I don't understand what the attraction is regarding the Shroud of Turin.
Do Christians need some physical proof to reinforce their faith?
Would an atheist become a believer if somehow this cloth was proven to come for the time of Christ? It still wouldn't prove that it was the image of Christ.
I think the whole notion of the Shroud of Turin being the image of Christ is unprovable and completely meaningless to the beleiver and the unbeleiver.
The Shroud is a fascinating artifact. First the image is inexplicable, it cannot be duplicated. We do not know what mechanism produced the image. Scientists, magicians, skeptics, debunkers, and amatuers have been attempting to duplicate all of the features found on the Shroud for over 100 years... and not one has succeeded yet.
If we accept the 1989 Carbon-14 dating of the shroud making it a medievil pious fraud, we then still have to explain how an unknown artist was able to create it incorporating many things completely unknown and unknowable to anyone of that millieu. In addition we have to accept that it was created with perfect realism in a time of primitivism and cartoonish artwork. It also runs counter to many iconic traditions.
IF, and it is beginning to look more and more not to be the case, the Shroud is a medievil fraud, then we have an unknown genius with an apparent encyclopedic knowledge of many not yet invented disciplines, using unknown technology to create an artifact that cannot be duplicated 700 years later. This would perhaps be an even greater miracle than if it proves to be a first century relic.
Pious frauds were money makers... and ANYTHING, literally anything, could attract veneration. It didn't have to be convincing as 99% of the people totally lacked any discriminatory skills and were, to put it bluntly, totally credulous. One could (and someone probably did) pick up a sheep's femur, announce that it was the arm bone of St. Stephen, and garner donations day after day... and no authority would deny it. Why then should anyone go to the trouble of creating such a fraud as the Shroud would be if created at this time. The SAME amount of money could be had by taking a homespun sheet, daubing some chicken blood on it, and announcing the miraculous Shroud of Jesus. Pilgrims would beat a path to the door of the Charlatan.
Instead, we find the Shroud in the hands of a country Knight named Geoffrey de Charney (spelling was a matter of opinion in medievil France) who built a church to house it, using his own money and impoverishing his estate to operate it, and refused to display it. Geoffrey was not just ANY knight... de Charney was the Standard Bearer for the King of France and author of the French Code of Chivalry! It was only later, after Geoffrey's death, that his widow, needing cash to keep the Church at Lirey afloat, agreed to display the Shroud for the first time. These are hardly the acts of conmen and frauds.
Scientists, Christian, Agnostic, Atheist, Jewish, have investigated the Shroud and come away totally puzzled. Most will say that something extraordinary happened to the body the Shroud covered that caused a VERTICALLY COLLIMATED effect on the cloth. Latest research shows that the BONES of the body actually are imprinted on the cloth in what must be the first X-ray image in history.
What mysterious force created ALL of the features we find on this one small piece of cloth? Perhaps it is a snapshot of the moment of resurrection? Who knows.
Can we PROVE it is the Shroud that covered Jesus of Nazareth in the tomb as reported in the Gospels? Nope. All we can do is continue to find out what mysteries there are in the cloth, prove or disprove to the best of our abilities what we find there... and look at probabilities.
Will it convince Atheists? Certainly not those who refuse to look. Will it destroy the faith of the faithful if proven a fraud? Probably not. Can it make a difference in those who are seeking the truth, one way or the other? Absolutely.