Sigh…
So here’s what’s been going on lately. Most of you who read this blog already know that when my wife and I left Christianity, it wrecked most of our family relationships. My wife’s parents and siblings, as well as my own, felt that they could no longer interact with us socially after our deconversion. We were no longer invited to any family functions, and our communication with them all but disappeared. We would speak if it was about religious issues, or if there were logistic issues that needed to be worked out in letting them see our kids, etc.
Over the years, things have gotten a little better, especially with my wife’s parents. Things are by no means back to normal, but at least our infrequent interactions have become more civil and more comfortable. A few weeks ago, I even had a phone conversation with my father that lasted about half an hour and had no references to religion whatsoever. It was nice.
Nevertheless, the awkwardness is still there, just under the surface. And we’re still blacklisted from all the family functions.
Throughout this time, I’ve occasionally reached out to my side of the family with phone calls, letters, facebook messages, etc, in an effort to discuss the issues that divide us. I don’t get much response. I’ve always been puzzled by that, since I know they think I’m completely wrong. If their position is right, why aren’t they willing to discuss it?
In the last five years, I’ve also been sent books and articles and even been asked to speak to certain individuals, and I’ve complied with every request. Why not? How could more information hurt? But when I’ve suggested certain books to them, or written letters, they aren’t read. When I finally realized that my problems with Christianity weren’t going to be resolved, I wrote a 57-page paper to my family and close friends, explaining why I could no longer call myself a Christian. As far as I know, none of them ever read the whole thing. And sure, 57 pages is quite a commitment. But they say this is the most important subject in their lives…
This past week, the topic has started to come back around. A local church kicked off a new series on Monday entitled “Can We Believe the Bible?” It’s being led by an evangelist/professor/apologist that was kind enough to take time to correspond with me for several weeks in the summer of 2010. I’ve never met him in person, but a mutual friend connected us, since he was someone who was knowledgeable about the kinds of questions I was asking. Obviously, we didn’t wind up on the same page.
My wife’s parents invited us to attend the series, but it happens to be at a time that I’m coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team. So unless we get rained out at some point, there’s no way we can attend. However, we did tell them that if practice is ever cancelled, we’ll go. I also contacted the church and asked if the sermons (if that’s the right word?) will be recorded, and they said that they should be.
Monday night, the weather was fine, so we weren’t able to attend. And so far, the recording isn’t available on their website. However, they do have a recording of Sunday night’s service available, which is entitled “Question & Answer Night.” I just finished listening to it, and that’s where the bulk of my frustration comes from.
It’s essentially a prep for the series that kicked off Monday night. They’re discussing why such a study is important, as well as the kinds of things they plan to cover. What’s so frustrating to me is that I don’t understand the mindset of evangelists like this. I mean, they’ve studied enough to know what the major objections to fundamentalist Christianity are, yet they continue on as if there’s no problem. And when they do talk about atheists and skeptics, they misrepresent our position. I can’t tell if they honestly believe the version they’re peddling, or if they’re purposefully creating straw men.
A couple of times, they mentioned that one of the main reasons people reject the Bible comes down to a preconception that miracles are impossible. “And if you start from that position, then you’ll naturally reject the Bible.” But that’s a load of crap. Most atheists were once theists, so their starting position was one that believed in miracles.
They also mentioned that so many of these secular articles and documentaries “only show one side.” I thought my head was going to explode.
And they referred to the common complaints against the Bible as “the same tired old arguments that have been answered long ago.” It’s just so infuriating. If the congregants had any knowledge of the details of these “tired old arguments,” I doubt they’d unanimously find the “answers” satisfactory. But the danger with a series like this is that it almost works like a vaccination. The members of the congregation are sitting in a safe environment, listening to trusted “experts,” and they’re injected with a watered down strain of an argument. And it’s that watered down version that’s eradicated by the preacher’s message. So whenever the individual encounters the real thing, they think it’s already been dealt with, and the main point of the argument is completely lost on them.
For example, most Christians would be bothered to find out that the texts of the Bible are not as reliable as were always led to believe. Even a beloved story like the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus writes on the ground, we’ve discovered that it was not originally part of the gospel of John. It’s a later addition from some unknown author. To a Christian who’s never heard that before, it’s unthinkable! But if they’ve gone through classes where they’ve been told that skeptics exaggerate the textual issues in the Bible, and that the few changes or uncertainties deal with only very minor things, and that none of the changes affect any doctrinal points about the gospel, then it’s suddenly easier for them to swallow “minor” issues like the insertion of an entire story into the gospel narrative.
Sigh…
I’m going to either attend these sessions, or I’ll watch/listen to them once they’re available online. I may need to keep some blood pressure medication handy, though.
