- The Shroud of Turin
It really does strain credibility to be confronted, yet again, with nonsense about the Turin Shroud, the medieval piece of cloth with the image of a man imprinted upon it, widely believed, at one time, to be the actual grave clothes of Jesus. We don’t even have evidence that Jesus was buried. Most crucified people were never buried. They were left on the cross for carrion creatures like dogs and vultures, and then, if there was anything left, it would be thrown on the rubbish heap, where it would either burn or rot away. Crosses, at the time, were short. They were not “noble” and tall, as the crucifix often pictures the crucifixion of Jesus. They were short things, just tall enough to make the torture effective, and to enable them to be accessible to animals on the ground. Even before they had died animals might tear away the flesh of crucified persons. There was nothing noble or beautiful about this way of dying. It was deliberately to treat the human being as less than human, to torture, degrade and humiliate them. They were hung out naked in the sun to die in torments. There was no discreet loin cloth to cover the pudenda (‘pudendus’ just means ‘shameful’ in Latin). The whole purpose was to dehumanise and to degrade by making a person’s naked suffering public. It was supposed to deter offences against the law, or against nobility.
But now we are being told that the shroud has been shown, scientifically, no less, to be genuine. According to Nick Squires at the Telegraph, “Italian study claims Turin Shroud is Christ’s authentic burial robe“. The claim is that
Italian scientists have conducted a series of advanced experiments which, they claim, show that the marks on the shroud – purportedly left by the imprint of Christ’s body – could not possibly have been faked with technology that was available in the medieval period.
Which means, being interpreted, that they don’t know how the image was made, but they needed to use technology not available in the medieval period in order to duplicate the image. As Tom Chivers tells us, in the same newspaper, “The Turin Shroud is fake. Get over it.” And even if it isn’t, as Chivers points out, it still doesn’t prove that Jesus was divine; it doesn’t prove that he was raised (or rose) from the dead; it doesn’t prove that his words are thereby given special authority over us; it doesn’t prove a thing. All it is, whatever its origin, is a piece of cloth with a strangely imprinted image of a bearded man.
However, none of this really matters, the Vatican tells us. No matter what the truth is, whether it’s a fake or a genuine relic from the grave of Jesus, it has a particularly important role to play in the life of the faithful. In Daily Mail type language
The Turin Shroud DOES have miraculous powers… whether it is genuine or not
According to the pope, who won’t be called out on the dispute over the authenticity of the shroud — because, by taking a position, he’d have to take a position on the supposedly scientific evidence — better reserve judgement on all that – the shroud
… is an extraordinarily powerful image of Christ’s suffering — and made so because of the faith people have in it, whether it is genuine or not.
“And that,” says Peter Stanford, the author of the Daily Mail piece,
… surely, is the point about religion — a point we are in danger of missing now that every belief and theory is judged to be worthless unless it can be put under a microscope by scientists and proved, irrefutably, to be true.
Some things, some important things, just don’t fit into this rigid, logical model of the world.
Science, as the saga of the shroud epitomises, can never get to the bottom of faith.
It’s the old “other ways of knowing” trope, but Stanford wouldn’t have been writing about it in the Daily Mail if scientists hadn’t come up with a claim that science shows the shroud to be genuine. Genuine what? is still a question that needs to be answered. Without this ”science” the “truth” about the shroud would have been decently hidden being ecclesiastical subterfuge and prevarication. The cathedral in Turin has too much invested, spiritually (and financially too, of course), in the relic, to abandon it now.
The story in the Independent doesn’t pull any punches at all:
Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural
The story begins with these words:
Italian government scientists have claimed to have discovered evidence that a supernatural event formed the image on the Turin Shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
But this is nonsense, since they don’t know how the image on the Shroud was made. They made a similar image, apparently, using modern technology, but it does not follow that there is no other way of making the image. Besides the original carbon dating puts the shroud somewhere in the vicinity of 13-1400 CE, well after the supposed resurrection of Jesus. As one of the scientists — Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at Pavia University – told the Independent:
The implications are… that the image was formed by a burst of UV energy so intense it could only have been supernatural. But I don’t think they’ve done anything of the sort.
And of course Luigi Garlaschelli is absolutely right. The only way that they could show that it could only have been made by some supernatural force is by showing that it could not be made in any other way, and this is something that has not been demonstrated. Religious scientists shouldn’t let their religion interfere with their scientific conclusions.
