This is a scholarly and massive response written by Jenny Hawkins on Quora. I only posted the CONCLUSIONS. Read the entire post here: What factors point to the Turin Shroud being a fake?
Carbon 14 picked up the soot from a previous fire and/or the sample allowed by the Vatican around the edge was from a very old repair where materials were added.
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Very common to fake stuff about Jesus starting around 100 AD or so. If you had an artifact, (fake or real) then it brought more parishioners to your church which always meant more money.
The same holds true with the Shroud of Turin. I don't know if it's real. I choose to believe that it is. So many of the debunking arguments have been debunked. Does that make me right? Perish the thought. I wasn't there when it was weaved.
It's always so easy to tell people, in matters of faith, that they are dolts and rubes. I find the faithless to be a tedious lot.
One other detail anti-Shroud people fail to notice or just blow off: There are nail prints in the wrist not the palm as ALL paintings and statues show.
Before I give my comment, I will be very upfront that I am Jewish.
Heres my comment: if you need a material object to verify your faith then your faith is not terribly strong. This applies whether you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or any other faith. You either believe, or you dont. That said, every single person is going to have some doubts, that is part of our nature and has been purposely woven into that nature by God - because if there was no doubt then there would be no free will.
I do not know whether or not the shroud of Turin is what it is purported to be, or not. Speaking as a person of (most definitely imperfect) faith, I dont think that it should matter one way or the other.
Fascinating discussion.
I lean towards the shroud being authentic if for no other reason than it is unique. The same cannot be said for pieces of the true cross or nails from the crucifixion.
The shroud cannot be reproduced. Again, unique.
Does my faith depend on it as others sneer? No. Why would it?
NON believers are the ones who should wonder if their beliefs are wrong.
One could have every physical item that Jesus Christ touched in one’s possession, and still be condemned to hell. Because, one has to hear God’s words AND act on them.
Acts 2:38,... is it from heaven, or of men?
One of the primary scientists on the Skeptical side is Stephen D. Schafersman. Schafersman holds a B.S. in Geology and Biology from Northern Illinois University, a M.S. in Geology, and a Ph.D. in Geology.
Schafersman regularly calls scientists working in their fields of expertise “pseudoscientists” for doing science that proves the Shroud evidence to be authentic. Challenging their findings in their own fields with his “expertise” based on his degrees in “geology.”
I haven’t posted anything for a while, but recently I posted two articles about the Shroud.
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I rarely post here though.
I don’t know. It could be the real thing.
I remember reading about the carbon 14 tests when it was done. It struck me as about as poorly done as possible and probably on purpose. And this was Oxford!
The radiocarbon data has already been satisfactorily explained as “sampling error”. The places they took thread were from newer “repaired” areas. Once upon a time, I worked in a carbon dating lab as a tech (in grad school). The newer accelerator-based methods are orders of magnitude superior to the old approaches, so it is imminently possible to redo the studies with much smaller samples.
One other interesting fact: The image is a negative image. People in the Middle Ages knew nothing about photography or imaging.