Finding Truth 
One request: Please present your evidence in concise, relatively brief statements. If I find it compelling, we can go deeper.
Thanks.
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I came across an article headed “1,500 Medical Studies Declare Healing Power of Prayer Undeniable”. I thought this will be useful, some hard evidence at last.
However when I read the article what was screaming at me was ‘psychological factors’. Seemed to be no proof about prayer, it might as well said ‘tea drinkers live longer’ or ‘married couples are healthier’. If this is ‘undeniable evidence’ then the case is exceedingly weak.
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/religion-today-blog/1-500-medical-studies-declare-healing-power-of-prayer-undeniable.html
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Hi Peter, it depends on what sort of studies you want. Some types of studies yield little positive results, others yield strongly positive results. No prizes for guessing which types of studies sceptics and christians prefer (but I’ll give you a hint: they aren’t the same). There’s enough information out there to justify belief or scepticism, but not enough to force either view. I think God’s given us enough to go on if we want to know, but not enough to beat us over the head if we don’t want to know. A sceptic would say something different (fill in your own words!). I have researched this quite a bit, and still going.
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Hey Peter,
Someone once wrote that a new Christian will pray for God to do incredible, miraculous deeds, a seasoned Christian will only ask for his meal to be blessed. Why is that? Answer: After asking God to perform miracles multiple times, and after noticing that those kind of prayer requests are rarely if ever answered, for you or for anyone you know, most Christians learn not to ask God for the hard stuff, just the easy stuff…the stuff that has a 50/50 chance of happening anyway.
So you believe that God cured you of your pneumonia, do you? Great! But most people recover from pneumonia. When God heals people with limb amputations, THEN I will believe in the power of prayer. Last time I checked, no amputee’s arm or leg has been spontaneously reattached or regrown by prayer or anything else.
I will wait to see what “Crown” has to say, but let me give an idea of my worldview: I believe that every decision that I make is based on a calculation of probabilities. Sometimes that calculation is done consciously, such as when I decide whether or not to walk across a weather-beaten foot bridge over a deep gorge in the African jungle, or subconsciously, when I drive over bridges on an American highway. My brain calculates whether or not I should take a particular action or believe a particular concept to be true or not.
My brain has already calculated that most people recover from illness spontaneously, and many more recoveries are due to medical interventions, even though for some reason, prayer, not the doctors and not the medicine, gets the credit. The probability that an invisible ghost god is responsible for healing is very low on my list of probabilities. Even the worst of cancers have survivors. Even the worst of injuries have survivors. And what convinces me even more that these recoveries are not due to the Christian god’s intervention is that the incidence of disease and death from disease and injuries is no different among Christians than among any other religion on the planet…even though Jesus said, “Ask anything in my name and it shall be done unto you.”
Sometimes you win the Lottery, even when your odds (probability) were a couple million to one. It happens. It doesn’t mean that an invisible god pulled your winning numbers out of the “hat”.
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Hi Gary, a couple of years ago I visited a lady who was ill. She had a very bad cold. I prayed for her and was surprised to see her at Church the next day with no ill effects. She came up to me and said, ‘your prayer worked’! She was convinced it was the prayer that cured her cold. But I recall wondering to myself at the time that maybe it was just the passage of time and the normal healing process of the body.
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Well, I’m not sure why we haven’t hear from “Crown” but I read up last night on the topic he is going to discuss: the alleged burial face cloth of Jesus housed in Oviedo, Spain, and the alleged burial cloth of Jesus–the Shroud of Turin.
Believers will present all kinds of arguments why these relics are the burial garments of Jesus, including pollen found on both garments, that some allege are from plants only found around Jerusalem.
Even if all these claims are true, the only way to prove that these burial garments are those of Jesus of Nazareth is to have DNA evidence. Do we know any descendants of Mary that we can test DNA samples from?? No. But even if we could, it still wouldn’t prove that Jesus rose from the dead, and that’s the issue, not whether Jesus was executed. I already accept that assertion as (probable) historical fact.
And again I go back to probabilities: What is more likely? That the above relics are actually the burial garments of a first century Roman criminal, or, frauds, perpetrated in the Medieval Ages during the very profitable relic trade?
Carbon dating has shown that the Shroud was made in the Middle Ages, not the first century. Believers have come up with many excuses to dispute the accuracy of the carbon dating, but I don’t buy them.
Next evidence, please.
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I’ve read it was dated to the 12th century.
Speaking of “Do we know any descendants of Mary that we can test DNA samples from??” – Doesn’t it make logical sense from a strictly biological standpoint, that any offspring of Mary’s, without an earthly father, would have to bear a strictly “XX” chromosome? Why would a “holy spirit” possess human DNA?
