I’ve “looked into it” for a very long time, in fact, from the very fist time I heard about it many decades ago.
While it’s interesting as all heck I can’t get past a few things that don’t add up. Which I don’t feel like elaborating on at the moment. I’m on the faked side until It’s proven different.
As a born again Christian I don’t believe in idolatry of any sort. Praying to statues, counting beads, lighting candles and praying to artifacts is what I consider man made religion, not of God.
No one prays to the shroud. Nor do those who believe the shroud is authentic need it to to support their faith. On the contrary, it is their faith that values what appears to be the authentic burial cloth of our Lord.
I have been studying the Shroud of Turin for nearly 50 years. I have yet to meet any one of my fellow students of the Shroud who prays to the Shroud. You impute to people something that is literally just not there.
Among the many types of people whom I have met at Shroud symposia, Evangelical Christians, Protestants, Catholics, practicing Jews, Agnostics, Atheists, Scientists, no-nothings, and skeptics, not a single one of them has ever professed a desire to worship the Shroud. Not a single one has expressed the thought that the Shroud had any ability to cure anyone of an affliction. None have ever stated it was imbued with any powers. The most any would say is that it allowed them to focus their thoughts on God, Jesus, or the sacrifice and suffering that Jesus undertook for us.
For me, for the first time, I began to grasp how horrific the flogging, scourging, and beatings were that were inflicted upon Jesus before he was crucified. Nothing in words are as evocative as what can be seen on the wounds all over the image on the Shroud. The Forensic Pathologists who have investigated the wounds seen on the image on the shroud are actually surprised how extensive they are. Some are skeptical that the man who received them would have survived that kind of scourging, let alone being crucified in addition to them.