The shroud of turin

[Rev. Rye]

[Abaddon_ire]

[Paleophyte]

Most recently Casabianca et al. (2019), based on information obtained after a legal filing with the British Museum, showed that some of the original Shroud date measurements reported by the three laboratories to the British Museum were modified from their original ‘raw’ laboratory values and transformed into their published form using an unstated methodology.

Our review and analysis of the Shroud radiocarbon data reveal a significant shortcoming in the original report by Damon et al. (1989). The shortcoming begins with the lack of adherence to the protocol that W-W define for combining the inter-laboratory data sets.

Rogers (2005) proposed a method for cross checking the dates of ancient textiles by measuring the loss of vanillin from residual lignin at the growth nodes of linen fibers. The tests he performed on the Shroud threads suggested to him a much greater age than the results Damon et al.

Fanti et al. (2013) developed a series of relationships between characteristics of fiber over time and a method of estimating the age of the fabric. He subsequently applied these techniques to a series of fibers extracted from the Shroud and derived an estimated calendar age of 90 AD +/− 200 yrs (Fanti et al., 2015).

Casabianca et al. didn't manage to do more than expand the range of the age slightly. You're looking at multiple AMS 14-C ages from multiple labs, all done double blind with quality control samples. All returned Medieval ages regardless of the age range and uncertainty you want to assign. The vanillin and fibre characteristic techniques are extremely dubious, especially as they are extremely sensitive to the storage conditions. Neither should be regarded as more reliable than the 14-C AMS dates obtained in 1989.

[Pat Mustard]

The shroud of turin...

is a fake. And a badly made one at that.

Next thing you'll be telling us is that all 12 holy prepuces are real.

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TL;DR: The Shroud of Turin is a lot less meaningful method of "proving" Christianity than it might seem at first glance.

But, hey at least it's a good way to debunk christianity. Somebody put an awful lot of time, effort & money into making it and then selling it. A person well conversant in the catholic practice of making fake relics.

[Fake Messiah]

Shroud of Turin is actually an image of Howard Stern's penis.


But it's also a symbol for theists' arguments: no matter how many times you show them they're wrong, they just keep going to the same old debunked arguments and same old logical fallacies and insist that they are right.

[Gwaithmir]

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

[Smedders]

It was carbon dated some years ago to around the 14th/15th century so cannot have been the shroud Jesus was wrapped in. Even given the range of possible error for this date it is way too modern to be 1st century.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

1. It's a painting 1
If this were true, it should be possible to identify the pigments used by chemical analysis, just as conservators can do for the paintings of Old Masters.

Would you like to know all the ways this is wrong? If so, get a ph.d. in organic chemistry.

[The Grand Nudger]

We're constantly told that there is evidence for christ - and to that end, we're directed to consider a stick figure drawn on a bedsheet.

....the quality of miraculous demonstration has certainly declined since the days when god himself would curse a fig.