHROUD, IT WILL NOT Test to the THE SAME AGE AS THE SHROUD! Therefore, dinodino, the fact that the SAMPLE was NOT HOMOGENOUS with what they intended to test, means they did NOT test the age of the Shroud of Turin.
The 1988 C-14 test gave us an average age for a 40-60% mixture of 16th century cotton threads and an unknown provenance earlier age 60-40% older Linen thread. That's all it tested, nothing more. The inventor of the particular low-mass C14 method, Harry Gove, when told of the fiasco with the Shroud dating, did a reverse calculation to estimate the origin date of the Linen and came up with 1st century with confidence range +/- 100 years.
In the interests of truth, roamer_1, I must disagree. I know what you're attempting to say. I'm going to disagree with the way you are crouching it. In actuality, the C-14 test was VERY accurate. . . of what they tested. The three labs did a fine job of accurately testing a botched sample! We know this because the samples and sub samples show us a variance in age that nicely agree according to the percentage of younger cotton threads mixed with older Linen threads: the more cotton, the later the creation date. The scientists didn't seem to notice that their results across the sub samples were each outside the degree of confidence range of the other sub samples. None overlapped! This should have raised a red flag and told them they were dealing with a sample that was non-homogenous. Instead, the lab that cut its sub sample into smaller pieces, averaged its results to "make them fit." And the London Lab just didn't point out to anyone that the range across all four sub samples 1260 to 1390 with each having +/- 25 years, simply did not agree! A statistician, in fact two, looked at that later and came to the conclusion that for those results to come from a homogenous sample were one in 16 million.
What can be accurately said is that the original carbon dating conclusions were invalid because they did not test the Shroud. That is a true statement. It was bad science. That's also a true statement.
But as a trained scientist, I am skeptical, and this most recent report doesn't persuade me. Too many things can be claimed as true but maybe they are not, on both sides.
NO! NO! NO! The scientific method does NOT work like you describe. It stands UNLESS it is FALSIFIED. PROVED WRONG. There are many ways of disproving a C-14 test. . . which is not infallible. In fact you assume that. In this case the proof HAS BEEN PROVIDED. How many times does it take to get through your thick skull that what was tested did NOT REPRESENT WHAT THEY WANTED TO TEST???? They could just as easily tested your old sneakers and gotten as good a result as these... It's the equivalent of what they did!
Proper protocols are important in any testing. Planning is king! The area they took the sample from could NOT have been worse. The STURP scientists in planning for a C-14 testing had already mapped it as a possible repaired area because it was chemically, physically, and photographically different than the main body of the Shroud. It was excluded from the agreed C-14 sample protocols for those reasons. . . but the STURP scientists were excluded from participation in the 1988 testing.
The 1988 scientists also came up with protocols that excluded that corner. But at the last minute, literally, those protocols were thrown out and instead of six samples from six different places, only ONE sample was taken from the worst possible spot. . . a decision made by one person. That's bad science.
Ignoring well planned protocols is why the C14 test is completely invalid. The sample taken was not representative of the item to be tested. Because they DID NOT follow their own protocols, the end result was their sample has been proved to be a melange, a mixture of original and later materials, not homogenous with the intended object to be dated, and therefore, they DID NOT DATE WHAT THEY SAID THEY DATED! Their data are garbage and their conclusion even more so. Garbage in, garbage out.
NOW. Do you understand. That's how the Scientific Method works. That conclusion has been FALSIFIED. Proven wrong, as such it is false and it cannot be used in any scientific article as a FACT. Your using it is a logical error. . . so stop, already. It has been superseded by later work. . . which does NOT have to be the identical kind of test, just work that falsifies it. Pay attention!
Darn, wrong again. :)
PhD in molecular physics here.
Cheers!
Whenever I hear a self-described “scientist” say that a matter must be “settled or closed”, me thinks that political science is in play. Real science is never settled, it is never closed, it is always moving. Like a shark, if it ceases to move, it dies.
I’m with Phileas Fogg on this one.
Joe Nickell's opening sentence of this article totally mischaracterizes Roger's article, completely exposing his bias and his agenda because Roger's article said NO SUCH THING! It feeds into the preconceived notions of the target audience and what they WANT to believe:
"Longtime Shroud of Turin devotee Ray Rogers, a retired research chemist, now admits there is the equivalent of a watercolor paint on the alleged burial cloth of Jesus."First, It is the very existence of that "equivalent of a watercolor paint" that exists on the SAMPLE that makes the C-14 test invalid! It was never found anywhere else on the Shroud! Are you that idiotic that you, and Nickell, fail to understand this basic point? The sample that was tested was NOT representative of the main body of the Shroud!
