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..my 23 cents… !!!: The Shroud of Turin !!!
Close. Just a few more cents:
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have been physically traumatized in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, from which it derives its most common name. Some believe the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus and that his image was recorded on its fibers at his resurrection. Others contend it is a medieval hoax or forgery.
Actually. a whole lot of people believe it MAY BE real and that the image MAY BE a natural phenomenon unrelated to a resurrection event. Among scientists in the Shroud Science Group, it is unreasonable to jump to conclusions, either way, without enough evidence.
Barrie Schwartz on the Shroud of Turin
Barrie M. Schwortz discusses the Shroud of Turin:
shadowtalk » Blog Archive » Dimension X and Barrie Schwartz
Television Special Feb 1: Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence
In case you missed it, t he Discovery Channel will be rebroadcasting “Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence” on Sunday February 1 at 9 p.m. EST and again 4 hours later at 1 a.m. (Check your local listings). It will be broadcast on Discovery’s regular and HD channels.
This Shroud of Turin documentary was first shown in December and received numerous positive reviews. Part of it was recorded at Ohio State University during a conference of about 100 scientists, historians and other researchers last August.
Discovery is featuring the broadcast on their home page and that is warranted. In my opinion, it is the best documentary ever made about the shroud, even better than the 2002 PBS special. Watch it!
It clearly explains why the previous carbon dating has been shown to be invalid by peer-reviewed scientific studies including the work of Raymond Roger and subsequently a team of nine scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
If you have wondered about the shroud, this is an excellent production. Even if you are skeptical, it will help explain why many people believe it is genuine or are at least open to the possibility that it is.
Source: Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence to be Rebroadcast on the Discovery Channel
Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
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