For the past two years, you have been a frequent participant in this blog. You have commented 1,294 times. Most of your comments have been comprehensive, thoughtful, and well written. Many of us disagree with you a lot, and that’s fine. It is only when we start insulting others that things get testy. Yes, you mostly start it. And yes, people return the favor.
You also maintains you own blog, The Shroud of Turin: medieval scorch? Separating the science from the pseudo-science… (formerly entitled, Shroud of Turin Without all the Hype). Oftentimes, I cover your own postings in your blog. I used to cover you more frequently but lately what you have been posting is mostly selected comments that have already appeared in this blog. Maybe that will change because as you wrote:
Firstly, I shall be wasting no more time on the shroudstory.com site.
It is simply a mouthpiece (with some very mouthy contributors*) for the pro-authenticity, anti-radiocarbon dating agenda. Its host, Dan Porter, is almost certainly a front man for a behind-the-scenes organization, probably hard-line Roman Catholic, despite his declaring himself to be some kind of Anglican (Episcopalian). Or maybe it’s a soft-sell commercial operation. Who knows?
I had no idea. This organization is so behind-the-scenes that they have not told me. Shades of conspiracy thinking, is it?
I think this is the fourth or fifth times you have left vowing never to come back. C’est la vie, I guess. But if you change your mind you are welcome back. Really! And don’t stand on principle. None of us around here do.
You also wrote:
I would ask its host [that’s me] NOT to do cover posts on anything I post here in future.
Just as the news media doesn’t work that way, neither does social media. It would be analogous to a politician telling the New York Times not to cover him in the news because he doesn’t like what they write about him.
There are some things you can do, however. You can customize your blogging template to include the following meta command:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
If you do that, the search engines will eventually drop you from their results. This may take a few months because of the hundreds of comments you have placed in this blog. Google already knows too much about you. You must also stop using the promotional feeds. I see that you use Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit. Tumblr, LinkedIn. No good if you don’t want people to comment on what you write. Finally, you may want to issue user codes and passwords to those people you want to see your blog. If it is 1) in public space, 2) about the shroud and 3) newsworthy, it will or may be covered.
You wrote:
. . . I’ll still be here, ploughing my lonely furrow for what I call genuine untainted agenda-free science. There will be short shrift to those who continue to malign the radiocarbon dating scientists . . .
Colin, I’m not a scientist. In my world if someone announces and endorse the results of a study, be it scientific, historical, financial, etc., they are quite naturally endorsing the methods used. You can’t get away with saying the scientists in the radiocarbon dating labs merely tested the sample given to them. They knew about anomalies in the sample. If they didn’t know then they were not doing their job. Rogers put it well to Vatican Insider:
Asked whether he [Rogers] thought the authorities at Turin had been aware of such evidence as the 1978 photographs indicating that the corner of the Shroud from which they took the sample was unlike the rest of the cloth, Rogers responded that “it doesn’t matter if they ignored it or were unaware of it. Part of science is to assemble all the pertinent data. They didn’t even try.”
The threat of short shrift is noted. I guess you can write about my blog and I’m not supposed to cover yours. Is that it? You can criticize scientists left and right, but I am not supposed to? is that it?
You conclude:
So, time to move on. But to where and how?
I’ve decided to put together a lecture presentation, with no particular audience in mind as yet, one that summarises my thinking about the TS, especially the hot template/hot Templar angle. Yes, it’s all hypothesis, but I try wherever possible to accommodate as much of the available data (hard data that is) while keeping ideas testable in principle.
This is a real-time endeavour, and has been from the start just over 2 years ago. So I will be assembling that lecture in stages, directly underneath here, using my blog essentially as a work area.
That’s the nature of the exercise. I suspect this may be the first time a sustained scientific investigation has been carried out in real time on the internet. . . .
There is an important admission by Colin “Yes, it’s all hypothesis, but…”
A hypothesis is not evidence of anything. It is often an educated guess. Sometimes it’s an uneducated guess. To become important, the hypothesis must be supported by facts and experimentation. the Jacques DeMolay hypothesis is supported by neither.
As much as I believe in the right of free speech and welcome debate, CB has been a distraction. I still wonder if it was deliberate.
