Materialism’s Shroud of Turin: Of my gosh, life on Mars
Calling the photograph of a bit of Mars the materialist’s Shroud of Turin, as the Discovery Institutes’ David Klinghoffer does in Evolution News and Views is a real stretch. The issue for Klinghoffer is that one more “God of the gaps” gap seems to be closing.
Oh my gosh, if there is evidence of water there might be the possibility that some primitive, perhaps primordial form of life existed there. What does that do for the Genesis story? Notice, Klinghoffer tells us, that the “materialists” use an awful lot of “ifs.”
Klinghoffer is not all fluff. He has written articles for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. But make no mistake about it, he argues strenuously against evolution.
Materialism and Darwinism in their dual aspect as quasi-religious faith include a Genesis story, a scientific priesthood, the equivalents of sainthood and demonology, evangelism, catechism and excommunication, an Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and so on. The news in today’s Science about water on Mars and with that the consequent possibility of Martian microbial life — how many times have we heard this before? — offers what might be the materialist’s Shroud of Turin.
Look at photographs of the actual Shroud with its mysterious, haunting rust-brown image of what might or might not be the body of a crucified man from 1st-century Palestine. Believers persist in supporting investigations for forensic evidence of its authenticity.
The “ifs” keep being dropped and the gaps keep closing. But what in the world does this have to do with the shroud other than the color brown? Maybe this:
Notice just in those three short paragraph the number of "if’s," "whether’s," and "I don’t see why not’s" that pile on top of each other. Actually, there’s better scientific evidence that the Shroud of Turn is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ than that life exists or has existed on Mars. After all, there is at least debatable evidence for the former but not as yet one single iota for the latter.
But so what? Really, so what? You can’t really make a good analogy here. Read Water on Mars: Materialism’s Shroud of Turin – Evolution News & Views
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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
Scientists think that photograph shows evidence of water? It looks like a dry landslide to me. Sandslides and wind erosion. Are they trying to baffle us with BS??
I think that Nasa’s current obsession with Mars is more evidence that mankind has lost our marbles, IMO. There are so many problems right here on planet earth, why are we spending billions and billions to find water on Mars. I’m especially sensitive about wasteful spending when I can’t even get people to give a few bucks to help some orphans in Haiti. Peoples’ priorities are totally messed up.
It’s very simple. Compare photos of the two planets MARS and EARTH side by side: if you were an alien looking for water, which planet would YOU head for? It’s a no brainer. The search for water does not justify what they’re doing, IMO.