The headline, seemingly everywhere reads, “Science Proves Miraculous Origins of Shroud of Turin.” While not viral, the message in this YouTube video from RealCatholicTV.com is being spread among Christian websites, particularly Catholic sites. It exaggerates the ENEA report. It sensationalizes it. Watch it. It’s not long:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6nuyWTqOtA
And here is some accompanying text:
How do we know that the Holy Shroud is real? Modern science is incapable of replicating the image.
While the second sentence is true, it doesn’t prove the first. Does this sound like God-of-the-gaps reasoning? Isn’t this just like the Intelligent Design (uppercase ID) folks trying to argue irreducible complexity? This makes pseudoscience out of science.
There is nothing wrong with the ENEA Report. It is how it is being reported. In my mind the authors of the report need to issue a clarification for the media. Or maybe I just don’t understand. In that case the authors of the report need to issue a clarification for us dummies.
The newscast wasn’t pseudoscience, in my opinion, because it did not seriously raise the question of whether or not the Shroud was authentic. The Shroud is an official relic of the Catholic Church and deserves to be venerated as the burial Shroud of Jesus. Whether or not it actually came into contact with Jesus, as relics are supposed to have done, is not important. That there is no explanation for the image on the Shroud is a reason to believe in Jesus.
It is a sign, not a miracle. You can’t expect a short segment like that to get into the difference between a sign ( a reason to believe) and a miracle ( a violation of the laws of science).
As for the advocates of intelligent design, they are quite correct about living organisms being irreducibly complex. All PhDs in biology agree with this. I prove this statement in my YouTube video titled, “The Truth About Evolution and Religion.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKaF8vX6HXQ)
Natural selection explains only the adaptation of animals to their environment, not common descent. Also, evolution only applies to the bodies of human beings, not their souls.
God-of-the-gaps reasoning??? That’s hilarious. God INVENTED God-of-the-gaps reasoning. Imagine how this world would be different if Abraham hadn’t taken God at His word and headed out of town with nothing but the “Word of the Lord” to go on.
The people at that God loves and respects are the ones who BELIEVE Him. Hebrews 11 is the great chapter which describes the heroes of faith. Those who took God at His word. They jumped the gap and went for it.
Those who are a hard-sell are going to miss out, big time.
Yes, I know that a zillion things have been done wrongly in the name of “faith.” And that’s what proves they ARE wrong things, people who didn’t use the sense God gave them. Or they didn’t use LOVE to balance their actions. People who let their children die rather than take them to a doctor. Misguided faith is a tragedy. I don’t understand it, where people will give stubborn “faith” more priority than prudence, love and caring.
We’re also commanded to live by the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, termperance (self-control) and faith. It’s a package deal.
Dear AnnieeCee,
You are confusing two “gaps.”
1) Faith is both a rational judgment based on evidence and a gift from God. We can’t criticize someone who says, “God hasn’t given me the gift of faith.” Such a person is admitting that God exists, that they have a meaningless life, and that the arguments for believing are persuasive.
2) The other gap is the argument for God’s existence based on questions like: What caused the universe to begin 14 billion years ago? This argument is unpersuasive and illogical. The real proof is that humans are finite beings and finite beings need a cause. If all beings in the universe needed a cause, the universe would not be intelligible. Hence, and infinite being exists. In the West, we call the infinite being God. (The Big Bang, as it is called, is a reason to believe in the Bible because the Bible says God created the universe from nothing.)