My memory’s not what it used to be, but I’m 90% certain that I made the link with the Templars through pondering details of the Lirey badge, its curious omissions and the peculiar “blood belt” (Wilson’s description) especially, rather than through awareness of the Knight and Lomas prison/torture scenario which came later. They proposed chemical imaging of a still living de Molay. I propose imaging off a metal effigy, possibly a crucifix to add to the confusion between Jesus Christ and an executed Templar It was strengthened by the close similarity between the names of Geoffroi de Charny, first known owner of the TS in Lirey, and Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, who died at the stake the same day in 1314 as Jacques de Molay. Genealogist Noel Currer-Briggs considered them to be nephew and uncle respectively, so it was a small step to regard the TS as a one-off grim and arresting pyrographic tribute by nephew (maybe) to his uncle (maybe).
But this is clearly not the site to be discussing these ideas, and in any case I am now going through the sequence of ideas developed over the last two years and trying to decide how credible they are or not. Some here have quickly made up their minds. I have not, and could be swayed either way as new argument or evidence comes my way. But I will not be ridiculed or bullied into submission. I’ve taken unconventional stands in the past, and lived to see my ideas become accepted as the norm. The John Klotz’s of this world cannot take that away from me.
My site is now a work sheet for detailed and meticulous re-examination of each link in the chain, so to speak. It’s unlikely to appeal to many here, bar one or two folk still receptive to new (or even recycled) thinking. That’s why I’d prefer to work with few if any distractions from having posts covered on this site. My blog has always been primarily by way of a personal odyssey, certainly not the draft for a book, and with no absolutely no ambition for fame or personal enrichment.
I will look in here from time to time, not to comment, but to pick up on views I consider interesting or debatable, offering my own view maybe over there. But with that proviso, kindly consider me hors de combatwhere this site is concerned. Chalk and cheese…
Colin, for me, was only a distraction when he lost his patience and then strayed from the facts into personal attacks. I’m not sold on the Molay hypothesis either but Colin’s other observations about the Shroud, his questioning of the assumptions, were most valid. His scorch experiments were also fascinating re: 3d properties.
I’m not here start a CB fan club but we need Colin, Charles, and Hugh’s skepticism. It’s healthy for the discussion.
What I’ve noticed with both sides of the debate is a reflex to dogma and ad hom attacks the minute we realize ‘I might be wrong’ – but cannot handle this possibility.
Each of us has boldly claimed that whether the Shroud is authentic or a fake, that it doesn’t really matter as to what we believe about Christ. Looking at our reactions to each other on this blog at times, I think we’re not being honest with ourselves.
“Looking at our reactions to each other on this blog at times, I think we’re not being honest with ourselves.”
Great point. Many here DO seem to be clinging to Shroud authenticity to support their faith, despite what they say.
You are absolutely right. By the same token I have also noticed people clinging to fantasies to support their lack of faith, despite what they say( that they are only interested in scientific proofs and so forth).
No one has noticed that there are bloggers who react to other bloggers depending on how yet other bloggers react?
It isn’t just that his screeds are so antagonistic to the Shroud world, or even that they are bitter and self-humiliating, but that they are so unfailingly patronizing. The Shroud world, we gather, hasn’t been sufficiently deferential to Berry’s credentials, to his academic attainments and his immense store of knowledge, his often unfortunate command of chemical minutiae, and the insolent presumptions of superiority that have come along with it all, however unentitled. We read of the deluded Shroud world, the “Mickey Mouse” Shroud world, the Shroud world, and the big one – particularly distasteful because it has been so gratuitously trumped up as to look like a mere projection – the starry-eyed pseudo-science Shroud world.
Thankfully I and a tiny handful of others are no longer the only ones blowing the whistle on Shroud pseudoscience, David Kyle Johnson on Psychology Today has recently added his voice too, citing my views on the resort to wacky or unspecified radiation sources, rarely bothering to discuss problems and mechanisms of imaging. Here’s a link to the first of his three part series, curiously not flagged-up thus far on this site.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-i/comments
One needs hardly add that he also attracted the kind of personal invective in the attached comments as we see here.
Enough said. DFTT.