Call me a doubting Thomas if you want. Fakery was rampant in that period.
You couldn’t be more right. Lots of fakery. But that doesn’t mean this is fake. At its simplest: an image of a person consistent with Gospel discussion of Christ crucified. Scorched, not painted, into the top few fibrils, that is the fibers that make up thread. Not reproducible by any technology we have, let alone that available in the Middle Ages. And on and on and on. My point being look into it and draw your own conclusions, but just slapping the fakery label on it is not supported by the evidence or the scholarship
It is only in our generation that the dimensional message Jesus spoke to His disciples in John 14 is being discovered. There are real, physical realms of space and time not sensed by us which are referred to in the Word of God. In our age we are beginning to bump up against these realities because they exist IN the Universe God has created, and our science is now on a path to explore these realities, realities of dimensions which the Rabbi Nachmanidies wrote about nearly a thousand years ago which he discerned from his careful study of Genesis. There is even photographic evidence of such 'higher' dimensions, made by photographing the growth of crystals which indicate not sensed variable (dimensions) are an essential part of the crystalline growth function.
The evidence found in the shroud is only just being understood, using scientific methodology and techniques our generation has discovered. My feeble description of the technique used to 'map' the radiation pattern is but one example you should not dismiss so quickly. If you are grounded in the Word of God the authenticity or lack thereof will not be a deciding factor in your faith. However, to establish scientifically the authenticity of the shroud makes a very strong anchor from which faith can grow even in a scientifically skeptical heart. God desires that all men come to Christ, but only some will, usually because their pride is such a great impediment.
petitio principii. You are "begging the question", assuming the Shroud was made in the 14th Century, when there was a thriving market in hoax relics. However, there is a huge amount of evidence that the shroud predates that period, going back at least to the 6th Century, and earlier, when artistic evidence of what Jesus Christ archetypes looked like, and the revelation of the Image of Edessa when the Mandylion was found in the wall of the City of Edessa was revealed in 525AD after an earthquake destroyed the city gate. Jesus depiction suddenly changed to reflect what we see in the Shroud image at that time. . . following the legend of King Akbar and the Image of Jesus that was carried to him by the Apostle Thaddeus shortly after Jesus' death. . . which, if we provisionally accept it, provides a someone broken, punctuated, but connected historical provenance back to the mid-first century.
Calling you a “doubting Thomas” would be generous and an insult to Thomas. You completely reject it without even examining the evidence.