imageHe recently  appeared on local St. Louis, Missouri, station KSDK. He is still telling people that Pope Francis has a Masters Degree in Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires. He does not!  Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) attended a technical secondary school, Escuela Nacional de Educación Técnica N° 27 Hipólito Yrigoyen. There, he earned a chemical technician’s diploma, essentially, a high school diploma with a trade school proficiency as a chemical laboratory technician. For some time after that he worked for Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory as a technician. He did not study chemistry in academia.

And he is still promoting his petitioning of Pope Francis for testing that has yet to be shown valid for what he proposes. On this site, last September, he wrote, astoundingly:

[T]hese procedures could test every explanation for the Shroud’s radiocarbon dating and answer all the mysteries surrounding the Shroud.

In a strange PRWEB press release, “Many of World’s Religious Problems Could be Resolved by Molecular and Atomic Testing on the Shroud of Turin,” Monograph Publishing of St. Louis, Missouri stated last May that . . .

Religious beliefs have caused more conflicts, hatred and war than any other factor in the history of mankind, with the number of conflicts and their potential for nuclear destruction increasing at an alarming rate. Shroud of Turin expert, Mark Antonacci, contends that scientific information acquired by modern technology could lessen or eliminate this historic problem.

A wide variety of religions exist throughout the world today as they have throughout history. The reason there has always been such a wide variety is because there has never been objective and independent evidence to support the central premises of these religions. Until now.

Until now?

A leading hypothesis published in Scientific Research and Essays in 2012 asserts that particle radiation was emitted from the length and width of Jesus’ dead body while he was wrapped in the Shroud, and it was this “event” which caused the unique images on the cloth. Molecular and atomic testing could prove that hypothesis to be true. If, on the other hand, it did not provide such proof, it would not mean that the Shroud is a fake – it would simply mean that this particular hypothesis is incorrect. If unfakable and independent evidence was obtained to confirm this hypothesis however, it could actually be used to analyze the central premises of various religions throughout history and in our world today.

Objective and independent evidence does not exist to prove the central premises of any other religion, agnosticism or atheism. In contrast, the Shroud of Turin could provide thousands of unfakable items of scientific and medical evidence to prove the central premises of Christianity. This new, incomparable evidence could lessen or remove the underlying bases for many of the world’s ongoing wars and conflicts. The world has everything to gain and nothing to lose by the proposed molecular and atomic testing of the Shroud of Turin.

[ . . . ]

Antonacci is currently petitioning Pope Francis, who has a masters degree in chemistry, to allow further, non-invasive testing of this burial cloth.

Note the terminology: non-invasive. Mark,however, is now calling for invasive testing, albeit minimally so. He changed the rules of the game after about half of the people signed the petition. All those people who signed up in support of non-invasive testing now find themselves, involuntarily, signature supporters of invasive testing. Is that honest?

It had been on November 1, last years, that Charles Freeman noticed that the title of Mark Antonacci’s petition read, “We Request That Pope Francis Allow Sophisticated and Minimally Scientific Testing to be Performed on the Shroud of Turin.”

“Minimally scientific.” It was good for a laugh or two and the mistake seemed innocent enough. It was quickly corrected. Ellie Jones, who apparently is associated with Mark, let us know:

This was definitely an error in the typing of the headline of the petition. The petition has been corrected to reflect minimally-INVASIVE, not minimally-scientific. The petition was updated a week ago and the word invasive was inadvertently omitted.

Is it not highly unusual to change a petition’s wording and meaning after many people have signed it?

Oh well, it won’t matter much. So far 322 people have signed the petition in about a year. The stated goal on the petition is 50,000 signatures. He has a way to go.

Oh, did we mention that the leading hypothesis published in Scientific Research and Essays was written by Mark and the Scientific Research and Essays is a pay-to-play vanity journal. The very notion that this article was peer-reviewed seems amazing. See: Particle radiation from the body could explain the Shroud’s images and its carbon dating, (Scientific Research and Essays Vol. 7(29), pp. 2613-2623, 30 July, 2012 — Available online at Academic Journals) 

Abstract:

This paper highlights some of the main reasons why radiation caused the body images on the Shroud of Turin; why the source of this radiation was the body wrapped within it; that the radiation appears to be particle radiation; and that if particle radiation came from the body of the man in the Shroud, it could account for or explain all of the primary and secondary body image features, the excellent condition of the cloth, its back side imaging, its possible coin and flower images, and the still red color of its centuries old blood marks. Particle radiation could also explain the Shroud’s 1988 radiocarbon dating.