Shroud of Turin part 1

THE SHROUD OF TURIN

 

An Image of Doubt

 

 

Gary Kent

 

 

 

A scientific super hoax, a fraud of the first magnitude, that's the only way to describe it. This is not so much a story of foolish misdeeds and misinterpretations regarding the "scientific" investigation of the Shroud of Turin. It is also meant as an offering of an archetype, a prime example of how gets established such a phony nonsense of a hyper-lie, such an ugly, gnarled, non-science paradigm. It must be that the minds of so very many bored people absolutely need to believe, they truly crave this kind of extreme pseudoscience claptrap.

 

Government officials and police have to fight drug abuse. Scientists and journalists have a hard job too. They must tenaciously fight cases of well organized, well financed, pseudo logical, ostensibly learned semi-scientific nonsense whenever they find it. If we do our jobs well then our fellow citizens, students and readers will help because nobody really likes to be addictively doped or duped.

 

This is an urgent matter of leadership and confidence, competence too.

 

After all, science is not a democracy. Not all scientists are created equal in talent or proficiency. Not all scientific techniques, not even high-tech ones, are of equal reliability or of equal import when called upon to settle particular special technical questions.

 

Perhaps the growth of government has conditioned us to accept the drivel put forth by overwhelming battalions of commissioners and committeemen. Panels of so-called experts, these commissions and committees often govern themselves by some form of parliamentary procedure. Democratic ideals are bandied about much as the whip-like sticks that chimpanzees love to wave, thrust and parry at each other when not using them to zip termites from deep within some cozy little vermin nest.

 

Committees who tout their own existence as Blue Ribbon Commissions who beget themselves and who then select their own members are particularly suspect. Where the scientist members jockey for advantageous commercial, social and political positions we must give pause. When is paramount the protection of their own fragile God given "rights", robust skepticism must prevail on our part.

 

Time after time, commission reports and the thick proceedings of technical committees are justly buried in brittle dry archives deep under dingy desiccated dust and dank darkness. Participating scientists pray that their consensus bound koo-koo conclusions will become forgotten myths. Fit only for oblivion, the errors of popular democratic scientism are really a pervasive kind of pseudointellectual faux science. These reports are still piling up in the basements of public, private and government libraries all around the world.

 

One of the most deserving candidates for permanent future obscurity is the report of the Shroud of Turin Research Project. The STURP commission, as it is sometimes called, operated under very fair, civil and democratic procedures throughout its existence. It was all so neat and tidy according to the letter of understanding that all members signed as a prerequisite for participation.

 

STURP was designed and constructed by techie type Shroud enthusiasts expressly in order to conclusively authenticate the cloth that is purportedly the burial wrap of Jesus Christ. Supposedly, it bears a front and back body image of the crucified Messiah.

 It first became known to anyone of whom we are aware in 1437 when Charles de Charney exhibited it in a small church in Lirey, France. Denied by the contemporary bishop of the area as well as by his successor, the Shroud eventually outlived authorized strictures requiring that it be officially portrayed only as a mere "likeness".

 Once the pastoral dicta were forgotten over decades, the miraculous claims about the Shroud were again touted. The touts were turned to ticket money, of course. So the Shroud legend began as a sort of ecclesiastically questionable church-carnival or holy festival side show.

 STURP, in its quest for democratic ideals, completely neglected these facts and focused instead on the narrow semi-scientific Holy Grail of consensus by committee.

 
But democracy in STURP has meant only that minority views were perforce to remain subservient to the bully rule of crass conformity and the tyranny of the majority. No minority report was allowed, no dissenting opinion was promulgated.

 

The STURP commission sacrificed truth for frail human notions of consistency in order that falsehood could be parlayed into a christologically golden conclusion. Yet the bias and preordained final desire of the STURP commission to theologically justify its existence has escaped notice by the press. Few journalists= pointed critical analyses have appeared though more than three decades have elapsed.