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We are left with only two possibilities for the
images on the Shroud of Turin. The images were formed by radiation or by some other unexplained phenomenon.
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Some of the material in this essay is obsolete. Please refer to the The Searching for Sister Ann's Bishop Who Thinks Ann is Nuts An Episcopalian's Perspective -- AN ONLINE ESSAY -- By Daniel R. Porter |
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Part 18: How were the images formed? So how were the images formed? Scientists really don't know. Over the years, dozens of natural process theories have been proposed and tested. Some researchers suggested that aloe, myrrh, and other funerary ingredients, in combination with sweat and blood, could have produced a chemical reaction or a stain. The mechanisms for these theories all rely on contact, vapors, or emitted heat. They don't meet the image characteristics criteria. Various artistic theories, in addition to painting, have also been advanced and tried. Among these are: dust paintings, primitive photography, bas-relief rubbings, and hot statues for scorching the fabric. None of the naturalistic or artistic theories has held up to scientific scrutiny. None can satisfy the image criteria that must be . . .
We are left with only two possibilities. The image was formed by radiation or by some other unexplained phenomenon. From theoretical physicists, biophysicists, and radiologists startling possibilities are being proposed. Dr. Giles Carter, Professor Emeritus at Eastern Michigan University has suggested that a long-wave, low-energy X-ray, a product of some inexplicable process, could produce such an image. Physicist Thadeus Trenn, has theorized that weak dematerialization accompanied by resulting electrical-coronal discharge could have produced the images. Jean-Baptiste Rinaudo, a biophysicist from the Institute of Biology at the Center of Nuclear Medical Research in Montpellier, France, has suggested image formation from the release of protons and neutrons from the nuclei of deuterium atoms distributed over the entire body. He argues that protons, in that they are not penetrating particles, would produce a superficial topmost fibril image. Furthermore, the maximum travel for protons would be but three or four centimeters in air. He points out that the number of protons that would reach the surface of the cloth would be in direct proportion to distance, thus controlling pixel density. Recent experiments conducted by Rinaudo and several others at the Grenoble Nuclear Studies Center in France have produced a semblance of an image of conjugated carbonyl on linen with proton bombardment. Dr. Kitty Little from Britain's Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, England, has suggested that alpha particles produced by "nuclear disintegration, acting almost instantaneously," like protons, could have produced the image. There is some argument for dematerialization or nuclear disintegration that should not be ignored. There is the matter of the unbroken and un-smeared quality of the bloodstains. If the body somehow dematerialized, then the bloodstains would have remained intact and un-smeared. Bloodstains, seemingly in the man's hair, which are not in proper of registration with the source wounds, are mathematically consistent with a cloth falling through a dissolving body - toss a bed sheet and watch it spread out as it falls. Dematerialization, with a cloth falling through a dissolving body, is also completely consistent with the teeth and bone imagery. But, dematerialization defies our Newtonian-conditioned sensibilities. Might it have been as Tom Wright suggested: "that cameras would sometimes have seen Jesus and sometimes not . . ." Can we at least not wonder: Did something happen in the tomb? Did something happen within that linen Shroud? Did something happen that was so powerful that an image was imprinted on the cloth? Thomas Cahill also wrote: ... Was this image impressed upon the cloth by the heat or light of new life? No laboratory will ever tell us, nor can any scientists give such questions a scientific answer. The questions are important, not because we can ever hope to answer them with human knowledge, but because they lead us to the ultimate question about Jesus: does his story make sense? "The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world," said the Johannine Jesus. We do not have to adopt the theology of substitution - the theory that God required a spotless victim to make up for human sin - to make sense of the crucifixion ... But Jesus' suffering body is surely his ultimate gift, for it is his final act of sympathy with us... ... When they come to Jesus, he seems already dead, so they do not break the bones of this Pascal Lamb without flaw. Just to be sure, however, "one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and at once blood and water flowed out" - witnessed, writes John, "by the one who saw it," the Beloved Disciple. This blood and water, the last drops of Jesus' wracked body, seem to have flowed copiously, if we accept the visual testimony of that strange Fifth Gospel, the Shroud, which may have been a treasure of the church of the Beloved Disciple, the same church* that treasured the evolving Fourth Gospel * the Johannine church with a community in Edessa I don't know who was Sister Ann's bishop. If you, the reader, are he or she, may I suggest that the Shroud is either the real thing - of and by a rare exception to laws of nature - or it's the world's single most amazing unexplainable hoax. Ann is not nuts. It may be the David Hume's empirical-skeptical prescription on miracles is what we need to declare, at least philosophically if not also scientifically and historically, that a miracle did occur.
Dan Porter is an Episcopalian and a member of Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City. He may be contacted by email at porter@shroudstory.com or by mail at 20 McIntyre Street, Bronxville, NY 10708. (c) Copyright 2001, Daniel R. Porter. All Rights Reserved. This article may be reproduced in full for any non-commercial purpose without further permission.
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