Just to show how wildly views can vary among people who think that the shroud is real let me disagree with several points in this posting from Big R’s World:
Scientists and graphic artists are able, with today’s technology, to raise a three dimensional image from the Shroud of Turin to reveal precisely what the face of the man in the Shroud looked like.
Precisely? Maybe. It is my opinion that if we don’t know exactly how the image was formed, how the cloth might have been draped on the body and so forth, we can’t know. But many friends of mine, who have also spent years studying the shroud, disagree with me on that point.
. . . The mystery remains on exactly how the photographic image was formed except there was light that traveled through the body similar to the way the light moves in a photo copy machine.
I understand that argument. I’ve studied it. You might be able to model an imaging mechanism this way. But, frankly, I’ve seen no evidence that suggests that light was in any way the cause of the image. From a chemistry point of view, I’m far more inclined to believe that the image was formed by slow chemical reaction between amine vapors emerging from the body and a reactive substance on the cloth such as a natural soap residue.
Is the image of the man in the Shroud actually the Lord Jesus Christ? That may not be proven to everyone’s satisfaction however I now believe it is (with no doubt in my mind), the actual burial cloth that Jesus Christ was wrapped in.
Yes, I agree with this statement except I might throw in the word reasonable between no and doubt.
Further, the image was imprinted on the cloth at the moment the resurrection took place. Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead.
But why not an hour before the Resurrection? Or ten hours before? There seems to be a sense, even a belief, that the resurrection event was energetic. Many people express that view. Why?
Don’t even get me going about images of coins, flowers, lettering, etc. on the shroud.
I don’t mean to pick on the author of the blog. I have friends who agree with him. I just found it was a useful posting to make these points. See: The Real Face of Jesus « Big R’s World