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Very good point, Archae.
One other thing about the Shroud of Turin I find shocking is that believers claim the shroud has blood on it with AB blood type. How is it that Jesus had a recognizable blood type? We each obtain our blood type by receiving one allele from each of our parents. Here is an example:
“How are ABO alleles inherited by our children? Each biological parent donates one of their two ABO alleles to their child. A mother who is blood type O can only pass an O allele to her son or daughter. A father who is blood type AB could pass either an A or a B allele to his son or daughter.”
You can’t obtain both an “A” allele and a “B” allele from your mother! So Jesus would only have one allele, from his mother, as his father was a ghost.
Do ghosts have a blood type???
The Shroud of Turin is either a fake or Jesus had a human father!
Of course, there is always the tried and true fall back: God went “poof” and Jesus was given AB blood by magic.
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As well as a penis, we can only assume.
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Point of interest: I will bet good money that the majority of Protestant Christians reading this thread will snicker along with agnostics and atheists at the Catholic “evidence” for the Shroud of Turin, but will turn around and accept as fact the Catholic “evidence” for the authorship of the Gospels.
The traditional authorship of the Gospels is a Catholic Tradition, declared as fact by the same Catholic Church Fathers who preached baptismal regeneration, the baptism of infants, and the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
Protestants threw out most of the Catholic traditions, but retained two of the most important, and two of the weakest to prove true:
1. The authorship of the Gospels.
2. The canonicity of the New Testament.
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arch, if god had a penis, i’m sure you’d agree it was the biggest, most impressive penis around – proving his divine nature.
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Gary M
I assume that the request for concise, relatively brief statements was for me?
You asked for the US Rules of Evidence, the way things would be admissible in a US Court. Brevity and concision are not features of our justice system. But as it happens, the judge in our case was just about to intervene this morning to lay down the law, so that may help you out somewhat in your quest to control the proceedings.
[Fade to a conference room in Oviedo, Spain.]
Crown: Now, to pick up where I left off last evening…
Judge: Mr. Crown, I’m going to need to stop you here. What is this picture that you have attempted to enter into evidence? You said that this is an old bloody cloth that is sitting in the monastery over there in town. You’ve tried to submit a photograph of it to this Court. I hope you’re not intending, by admitting a photograph, to admit details of the cloth itself into evidence.
Yes, your Honor, that is precisely what I intend to do.
But Mr. Crown, you can’t just submit a photograph in place of the actual evidence!
I can, your Honor, if Mr. M doesn’t object. He didn’t object. So yes I can.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa there! Now, see, you’re doing it on your very first move! You’re an experienced attorney. Mr. M isn’t. He is representing himself pro se before this court. So, YOU know that you can put just about anything into evidence if HE doesn’t object to it, and you know that he’s not going to. He wanted this done under US Rules. By that he didn’t mean all the lawyer’s tricks under the Rules. Since I can see YOU’RE going to try to take advantage of him because, I am going to have to step in and impose the rules on you.
But your Honor, I’m playing by the rules!
Yes, Crown, what you are doing is LEGAL, but it was not the INTENT of this mediation. Look, you’re calling this a trial, but really what this is, is non-binding mediation with a stipulation to the US Rules of Evidence. There is no justiciable issue here, so there can’t be a real trial. The whole POINT is to try to persuade each other to come amiably to a common position on a non-justiciable question. And playing tricks to force things into in evidence that competent counsel would object to is not going to help you reach any sort of agreement at all. So I’m going to have to intervene here from the bench to ensure that Mr. M’s available objections are properly presented. And here’s how I’m going to do it –
In a normal case with proper representation, there is pre-trial discovery. Each side has to present the other with the evidence that it has in its possession, when requested by the other. Crown, you have not requested any discovery from Mr. M…
No, your Honor, I have not, but that doesn’t mean that M cannot request discovery from you.
Mr. Crown, I’m not in a position, as judge, to frame a discovery request against you on his behalf, but I can impose an evidentiary hearing that will function as de facto discovery. And that’s what I’m going to do. So, Crown, what is all of the evidence that you’re planning on presenting to this court? Present a list, and while you’re at it, present your arguments as to admissibility.
Your Honor! You’re not allowed to make me tell the other side how I intend to present my case!
No, but I AM allowed to exclude any evidence that doesn’t meet the evidentiary standards, and I’m the one with the discretionary authority to decide that.
Unless I appeal…
Unless you appeal and WIN, and who are going to appeal TO? See, I can play the procedural game too.
