Promoted Comment by The Deacon to I Guess the Debate Offer Was BS
When Dr. Skyvington [pictured] writes, “For everything concerning allegedly ‘miraculous’ manifestations of certain facets of Humanity (as interesting as they are), I recommend strongly the reading of books by Richard Dawkins, who is a brilliant and serious dispeller of bullshit,” he illustrates an inherent weakness in the thinking of atheists when it comes to the shroud. They cannot accept the possibility of anything miraculous and thus must reject out of hand anything that threatens that belief. That is religious behavior. Atheism is a religious belief, not a non-belief, and in the extreme, as is the case with Prof. Dawkins, it is indeed blatant fundamentalism, as Prof. Alister McGrath makes clear (thanks for that link).
The shroud’s authenticity does not depend on any miraculous explanation, not for carbon dating failure and not for the formation of the images. To suggest so is utterly unscientific. So why do atheists such as Dr. Skyvington allege “allegedly miraculous manifestations”? It is because the shroud threatens their belief. The shroud might be the explanation of a miracle, which is quite the other way around, which then makes Prof. Dawkins a frivolous dispenser instead of a brilliant dispeller of bullshit.
[See: Antipodes]