The comments about the coin-on-eye issue have gotten rather testy, For instance when Max Patrick Hamon writes:
Spy details on ancient coin types “behave” like fingerprints. Body images (resolution limit 0.5cm) should not be mistaken with blood images (resolution limit 0.5mm). Many Shroud researchers (including Barrie Scwortz) makes repeatedly the same confusion. He also totally ignore the thread count per square centimetres. The only snag with Barrie Schwortz’s faulty opinions is that thousands of his website viewers are all too ready to believe him.
And when Hamon writes: “On the contrary Barrie’s arguement is very weak and his opinion not qualified,” followed by “Remember: when there are two Jews, there are three opinions!”
I must remind him that he is wrong. He must have been thinking about Episcopalians.
It sort of started on August 29, when I wrote a posting entitled, “Pareidolia and the Shroud of Turin: Yes and No.” I was expanding on some points I had made in an earlier posting when I wrote, “I Don’t See Flowers and Coins and Teeth on the Shroud of Turin.” I had staked out a skeptical position on coins, flowers, lettering and all manner of things and shapes that people think they see on the shroud:
[I]t is fair to be skeptical, as in the case of the flowers, teeth, coins and lettering because there is identifiable noise such as the banding, wrinkles and crinkles and whatnots. "’I see’ said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw," so goes the excruciatingly ridiculous old English ditty. "I see flowers, I see teeth . . ." You get the idea.
I would like to see the flowers. I see something that looks like two flowers. I’m not convinced they are flowers. I’m not trained enough in botany to know many other types of flowers to look for. I’ve read the books. Studied the charts and diagrams. Looked at pictures through gadgets. I don’t see the flowers. I want to see. Show me. Show me that these images are not pareidolias or apophenias or phantasms or I-think-I-sees. Show me that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t New Jersey.
The posting received little or no attention. Maybe it was the title. Maybe the New Jersey-ites didn’t like it.
Then, recently, I stated that I thought it would be nice if the HAL9000 HD images of the shroud were made public. The reaction was strong. To my surprise not everyone agreed. This resulted in a series of posts with numerous, initially thoughtful comments by many people. They were: 1) “Value of Putting HAL 9000 Shroud of Turin Images Online,” 2) “Free the HAL 9000,” 3) “More on Freeing the HAL 9000: Yes, what is the Archdiocese of Turin afraid of?,” 4) “Comment Promoted: Of Coins and Flowers and More on the Shroud of Turin,” 5) “There is an Image of a Flying Saucer on the Shroud of Turin” and 6) “Paper Chase: Max Patrick Hamon on the Coin-on-Eye Issue.”
To this last posting, the most important one to read, now viewed more than 3700 times and now having some 32 highly-charged comments, Max Patrick Hamon, who presented at Frascati, Italy, and Torun, Poland, offered this comment:
Dan, I wish you had asked me how much credence I give 1979-2008 Filas et al’s coin image extractions. In spite of my deep respect for Filas’, Whanger’s and Moroni’s pioneering work, my answer would have been NONE!
I might even have added: I am convinced “THEIR COIN IMAGES” are not there. Both optically and numismatically speaking I CAN PROVE IT.
However, the whole irony of it is I myself detected and identified incomplete Pilate coin impressions… on the suspected areas. Both optically and numimactically, I do hope it will be convincing even to the uninitiated eye.
When can all of us with our uninitiated eyes see the evidence? The statement is too bold to go unsubstantiated. Will this new evidence overcome the primary objections to “Filas’, Whanger’s and Moroni’s pioneering work,” namely the weave of the cloth, the visual noise (what photographs are being analyzed?) and cultural/religious objections?
We are having quite an argument about unpublished material. Did readers of this blog or anyone from the Shroud Science Group attend a talk by Hamon at Frascati or Torun?
Max, I’ll let your comments fly even when you write: “Yannick, you’re REALLY THICK.” But I would like to see substance beyond the abstract you offered which touts your qualifications while diminishing the rest of us.