Evidently, your Honor…
Exactly. Evidence. So now, Mr. Crown, be a good fellow and present me with a list of all of the evidence you intend to present, and go ahead and give me your arguments for admissibility with each piece. Save some time.
But that will completely remove all of the drama in the case! It will remove my ability to bring out the facts a little at a time, to tell the story in the way that is most convincing.
If you want to tell stories, Mr. Crown, go write for Boston Legal. I’ve seen you spin your stories and schmooze opposing counsel so they don’t go for the jugular when you’ve negligently missed a filing date. I’ve seen you manipulate facts and evidence and people all your life…
Excuse me, all my LIFE? Your Honor, are you STALKING me?
No, you idiot, I AM you! I’m a figment of your imagination, remember? And if you keep trying to schmooze ME you’re going to look like a mental patient in front of everybody reading this, so knock it off and fly right.
Right. Yes, sir.
So, now, stop bantering with me and give me your evidence and tell me why I should allow you to bring it into court! Tell me the story the way the law would make you do it if the other side had good counsel. Get on with it.
Very well, then, your Honor, Mr. M, here we go.
(1) Exhibit 1 – the “Oviedo Cloth”. I have to submit this as a photograph because the object itself is a treasure kept by the Cathedral in Oviedo, Spain. I can no more bring it into court than I could the Mona Lisa. not unless the custodians grant permission for that.
I will ask for judicial notice of the undisputed facts that the cloth EXISTS, that it is kept in the Cathedral in Spain. You will grant judicial notice of the EXISTENCE of this well known, documented artifact which is at times put on public display, will you not, your Honor?
Yes, obviously. But what is the relevance of this cloth?
I will present forensic evidence, in the form of reports of forensic scientists, on properties of the cloth: that it is 100% linen, that the stains on it are of human lymph and blood type AB, and that it bears pollen grains in its weave that are unique to plants indigenous to the Levant. I will present carbon dating evidence that it dates from the 700s AD.
I will also present expert testimony that the carbon dating of old linen is notoriously unreliable.
I will also enter into evidence the blood typing of Egyptian and Mesoamerican mummies dating from 2000 and 3000 years ago, respectively, which demonstrate Blood type A (on the Egyptian mummy), and Blood type B (on the Mesomerican).
I will also enter into evidence, as an ancient document, words from Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11 that prohibit the Hebrew people from making cloth of threads made out of mixed material. If you require it of me, I will present these texts in Hebrew from the “Dead Sea Scrolls”, First Century artifacts taken from the caves at Qumran. I will ask you to take judicial notice of the translations of these passages from widely available sources.
That will be the set of evidence I present as Exhibit 1 and related materials, your Honor.
The relevance of the mummies from the First Century and the 10the Century BC is to counter the potential argument that “all old blood types as AB”. This is completely untrue, but is widely disseminated. I seek to preclude such arguments by forensic and material facts. The expert discussion of blood typing will also point out that the AB type on the cloth is quite rare.
The relevance of the pollen grains is that, although the cloth is currently found in Spain, the presence of pollen of plants that are found only in the regions of Israel is evidence that the cloth was at one point in its history in the regions of Israel.
That the cloth is 100% linen, and not a mix of fibers, means that it fulfills the requirement of Jewish law such as it was known to exist in First Century Israel, as proven by the existence of those provisions in the scrolls of Deuteronomy and Leviticus found in the Qumran caves, which were abandoned in the First Century.
The presence of the cloth at Oviedo is documented there from the time of its arrival in 631 AD. I will demonstrate this using ancient documents – the monastic records making reference to its presence. The unreliability of carbon dating evidence will be testified to by experts in the field (in the form of written reports, unless you require me to produce live witnesses). The fact that the documentary record records the Shroud’s presence at Oviedo for a century and a half prior to the carbon-dated age directly demonstrates the unreliability.
Finally, as regards Exhibit 1, I will introduce into evidence the ancient record contained in John 20:6-7, which reads in pertinent part: “And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.”
I will enter into evidence the expert testimony of historians that describe First Century Jewish funeral preparations.
Mr. Crown.
Yes, your Honor?
You seem to be arguing that this old bloody cloth you intend to enter into evidence is the facecloth of Jesus, and for proof of this you offer pollen from Jerusalem and ancient documents that only begin the chain of custody in Spain in 631 AD, and that only refer to travel from the Middle East. Is that correct?
Yes, your Honor. I realize the chain of custody problems. This bloody facecloth establishes an Israelite provenance, a blood type, and of course is evidence of a trauma (the cloth is heavily stained with blood and lymph, but I recognize the chain of custody problems and the vague “somewhere in the Levant” provenance. But I am prepared to demonstrate by forensic evidence that this cloth was in fact in Jerusalem, in or around the time of the First Century AD.
