John Klotz’ Letter to the New York Times
On August 9, 2012, Ross Douthat had a piece in the Opinion Pages of The New York Times on the American Nuns and the Fate of Liberal Christianity. Regular reader and contributor to this blog, John Klotz, wrote a comment that is published in the Times’ website:
Here it is (fair use)":
I do not think that Christianity can escape Christ even as we explore he meaning of scientific advances. We have now reached the point where science is dealing with intrinsically religious issues including the evolution of consciousness and its reality at the quantum level.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, science also demonstrates the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin as the burial cloth of Christ.. The carbon dating to the Middle Ages often cited to the contrary was hopelessly inept and no one can demonstrate how the image on the Shroud was created. The evidence is overwhelming that it was not painted. The forensic reality of the Shroud deals Christ back into the discussion. There are numerous sources concerning the issue at http://shroud.com I might also suggest the blog: http://shroudofturin.wordpress.com/.
Christ was/is real. He did suffer, He did die and He was buried. The Shroud is consistent with his Resurrection. Liberal theologians ought not deal His reality out of their equations.
The martyred nuns and priests of El Salvador whom the Vatican studiously ignores give the most profound testimony to the meaning of Christ and Christianity. The scandal is the pervasive and growing power of Opus Dei at the Vatican. Dan Brown couldn’t make that up. It’s real and it is not a fairy tale like the DaVinci Code.
The American nuns are living the true Gospel and the true Christianity.
John C. Klotz
http://johnklotz.blodspot.com
Notice this blog is mentioned. That’s cool and good for a few hundred visits.
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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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