A reader writes:
Every student of philosophy should know that an appeal to lack of evidence, argumentum ad ignorantiam, is proof of nothing. So I was told recently when I claimed that the shroud must be real because no one had figured out how the image was created.
There is something compelling, however, about mystery that speaks to our higher faculties; those faculties which ignore the limitations of mere rationality. One would think, really, that after so many years someone would have figured it out. There is nothing like it in the world of art from any period in history. That includes photography.
Fifty years ago John Walsh wrote these words. They are no less meaningful today.
The Shroud of Turin is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Christ in existence or it is one of the most ingenious, most unbelievably clever products of the human mind and hand on record. It is one or the other, there is no middle ground.
Argumentum ad ignorantiam? Mea natibus (but mea asinum sounds better).