I will do this by introducing a second piece of physical evidence, Crown Exhibit (2), the 100% linen burial wrap which covered the same dead, bleeding body that this face cloth did.
I will demonstrate that this second cloth is the companion to Exhibit 1 through the report of a detailed forensic analysis that was made of the patterns of blood and lymph dispersion and contact points between the imprint of the face in the face cloth and the imprint of the face on the burial shroud. Through a computer demonstration I will overlay the stain patterns and contact pressure points of the second cloth upon the first, and demonstrate that they match like a fingerprint. The rare AB blood type also matches, as does the pollen.
By way of this “fingerprint” overlay forensic technique I will demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that these two bloody 100% linen cloths once covered the same face of a dead man, bloo type AB, somewhere in Israel, Jordan or Syria.
By the documented date of 631 AD for the arrival of the facecloth in Oviedo, I will demonstrate that the carbon dating of the second cloth to the 1300s is quite impossible: the fingerprint-overlay of the blood and pressure points leaves no reasonable doubt that these two cloths covered the same face, and the facecloth is documented by an admissible ancient document chain of custody to have arrived in Spain in 631 AD and to have been revered since that time as the burital facecloth of Jesus.
By the specific soil types found in the folds of the second cloth, I will present forensic analysis that identifies the location of that soil to be, specifically, the region of Jerusalem.
Having demonstrated the unreliability of Carbon Dating on linen both through forensic testing and through a documentary record (a linen cloth sheet that was carbon dated to the 1300s is found to have a fingerprint-like match in blood and pressure-point pattern to the bloody imprints of a facecloth whose documentary trail begins 700 years earlier.
I will also present vanillin decay forensic evidence (from a peer-reviewed 2006 report published in the chemistry sciences periodical “Acta Thermochimica”) that indicates by the absence of any remaining vanillin in the linen that the linen dates to prior to 600 AD (no further specificity is possible, due to the complete absence of any remaining vanillin in the fabric).
I will present forensic evidence that the carbon dating of the cloth conducted in the 1980s was performed on a mixed-fiber medieval patch on the edge of the cloth, and not on the 100% linen main body of the cloth, which is much older.
An analysis of the image on this second cloth, popularly known as the “Shroud of Turin”, will show the deceased body of a man who has been severely beaten, crucifed through the base of the hands and the feet, lanced in the side, battered in the face, with indication of bloody wounds seeping through his hair. No bones of the man’s body appear to have been broken.
One of the coins on the eyelids of the deceased will be demonstrated to be a lepton bearing a mis-spelling of the title and name Pontius Pilate. Photographic and documentary evidence of an actual original example of this coin with the mis-spelling will be introduced into evidence.
I will introduce evidence from the 1970s of expert microscopist Walter McCrone indicating his findings that the image on the Shroud of Turin are painted. And I will introduce dozens of forensic experts who describe in great detail that the image on the Shroud is neither painted nor drawn or branded in. I will present no evidence corroborating McCrone’s findings, as I have been unable to find any. I will present dozens of reports by more recent forensic examiners refuting it in totality and in detail.
I will enter into evidence, under the ancient documents exception to the hearsay rule, accounts of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which describe the scourging of Jesus and the peculiar manner of his crucifixion and burial, as well as the disposition of his burial cloths in his tomb. These documents are not entered to establish that Jesus is in fact the person on the Shroud and whose blood is contained on the Facecloth, but to demonstrate that the person on the Shroud matches each of the details contained in the Scriptures.
The Jerusalem region soil on the feet of the man in the Shroud establishes that, whoever he was, he was crucified in that region. This correlates to the Levantine pollen found on both the Shroud and the Facecloth.
The Pontius PIlate coin image on the eyes is corroboration of First Century Roman-era execution.
I will introduce into evidence, under the ancient documents rule, the Gnostic “Acts of Thomas Didymus”, specifically the “Hymn of the Pearl section contained therein. This document is estimated to have been created in the early 200s AD). It reads, in pertinent part:
“Suddenly, I saw my image on my burial garment like in a mirror
Myself facing outward and inward
As though divided, yet one likeness
Two images: but one likeness of the King of kings.”
As I present this early document, I will present the image that is on the shroud, demonstrating that the description fits the likeness.
This is presented as corroboration, that the Shroud of Turin meets that description, and may have been the burial garment to which Didymus referred. The 3rd Century provenance of the Didymus document would place the Shroud at a date preceding that, and would establish that in that time already it was an object of reverence and wonder to some Christians of that age.
