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Worship:reverent honor and homage paid to God"

Not to "God" alone (with or without the dramatic font), but any god. Pagans also worship their gods.

If all of these items in the Vatican's Reliquary are not worshipped to some degree or other, then why are they there? Why are they venerated? Why are the people here attacking this scientist? What difference does it make if the Shroud or any other of the relics are authentic or not?

Is not FAITH the only real evidence of God's existence? ...of Christ's existence? Then the only question that is relevent is, is your faith genuine or is it dependent on some artifact...or idol?

This whole dialogue began because some scientist threatened to expose the Shroud of Turin as a possible fake. For that possibility alone, he has been reviled and insulted.

It appears to me that, at least some here, need there to be physical proof of something that can only be proven by faith. You cannot secularly prove the existence of God nor can you likewise prove that Christ was the Son of God. All of these relics are mere distractions from what is true and real.

God is. Christ is the corporeal presence of God as he is the Son of God and the Holy Ghost.

That distraction is the very reason that God admonished us in Exodus 20:

"4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

It is not until the next verse that "worship" is invoked.

5. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them..."

So it is the existence of the image or idol itself that is offensive to God, not solely the worship...according to the Bible.

Not to "God" alone

Yes to God alone. Attempting to apply to any thing other than God, the unique reverence, respect, honour etc. due to God alone is idolatry. The Pagans you cite are committing idolatry.

Is not FAITH the only real evidence of God's existence? ...of Christ's existence?

Christ's existence was not known to the Apostles and their contemporaries by faith ... He was truly incarnate: He walked, talked, breathed, ate, slept, woke, worked, performed signs among them. His life, ministry, death, and resurrection was and is a matter of objective, physical reality. We know about it by eyewitness testimony. That is the evidence of Christ's existence. As for the existence of spiritual God ... there's plenty of material and philosophical evidence to suggest that He exists. See St. Thomas Aquinas' famous "five proofs for the existence of God" ... I think they fall a bit short of positive proof, but certainly suggest that belief in God is not unreasonable. That Jesus of Nazareth was and is God ... that's a matter of revealed knowledge ... of faith.

For that possibility alone, he has been reviled and insulted.

Nonsense. He was reviled for doing bad science.

. All of these relics are mere distractions from what is true and real.

Says you. Others find them to be useful reminders of what is true and real. As I told the other fellow: If you find them bothersome, avoid them.

God is. Christ is the corporeal presence of God as he is the Son of God and the Holy Ghost.

That looks a whole lot like a heresy called "modalism". We Christians believe that God exists in three distinct Divine Persons, revealed to us as The Father and The Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son, Who exists eternally as do the Father and the Holy Spirit, took on human nature and became incarnate. By doing so, He became the "image of the invisible God", as St. Paul reminded the Colossians. The Father sent His Son as the perfect icon of God ... any mere material icon is a reminder of the reality of the incarnation ... a reality unknown to the Jews of Moses' time (obviously). It is a reminder that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us". It is a reminder that "God so loved the world that He sent His only Son ..." Some folks seem to me to be very uncomfortable with the earthy, material, physical reality of the incarnation. I don't know why.