Author Interview with Robin Maxwell of Signora da Vinci
Where oh where do they get their facts about history?
Q: While researching for Signora da Vinci is there anything you learned about Leonardo da Vinci that surprised you or that you didn’t already know?
A: Just about everything. Like most people, I knew Leonardo was an amazing artist, anatomist and inventor (I’d been to one of the exhibits that display the inventions — flying machines and hydraulic systems to name a few) — that he’d created and that modern engineers executed. But I’d had no idea that he was a brilliant philosopher, an atheist who first and foremost worshipped nature; a vegetarian (at a time when such a thing was considered heretical); at different times in his life bisexual, homosexual and asexual; that he was publicly and excruciatingly tried for the crime of "sodomy"; and that he was probably a prime mover behind the Shroud of Turin hoax.
Don’t blame the interviewer: Passages to the Past: Author Interview with Robin Maxwell of Signora da Vinci
-
August 8, 2012 at 5:33 am | #1Is nothing sacred, even Tarzan? « Shroud of Turin Blog
Leave a Reply
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
Recent Comments