All of the above, you honor, presents a circumstantial case: SOME man CERTAINLY was crucified at Jerusalem in the Roman period during or after the period of Pontius Pilate, and had both that particular linen facecloth placed on his face and that linen sheet wrapped around his body. He was tortured in ways that match the scriptural descriptions, and buried in linen sheets matching the Scriptural descriptions. The Gnostic Acts of Thomas description of the burial garment of the “king of kings” is strong circumstantial evidence that something closely resembling the Shroud of Turin was known to early Roman era Christians.
The forensics establish that the Shroud and Facecloth are real artifacts of the preparation for burial of a tortured, dead Jew (the body is circumcised) from Roman-era Jerusalem during or after the era of Pontius Pilate and before the early 200s AD.
Does this establish that the man on the Shroud is Jesus, that he was crucified in the First Century? No. It does establish that SOMEBODY was crucified in the First or Second Century, in Jerusalem, in exactly the manner described in the Gospels, and that this very burial shroud probably influenced Christians quite early to think that it belonged to Jesus.
And that’s quite a lot.
And now I’m going to prove that whomever it was that was tortured, crucified and buried just like Jesus, whoever it was under that Shroud, was the subject of a miracle.
We shall return again to forensic pathology. The image on the Shroud is formed by a Maillard Reaction. This is the chemical reaction that causes bread to brown. The microscopic surface of the linen threads were browned just so to produce the image. That is clear from the recent biochemical forensics of the reaction.
It is clear that that’s what this is, and that’s a problem, because under the standard laws of physics, that is simply impossible.
Browning threads is not impossible, but the particular FEATURES of this browning of the threads is.
The image is on both faces of the cloth. Clearly on the surface that faced the body, and very lightly on the side that faced away from the body. However, the threads are not burnt through. The Maillard Reaction occurred only on the surface of the threads. Somehow, energy influenced both sides of the cloth to produce the mirror image, without burning THROUGH the cloth.
The image is three-dimensional, like a holographic negative. The 3-dimensional features of the body can be constructed from the image, which is also a photographic negative.
The photographic negative aspect of the image was not discovered until the Shroud was first photograph in the late 1890s. Photography, and the notion of the photographic negative, didn’t exist before the 19th Century. But this First Century garment contains one. Such images STILL do not exist in three-dimensions. Our holographic negatives today are slits in crystals which only form visible 3-d images when light is shined through them. The Shroud is unique in that the three dimensional image is preserved in a photographic image which can itself be PERCEIVED as a negative. The technology has not been invented that can do that.
The image is formed of Maillard Reactions, billions of them in an exquisite sequence so perfect it created a microscopically perfect three-dimensional image of this crucified man. Problem: Maillard Reactions are entropic, like the swirling of gases in a room, or the swirling of smoke, or the browning of bread. One cannot paint a perfect detailed Mona Lisa in bread browning, even with a computer. One can create a vague image, but not the sharp holographic negative.
This First Century thing contains an image that is the equivalent of falling snowflakes being blown by the wind into forming a perfect replica of the Statue of David. It would not help if men were to try to set up a bunch of fans to do that. The process of snow falling, and microscopic sugars browning, is too complex, too random,, too entropic to do any of that.
The image on the Shroud is not man made. Man cannot do that today, even with technology. Sure, men can make things that LOOK LIKE the Shroud, from a distance, but the image on the Shroud is ACTUALLY a 3-dimensional photographic negative, in lightly browned linen sugars, on both surfaces of a sheet. The technology doesn’t exist to do that. We cannot imagine HOW to do that. One does not use linen, without any silver in it, as a photographic substrate. And one does not control entropic forces with three-dimensional microscopic precision. One does not do that in the 21st Century, it is completely impossible with our current technology. It was completely impossible in the 13th Century. And it was completely impossible in the First also.
And nature cannot spontaneously form such an image. Overriding the laws of physics. It’s impossible.
But there that image is. It’s real. It contains all of the features necessary FOR it to be Jesus, and it contains one additional feature that makes it certain that it IS Jesus, as advertised:
IT CANNOT EXIST.
Man cannot CREATE such an image, with THOSE materials and THOSE features. We can’t do it because the image itself breaks the laws of physics. One can breathe smoke rings. One cannot breathe out the Mona Lisa. It’s impossible. Second Law of Thermodynamics. Law of Entropy. They bar it. Nature can’t do it either.
But there it is. It DID happen, once, because we HAVE THE ARTIFACT. And look who it happens to be.