The funny thing is that it doesn’t really matter. If the image was made supernaturally, the image is a holy relic, and if the image was made by some process now forgotten, it’s still a holy relic! After all, it’s about faith, not science. The devotion shown to relics is not about anything that can be scientifically established; it’s determined by the way people feel, how they react, what kind of spiritual nurture they get out of it; because the church clouds the whole thing with so many layers of piety that panders to people’s credulity that it really doesn’t matter whether anyone knows the truth about things or not. It functions just the same whether it’s true or not. This is why some people think that the new atheists are wrong to put so much emphasis on belief. This criticism would be right only if belief did not stand at the centre of what the church and other religious institutions are up to. Sure, it’s easy enough to say, with the pope, that it doesn’t really matter; but it matters like hell, because, if they began to say what they seem to be saying, that the whole thing may be just a story that gives us some kind of psychological lift, there would be an outcry from the faithful so overpowering that even popes would fall. Religion keeps the religious project going by believing or half believing or believing in belief — it really doesn’t matter how it’s put — so that people can go on deceiving themselves about what it is that religion is really all about. So, whatever it is, as the pope says, ”it is an extraordinarily powerful image of Christ’s suffering” because people believe it, not because it is. And this is a perfect recipe for self-deception, because, if you look at the picture at the head of this post, you’ll see that it’s really the image of a dead man, not of someone who is suffering. This is the kind of double-dealing that the religions practice. It’s a con.
Also, in what sense is a “burst of UV energy” supernatural?
Yes, that’s a good question. I suppose they’re trying to say that until humans were able to cause bursts of UV energy it couldn’t be done, which is a bit presumptuous. For there may have been the natural occurrence of such an event, and the best answer to the question of its cause would not be a god, but some other natural occurrence. In any event, they still haven’t shown that the image could not be created in another way, a way, that, say, mimicked UV radation.
I thought the matter had been settled by the anatomy of the skull. In homo sapiens the eye-line is almost exactlyat the mid-point of the skull, with the grey matter residing at the top.
The skull shown in the Turin Shroud shows the eye-line far higher up the skull indicating that the brain case, in this instance, would be far smaller and approximately the same size as that of a chimpanzee. About the same as a proto-human.
With a homo sapiens sized body and proto-human sized brain would not the possessor have severely restricted mental faculties?
It all seems so 15th century, doesn’t it? When one thinks of all of the pieces of wood from the cross, the bones and blood of saints, and even Mary’s breastmilk! that have been paraded about in churches, one has to ask are people still that gullible?
Two words: MEDIEVAL FORGERY! No doubt like so many other religious “relics”.
And you know what, the truth should matter – but it doesn’t apparently to these vatican “scientists”. I say “scientists” because in order to be a real scientist you have to follow the scientific method which involves concluding the results from your experiments, and not the other way around.
Oh… and you know what also produces UV – the sun. I know they call it the dark ages, but I am pretty sure it was still up there back then.
So a source of strong UV was used in the creation of the shroud image – like from a magnifying glass under the sun? Over to Wikipedia’s entry on “magnifying glass”:
‘The earliest evidence of “a magnifying device, a hi lens forming a magnified image,” dates back to 424 BC Aristophanes “lens” is a glass globe filled with water.(Seneca says that it can be used to read letters no matter how small or dim),[1] Roger Bacon described the properties of magnifying glass in 13th-century England, followed by the development of eyeglasses in 13th-century Italy.[2]‘
So, eyeglasses and magnifying glasses became well known in Italy by the 14th century, and the Turin shroud was carbon dated to the 14th century. In other words, the shroud appeared soon after the local introduction of a simple technology that could have been used to make it.
It’s a wonderful example of a successful “supernatural” hoax. But as with crop circles and other hoaxes with an obvious natural explanation, the true believer prefers the supernatural explanation. It’s Bertrand Russell’s “cruel thirst for worship” in action.
I can think of at least one strong source of ultra-violet rays that was available in the 13th century: It’s called the Sun.
It’s my understanding that the “scientists” weren’t able to reproduce what the shroud looks like TODAY without high-powered UV lasers.
OK….but what did the shroud look like in 1400? Probably just a bit different, I’d say.
