Kriss, I have no issue with your atheism or agnosticism when it comes to the historical existence of Jesus. On these matters I respectfully disagree. What I do have a problem with is your use of facts.

You wrote:

According Gary Vikan carbon 14 dating shows, “it could not possibly have come into contact with the historical Jesus (if there ever was a historical Jesus-I’m agnostic on that).”

You might want to review the science on this matter. It is now widely recognized that the carbon dating must be considered invalid. Ray Rogers, who had accepted the carbon dating, decided to disprove a crazy explanation from what he called the lunatic fringe. The crazy idea was that the Shroud had been mended and the samples were from that mending job. What Rogers discovered was that the crazy idea seemed to be right. He concluded that the sample used for carbon dating was not representative of the cloth. It was chemically different. Moreover, one of the chemical differences, the amount of vanillin, provided a new clue about the cloth’s age. Samples from the main part of the cloth, unlike the carbon 14 sample area, did not contain any vanillin. If the shroud was only as old as the radiocarbon date, it would have plentiful vanillin.  The Shroud was at least twice as old. It might be 2000 years old. After a lengthy peer review process, his findings that the carbon dating was wholly invalid were published in the scientific journal Thermochimica Acta.

Rogers’ published work showing that the carbon dating is invalid has been confirmed by John L Brown, a forensic materials specialist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia and by Robert Villarreal and a team of nine scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The Shroud first appeared in 1357 and was in possession of French nobleman Geofrey de Charnay. Bishop of Troyes, Henri of Poitiers, believed it to be a fake, why, because the artist that claimed to make it told him so.

There is not a single shred of historical evidence other than the claim by Pierre d’Arcis that Henri of Poitiers ever thought so. No 30 years passed. You can’t write history this way and you should know better.

30 years pass, and in 1389 Henri’s successor, Pierre d’Archis states, “The Shroud is a product of human handiwork.” Although the Pope at the time allowed the Shroud to be displayed, he did so with caution and only if a priest were present to acknowledge that the Shroud is Not the true burial cloth of Jesus.

The consensus of many historians is that Pierre d’Archis was referring to a painted copy then on display. Many other papers at the time (historians need to consider all sources) dispute the Bishop’s claim. You are resorting to cafeteria style pick and choose history. Actually the claim was a forger had painted the shroud, not merely that it was handiwork, which brings us to the next point. You wrote:

Walter C McCrowe, in biblical Archaeology Review (Nov/Dec 98), “I concluded in two papers…that the Shroud was painted in 1355.” Other papers confirmed the results with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray determination and carbon dating. The Shroud was produced around 1355.

You have all this wrong. The “X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray determination” you mention as well as visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry and pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, laser-­microprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing show no evidence of pigments or media. Even McCrone’s own employees proved McCrone wrong. See Didn’t Ray Rogers provide a definitive answer about paint?  BTW: Carbon dating can’t tell us if McCrone’s claims of inorganic compounds (paint) exist.

You wrote:

Rev. Lino Otero, “Our search for the truth is guided by faith.” And that is the problem. Faith is has already come to it’s conclusion. Conformation bias will skew the results because of preconceived beliefs. Where is the scientific method and the search for the truth? It is nowhere if faith is the guide.

Good grief. Faith is not incompatible with scientific method or the search for truth. Faith, of course, does not provide observations, facts or measurements in the pursuit of science, but it can be a guiding principle. Don’t confuse faith with blind faith.

He went on to write:

One million tickets have been sold for the April 10-May 23 viewing of the original Shroud in Italy.

No. Wrong again. The tickets are free. The showing of the shroud will be very costly for the archdiocese of Turin.

The Vatican has not taken an official stance on whether the Shroud is authentic or not; but I’m sure that they do know that pilgrimages will bring in big money-for the original Shroud and its replicas. Why do believers still flock to see an unauthentic icon that has been debunked several times over, from a church that has lied and hurt society several times over-cognitive dissonance.

Because the debunkers have been debunked and so far have not been able to produce scientifically or historically sustainable arguments. Your arguments seem to be guided mostly by your faith.

See krissthesexyatheist: Debunking the Shroud of Turin, Again.

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