Oh, and one last detail: somehow, that bloody body got out of that sheet without smearing so much as a drop of blood anywhere on the fabric. Law a dead body on a sheet and put it over the top and leave the body there, things will settle. They won’t form images on Maillard reaction Mona Lisas, but they’ll settle. Eventually, the body will decay, and with it, the burial sheet, unless the body is gotten out of the sheet before that.
But when a bloody body is wrapped in a cloth, the blood goes into the cloth, it becomes sticky. Body and cloth and blood stick together. You can get the body out, but if you do, you’re going to crack and break and tear and smear the dry or the sticky or the still-wet blood. No matter what you do, you’re not going to get a bloody, battered body out of a full body sheet without smearing some of that copious blood, somewhere.
Except this one time. THAT body, somehow got out of THAT sheet, without smearing any blood at all. And that, your Honor, is a SECOND true miracle that is visible to anybody with a strong education in forensic pathology.
Bring in CSI, and they will corroborate what I will introduce into evidence.
Two miracles on a sheet that contains a man crucified in First Century Jerusalem exactly like Jesus.
Have I PROVEN that it’s Jesus? Have I PROVEN the Resurrection? Using modern technology and with no reliance on Scripture for anything other providing standards of proof so detailed they’d be impossible to accidentally meet without forgery…and yet forgery in this case is rendered impossibly by the physics?
Of course I have.
All one can do is doubt the reality of the forensics. Doubt that the facts are TRUE. IF the facts I have presented are true, then it is perfectly obvious that this is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ – and it’s perfectly obvious he was resurrected too – because that image is a miracle, and that body got out of that cloth without smearing any blood.
That’s it, your Honor. That’s my evidence, and that’s the case I will present. I have met all of the evidentiary standards. If you want to, you can refuse to admit the expert reports of forensic scientists, published and peer-reviewed though they be, because you can insist that I produce live forensic scientists for cross-examination.
That can be done – and if I were to win the lottery, I’ll be happy to do it. It would be expensive to gather that sort of LIVING talent into the courtroom to be cross examined. Peer review is supposed to do that for expert publications, your Honor, but you can postpone the proof until I can afford to haul the actual forensic scientists who did all this work and published all of that overlapping material into court. You can DELAY the presentation of the expert evidence by a trick, if you want to, your Honor, but you can’t keep it out if the writers DO testify in person.
I think with that, your Honor and Mr. M, with my evidentiary hearing, I rest my case. I’ve proven it. There isn’t any argument against it other than “I don’t believe the expert testimony”, but that’s not an argument, that’s an opinion of the trier of fact.
Attorney Crown, that was an interesting set of evidence. Yes, under the approach you have taken, all of that evidence is admissible. But let me ask you something. If all of that is true, what is there left to faith?
Faith doesn’t mean belief. It means trust. The Shroud and the Cloth, plumbed scientifically, prove Jesus was crucified at Jerusalem, died, was buried, and miraculously resurrected. He got out of that Shroud, leaving a burnt image on both faces, without smearing a drop of blood.
So, he was divine, or had divine favor.
What does that mean? Beyond the fact of a miracle, it means NOTHING. It means that a man was miraculous, indeed, divine – he overrode the physics. What does he WANT of you or of me? What does it MEAN? For THAT information, the only place that one can look is into the written sources that provided witness to those pieces of cloth in the tomb. It’s the Shroud that vouches for the integrity of the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection really.
It’s faith alone that lets one make the leap that the miracle man who came out of that Shroud and left his image on it without smearing a drop of blood really said “Love thy neighbor as thyself, and love God above all.”
The Shroud only proves that Jesus was divine. NOW what?
For THAT, the only place one can look to find out a thing about Jesus is the Scripture and tradition. And it takes faith to think that what Scripture and tradition say is really what the man who came out of that sheet by a miracle wanted.
Crown rests.
Goodnight.
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Enjoy your rest, Crown, you’ve earned it! 🙂
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Fascinating discussion, Crown.
Here are the problems with your argument, as I see it, and remember, I’m not just the opposing attorney, I am also a member of the two person jury (you and me):
1. For every expert you have that endorses the belief that the pieces of cloth in Turin and Oviedo are “miracles” and that they date from first century Palestine, you have two or more experts who say they are not. In addition, I would say that a very large percentage of Christians do not believe the Shroud of Turin nor the facecloth of Oviedo to be the burial garments of Jesus. Most Protestants do not buy this story. Most Protestants believe these relics were just two of the thousands of religious relics sold in the Middle Ages. Twenty different churches each claimed to have one of the ten fingers of a particular apostle. It was rampant fraud! Martin Luther denounced the relics trade as a major abuse of the Church. The overwhelming majority of today’s Protestants are extremely skeptical of any Catholic claim regarding a religious relic.