And, of course, they were going for an “instantaneous” creation. It’s just X many photons of UV light, which can be given either in a one-shot dose of UV lasers…or by letting the thing set out in the sun for a couple of weeks. And, oh by the way, what medium did they expose to the UV light? Human blood? The article doesn’t say.
And what in the world would powerful UV light have to do with bringing a dead person back to life? Um…I think powerful UV light is a great technique to sterilize something, not create life, and certainly not to reanimate a corpse that has its guts hanging out of its side. You’d have to propose that UV light was a mechanism by which a body could be reanimated — I invite the Italian “scientists” to give that a whack.
Really, this is what “scientists” in Italy spend their time on? It’s an egregious example of not-thinking.
Of course, one wonders just how closely aligned these “scientists” would be with say … the Turin Tourism Bureau?
No offense to anyone here, but these comments are taking the science behind the shroud’s origin far too seriously! “We don’t understand how it happened, therefore God” is never an acceptable answer. If people want such an option to be on the table, then it’s pointless to even discuss the science – they’ve already shown that they aren’t interested in it. Similarly, should we get all defensive when creationists complain that we don’t know how abiogenesis happened? No, because we don’t know how tons of shit happened. But it did, and saying “there’s this stuff called the supernatural that did it (and no one can explain that, by the way)” is a copout – the human need to invent stories run amok.
Bah! Humbug.
Tim, of course, you are right. But is anyone saying anything else? We could put it just that bluntly. But the claim that is being made is that they’re not just saying: ‘We don’t understand how it happened, therefore God.’ They’re saying: ‘This is how it happened, therefore God.’ And the latter argument doesn’t work either, unless they can show that it couldn’t happen any other way, and it needs to be pointed out, not only that this arugment doesn’t work, but that there’s something fishy, not only about that, but with continuing to treat the thing as a holy relic. I still have to read Charles Freeman’s book about relics, and how the medieval craze for relics influenced the church’s teaching and beliefs. It just does seem to me to go into greater detail, because the greater detail shows how deeply religion is committed to crazy ideas and beliefs.
Note excellent ‘religious feast’ clever marketing timing of announcement? Same ploys are employed regarding child abuse issues.
Wasn’t there a time when most churches had a shroud each? The fact that the faithful didn’t get to travel much meant that they could be kept unaware of the others, or possibly told that only ours is real and everyone elses is a fake. Once communication improved to the point where everyone became aware that there were hundreds of the things, all but the most impressive looking one were ditched.
Stonyground, I’m not too sure of the history. This is a comment by someone over at what may be a questionable site:
It comes from a blog written by a DM Murdock who writes under the name Archarya. But she may not have got everything wrong. The blog looks a bit huckersterish to me, but it may have some reliable information: http://www.truthbeknown.com/shroud.htm
For One with Faith, No Explanation Is Needed.
For One Without Faith, No Explanation Is Possible.
I think the shroud was a creation of Leonardo Da Vinci and is also the world’s first photographic image of the artist himself. If it is true, the artifact is indeed very precious and substantial, a missing work of a great genius mind of the Renaissance Period, highlighting a missing piece of one of his technological developments lost in time. I have looked into it a bit, and even though the shroud has been dated to be at least 100 years older than him, I actually think it really does lend to its credibility of it being tied to him, and not otherwise. A genius mind like Leonardo would know that if he were indeed trying to create a commissioned fabrication of an ancient artifact for the prestige of the church that he would need to use a very old cloth, perhaps the oldest he could obtain to lend to the appearance of age and wear and thus help generate a sense of authenticity for the artifact. Examinations of the cloth show there is evidence of paint having been applied to create the image, but other scientists argue that there is also evidence that the image was imprinted by UV exposure. Thus, a combination of an ancient method of photography that would have been an enigma to anyone else at the time plus application of paint to highlight and additionalize details that the photographic method could not achieve would be very ingenious and would be one of the very things that would make this artifact so mysterious today. I think finding evidence of any chemical remnants in the cloth in which it might have been treated for to allow for a type of photographic exposure would be the best method of testing it out… This unique combination of effects unknown to the general public would be key to making the image so unique and explains the presence of both paint and UV photographic shadows…
The ironic thing? Everyone is worshipping the image of Leonardo Da Vinci as Jesus, clearly, if he held any resentful feelings toward the church, which is what I suspect by my own interpretations of his paintings, then it is his last mocking laugh against them…