Who is Evolving Into Stupid?
Arrogant flight attendant Dylan Walker perhaps devolving into stupid in Daily Kos:
It is, however, very useful for dating artifacts like the Shroud of Turin and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but not quite the right radiometric clock for dating something very old, like the earth or igneous rocks and the objects found near them. Potassium-40 (the potassium-argon clock) is probably better suited for that.
In speaking of assumptions, who, in this case, are the ones jumping to conclusions? The people forming conclusions based on years of careful research, analysis, reason, logic and a certain thing called “evidence,” or the cranks that know the truth because they read it in the Bible? Ah, yes, the Bible. A collection of thousands of years-old allegories and fairy tales, passed on from person to person, tribe to tribe, for hundreds if not thousands of years, before they reached someone literate enough to write them down; translated and transliterated literally hundreds of times, to and from hundreds of languages
I agree with the first paragraph, assuming the work is done right. The second paragraph is idiotic. Dylan can’t distinguish differences in interpretation, I suspect.
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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
I’d have to agree with your assessment. He obviously knows very little about these books, except they have been translated and transliterated. These facts do not hardly disparage its message.
He’s echoing the views of Wellhausen and company, a closeted group of German antisemites who hated everything Jewish, including their sacred books. See, I could play the game too.
Apparently, he is not aware that those antiquated books he is scorning have also been subjected to “years of careful research, analysis, reason, logic and a certain thing called ‘evidence,’” adding to and enhancing our knowledge of the ancient near east.
I wondered who the hell is flight attendant Dylan Walker, that entitles him to make such profound(??) statements that have puzzled the world’s intelligentia for millenia. Checking the URL, and his profile says it all. He’s discovered how to set up a web-site (Wow!) but is just your average wiseass who enjoys making fun of people different from himself. Profound? Yea right! He even knows how to scribble a few lines of integral calculus. Wow!
Not to mention that there are 2.1 Billion people worldwide who still believe 2000 years later. The very small minority that abstain are just that. It’s that they speak louder than we do. We don’t go after them but they’re on a mission to come after us wherever we happen to be. As Frank Turek says, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.”
That fellow, Thomas, is confused between scientific evidence which has been continuous since the STRP Team went in, and the writings in the Bible. None of the Scientists’ evidence becomes proof of the Bible. It’s purely scientific–nothing to do with religion. That is until you realize the implication of the Shroud. Scientists do not know how it was imprinted. They do know it was not painted. They do know it portrays a man crucified according to the Roman penchant for torture. Therefore when faced with the “evidence” one must make a decision. Either believe the science or don’t. You can’t have it both ways guys!