Just the other day the pope was in some church where a bottle allegedly contained the blood of some apostle, and when the pope kissed it, the blood allegedly moved, or something to that effect. Such claims warm the cockles of Catholics, but they are a joke to Protestants. And I am a former Protestant. My worldview is already very biased against Catholic relic claims; a bias that originates from a version of Christianity, not atheism.
2. So the majority of experts do NOT believe in the authenticity of these pieces of cloth, and, a sizable percentage of Christianity does not believe in the authenticity of these pieces of cloth.
3. Since I am not an ancient cloth expert, I must ask myself this question as a non-ancient-cloth lay jury member: Whose argument is more believable, and, on which side of the argument are the MAJORITY of the experts?
My vote: NOT authentic.
Next evidence, please. I am not interested in discussing the Shroud of Turin or any other Catholic relic claims. I didn’t believe them when I was a Christian for the same reason I don’t believe them now: Only Catholic “experts”, for the most part, believe these claims.
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P.S. Send a team of Japanese scientists to Turin and Oviedo and let them have full access to the pieces of clothes to run whatever tests they want on them, and I’ll bet the pink slip to my car that they will come back and say: Fraud.
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Recent comments here are above my current pay grade, but I am very much enjoying them. Carry on gentlemen!
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Well crap… looks like I have a lot of research to do on cloths now, so thanks for that! 😉
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CUT TO:
INTERIOR – THE COURTROOM GALLERY – DAY
[From the gallery, slowly arises a man, incredibly handsome, tall, stately, dignified, exponentially more interesting than the Dos Equis “most interesting man in the world” – middle-aged, if he lives to be a hundred. This is Archaeopteryx, known as “Arch.”]
ARCH
(to the Judge)
Your Honor, if I may – I should like to appear in this proceeding in the role of Amicus Curiae, a friend of the court —
JUDGE
I should deny your request, as it would be highly irregular to allow it, but you’re just so damned INTERESTING, so sure, why the hell not?
ARCH
Your Honor, from the Jewish Encyclopedia, which I can only assume the Court would agree is not anti-Semitic: “Measurements of Jews have been taken sporadically in most European countries with the following results: The average height of Jews is 162.1 cm.” This translates to an average height of 5.31 feet, or +/- five feet, four inches. The image in the Shroud of Turin is of a man of six feet in height. There is no evolutionary or genetic reason, your Honor, as to why the average Jewish person should have shrunk in height over the past two millennia, while the rest of mankind has exhibited an increase in size over previous generations. Ergo, the image in the Shroud of Turin could not possibly be a first-century Jew.
Further, your Honor, if I may present from the Bible, the man who began all of this, the prophet, Isaiah, who predicted a Messiah, from whom the gospel writers had every opportunity to construct a fictional character matching Isaiah’s description: Isaiah 53 – “He has no form or comeliness . . . no beauty that we should desire Him.”
And as long as Mr. Crown, your Honor, is presenting to the Court photographs in lieu of the actual shroud, no doubt the Court will also allow me to present an image that most biblical anthropologists believe most closely resemble the actual Yeshua (“Jesus,” from the Greek):
The average Jew of the time period did not have long hair, as depicted in the image in the Shroud of Turin, who was estimated at being six feet tall and sporting long hair. If the Court would entertain a word from a prominent figure in the history of Christianity, Paul, aka Saul of Tarsus – “In 1 Corinthians 11:14 Paul tells us long hair is degrading to, and unnatural for a man.”
The website, Religious Tolerance offers, your Honor, a rather detailed analysis of the Shroud:
Judge:
Mr. Archeopteryx, your evidence is so compelling and you are SO freakin’ interesting, that I have no other alternative than to order, CASE DISMISSED!
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Very interesting points, Arch!
Crown: I would be very curious to know how Catholic cloth experts explain the claim that the blood on the shroud and on the head covering in Ovieda have type AB blood on it. You can’t have type AB blood unless you have a human mother AND a human father.
Please explain.
I will be happy to concede that the shroud is of Jesus if you will admit that Jesus was not born of a Virgin and was not God.
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HA! Leave it to Arch (that “incredibly handsome, tall, stately, dignified, ,,, middle-aged” man).
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Also, I neglected to mention that in 2002, forensic anthropologist Richard Neave determined, based on an analysis of skeletal remains of Semitic men from the first century, that Jesus was 5′ 1″! Compared to the figure in the Shroud of Turin, Jesus would have seemed like a garden gnome. They could have hung him on the cross with thumbtacks.
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Arch-
Everyone knows Jesus looks like Jim Caviezel. Or, this guy:
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Yeah, right – so did Pancho Villa!
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