Shroud of Turin part 2

Shroud of Turin  part 2

 

Only Dr. Walter C. McCrone's book, Judgment Day for the Turin Shroud, Microscope Publications, 1997, goes straight to the point. It details how he discovered artist's pigment on the Shroud of Turin image areas and "blood" stains sufficient to account for all the image's intensity. His much earlier published papers giving all the technical wrinkles of his findings were later corroborated by radiocarbon dating of the Shroud.

 

Visit  http://www.mcri.org/home/section/63-64/the-shroud-of-turin .

 

This very old and reliable, fundamentally electronic technique proved, within a margin of a few years, that the Shroud originated in the 14th century, just as McCrone (RIP), the world's best light microscopist, had deduced. The light microscope had once more proven to be more accurate, immediate and precise than the best "black box" high-tech methods.

 

Anyway, radiocarbon dating certainly does not make the work of McCrone moot nor does it close the account on the Shroud. McCrone, by his book, establishes that Shroud reverence continues to stray into fraudulent unscientific story-telling and basement level bawdy myth. This is despite conclusive proof against the Shroud.

 

While the Shroud and STURP were still making news in 1978 and '79, only a sense for the sensational in synergy with a compelling need for the correct political posture explains the virtual abdication of the press' role as a skeptical investigator. To question the Shroud was to offend Catholics and to depreciate Christianity. In a case like this, good investigative reporting is not a part of the best formula to promote strong newspaper and periodical sales in heavily Christian western countries.

 

Jesus might never approve. The Islamic world just may differ slightly. Let's let Walter McCrone's book make Shroud news again, now, so he can finally set the STURP record straight.

 

STURP lied. STURP made pompously momentous deliberate false claims. STURP was a cruel farcical cap to a 640 year old joke.

 

That the chemical and physical methods used to study the Shroud were being hailed as the best modern technology has to offer is disturbing enough. STURP's preposterous final claim that there is no credible evidence against the Shroud adds to the deficit. That such garbage, unrecognized as it is as bad science, if not pseudoscience, argues so well in the media for the Shroud's authenticity and is believed by the ordinary man-on-the-street, is a monumental setback for science itself, at least for science in the West.

 

Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic scientists laughed their heads off, opining "What a goof troop those impostors must be!" when they saw STURP studies published in famous western journals. The judgement of God may never be known for sure, but it has never been moral or right to lie for Christ any more than it has ever been so to kill for Jesus, the Crusades notwithstanding.

 

When news arrived that STURP proceedings were being attended by a fundamentalist Catholic cult of "Jesus freaks" some observers were perturbed. But when some STURP members took to wearing large wooden crosses around their necks perturbation degenerated to consternation. It was clear that only one conclusion was possible from this evangelical canonization commission.

 

It's too bad there cannot be a church trial of the Shroud as is done to elevate a personage to sainthood.

 

STURP conducted no such trial, that's for sure. There was no devil's advocate. No one in the STURP group was allowed to effectively argue the case against authenticity. No one in STURP really critically evaluated the results that were being obtained in favor of the Shroud. The one man who might have exposed this intellectual crime against humanity had been sequestered, isolated, silenced and all but excommunicated.

 

It is all classical high balderdash. The manner in which this fraud was propagated is documented by McCrone and much earlier by Skeptical Inquirer authors. McCrone administers the coup de grace. A discussion here of the SI authors’ critical analysis and McCrone's own independent scientific investigation of the Shroud must wait. For now, let's just say that McCrone's microscopical examination of Shroud samples was the only fitting, apt and well calibrated instrumental technique that was ever performed by both a courageous and truly objective investigator.

 

In a way, this author wishes to congratulate Dr. Walter C. McCrone publicly for his devotion to Science with a capital "S".

 

For McCrone was really a true scientist. (He died in 2002.) He both acknowledged and compensated for his biases. His marshaling of massive evidence against Shroud authenticity should have been the only data that was deemed admissible by STURP. Instead, it was crassly thrown out, arrogantly dismissed, haughtily rejected and a crass attempt was made to entomb it forever.

 

The initial premise used by STURP was that the Shroud is genuine. The negation of the premise is that "the Shroud is not genuine, it is not the true burial cloth of Christ, it is the work of an artist". On the surface, this implies to some that if it isn't the result of a real miracle, virtually the only alternative is that it is a work of art.

This is the null hypothesis that STURP used to try and show Shroud authenticity and to convince skeptics of their devotion to the scientific method. By apparently disproving the null hypothesis, by arguing that the Shroud could not be the work of an artist, STURP scientists knew they would never actually have to enunciate that most incredible conclusion. That the Shroud contains a miraculous image of the crucified and resurrected Jesus is laid between the lines. But if taken at face value, this is an inevitable direct conclusion that could be drawn from the STURP report.

Yet, if this conclusion is left to the reader, it is a finding that would be based on false evidence, specious argument and selective admission of facts, to be sure. Still, advantages accrued for STURP. For when structured this way the report largely escaped ridicule and mostly preserved the personal reputations of STURP members: a very happy circumstance for them indeed. They thought they could get away with this kind of a cop-out and still retain the good graces of Shroud fans and the Catholic Church.