Secondly, the entire C-14 sample was NOT destroyed in testing as Nickell claims. The fifth middle section sub-sample was preserved... and it shows exactly what was hypothesized, that one side was made of dyed cotton and the other side is made of original un-dyed linen material with a diagonal juncture skillfully joining the two sections, rewoven in a mixture... that was the third peer-reviewed work done in 2008 that nailed this down. Photomicrographs of the original entire sample before it was cut in five pieces and distributed to the three labs also show tell-tale signs of the differences between the two materials when it was known what to look for. That is why the 1988 C-14 test has been invalidated.
Nickell cites another notorious skeptic, McCrone, whose un-peer replicated work has been multiply times discredited TWENTY YEARS AGO by many expert scientists with far more sophisticated equipment than his polarized microscope and his unduplicated and unsupported opinion of what he saw!... down to the ELECTRON MICROSCOPE and X-ray micro-spectroscopic level—which are FAR MORE discerning than the human eye—instruments capable of discerning the make-up of the vinyl baggies the threads were transported in much less the make-up of the materials ON, IN, and AROUND the samples themselves. I told you this already. . . This is what skeptic sources do as I reported to you above. It is NOT SCIENCE. It is falsified, McCrone has been falsified in spades, ergo they and Nickell lie. Nickell asserts the following in his article, ALL FALSE:
"After McCrone discovered the image was rendered in tempera paint, STURP held him to a secrecy agreement, while statements were made to the press that no evidence of artistry was found. McCrone was then, he says, “drummed out” of the organization [Nickell 1998, 124—125; 2004, 193—194]. As evidence of its pro-authenticity bias, STURP’s leaders served on the executive committee of the Holy Shroud Guild."
See above for his claim of "tempera paint", none has ever been found except by McCrone. As a matter of fact, while scattered pigments have been found on the Shroud, no pigments have been found on the Shroud associated at all with the image or with the blood stains. Only McCrone claimed such.
McCrone claimed to have found Vermilion and Red Ocher... but NO OTHER scientist with far more sophisticated equipment could find any at all associated with the image or blood stains. What there was on the shroud was totally randomly scattered by environmental pollution and the pressing of painted copies to the shroud to sanctify them in the past.
Secondly, McCrone was NEVER an official member of STURP to be "drummed out". He was contracted by STURP to do some Microscopic studies, and under his contract was required to submit his work for peer-review. He refused, publishing instead in violation of his contract in his own, in-house magazine, The Microscopist, edited by Walter C. McCrone, reviewed by Walter C. McCrone. There was no special agreement placed only on McCrone. The "secrecy agreement" was part of the standard STURP contract that required anyone working on the Shroud to release information ONLY through STURP, not to make announcements on their own. McCrone broke that agreement by holding a press conference and publishing in his magazine in violation of his contract! Note how Nickell cites his OWN work for that statement?
STURP members had to physically retrieve the samples (lent to McCrone by STURP) that HE REFUSED to return or to forward the samples—which he took to referring to as "my samples"—to other scientists, as directed, for review or further research.
Finally, Nickell's claim of bias because STURP members were on the executive committee of the Holy Shroud Guild, the organization in the Catholic Church that has authority over the Shroud, is reversed and disingenuous. STURP incorporated members of the HSG executive committee so as to gain access to the Shroud. Without their inclusion, access would not have been permitted. STURP included agnostics, atheists, Christians of both Catholic and Protestant stripes, Jews, and other denominations. It was a SCIENTIFIC panel. Most went intending to find it was a medieval creation.
Nickell also attempts to defend the sample taking protocols by citing the C-14 committee's own protocols, but ignores that they were dropped at the last minute. . . and the sample taken from an area those protocols had specifically excluded, instead just citing the general guidelines about the sample being taken "away from patches and seams."
Nickell is also "shocked" that Rogers failed to cite McCrone's work. This is not shocking at all. Scientists do not cite superseded work that has failed the test of peer-review—especially un-duplicated work that has been found to be falsified. There is no point in reporting falsehoods. No reputable scientist reports twaddle and opinion that has been proven demonstrably wrong, especially when there was an obvious agenda being pushed, as there was with the Atheist McCrone. McCrone later became a laughing stock as his story about the type and source of the Red Ocher he'd claimed to have observed on the Shroud as pigment changed over the years... later claiming the red ocher had been mined from a source as that was developed only as late as the 1830s. Totally absurd. Do you see why he could not be considered reliable? Probably not.
Your citing of these articles as proof could be deemed a lie. They report falsehoods... deliberately. They are NOT TRUE. They are pushing a false agenda despite the state of the science. They cite already falsified data. Data that has LONG been proved false, yet these articles continue to trumpet them as if they were true. Do you want that? The evidence is that you do because you have been presented with the evidence of the falsification, and you again trot out the falsehoods. Why?
Sure, show us the corrected C-14 results. Oh, wait—there aren’t any?
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