Muslim Blog Asks: Is the Shroud of Turin Fake or Not?
Because of the level of news coverage given to the ENEA Report, Arif Khan over at Revelation and Rationality has written an interesting article, “Shroud of Turin – Fake or Not.” This is a blog prepared by “Ahmadi Muslim researchers who are interested in the interface between science and religion.” They are open to the possibility that Jesus survived the cross. I am convinced otherwise by the shroud’s image and historical plausibility. Even so and because so, I recommend reading this article. It is well written. Here is one of many points put very well:
Why is it so hard to explain the image?
There are specific key characteristics of the image that any theory must account for:
1. The image is a photographic negative
2. There is a 3D property to the image – the further away a part of the body was from the cloth the fainter that part appears
3. The image is visible only in the very upper fibres of the cloth – it does not go all the way through to the back of the cloth
4. When standing close to the cloth the image is not visible – it is only visible when standing a few metres away from the cloth
5. The blood flows on the cloth have been shown to be 100% anatomically correct based on modern physiology
6. There are no pigments or dyes used on the cloth
7. The blood is human and contains extractable DNA samplesIt is very hard to put together a theory that can satisfy all of the above items.
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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
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