Shroud of Turin part 5

Shroud of Turin  part 5

 

The brilliance of the Shroud's forger has blinded some STURP members, but if they were innocent as accomplices to fraud after the fact, then they were awfully stupid. They were silent as well while their colleagues freely tortured the scientific method.

 

Contrary to STURP'S blatant misstatement of fact, the spectrometric results, in the form of spectrograms of the blood areas of the Shroud, do NOT resemble the spectra of blood. They are not very different from that expected for a mixture of iron earth pigment and cinnabar or vermillion (mercuric sulfide). This pigment has a strong absorption band, or region of the visible spectrum where light of a very specific color is greatly attenuated (upon reflection in this case). The so called Sorét band of hemoglobin in blood absorbs in the same region, but it absorbs much more strongly and over a much narrower range of wavelengths. Only a novice or a charlatan could mistake the difference. A competent metal coordination chemist would spot this error instantly.

Yet, whenever STURP scientists have to explain discrepancies in their interpretations with the factual record of their own data they retreat into excuses. STURP vies with creation "scientists" for sheer slipperiness this way.

 

Potassium and sodium shows in their X-ray fluorescence spectrograms of genuine blood-on-cloth. Though the spectrograms obtained in Turin when the Shroud was examined in 1978 were of better quality than those of these standards, the absence of these elements (an essential component of blood) in the Shroud spectrometer output is attributed to "instrumental difficulties" and "electronic noise".

 

Or else somebody idiotically washed the Shroud. Like someone today would dry clean the Mona Lisa or scrub down the "Last Supper" with Comet kitchen cleanser.

 

By examination of STURP's own data it must be concluded that there is no blood on the Shroud of Turin. The opposite conclusion can be made only by selective exclusion of evidence in a knowing, deliberate attempt to subvert the truth.

 

The only way this kind of despicable pseudoscience could ever have been published in various reputable scientific journals is by means of cronyism or worse on the part of certain editors. Such an editor can parcel out candidate papers for publication to as many or as few referees as he pleases. He can even serve as a referee himself.

 

Some of the STURP scientists were well known to the editors of certain journals and to each other. If an editor should give papers to referees who did not recuse themselves because they were close friends of the authors in question or because they were associated, however loosely, with the work involved, a green light for publication from such referees would seem not so surprising.

 

Even at its zenith, when STURP scientists where actively engaged in Shroud investigations, the project was not well known outside of the circle of Shroud fans. If an editor were unaware of the existence or of the large scope of STURP, he might accidentally give papers for review to other members of STURP to referee in a sort of fortuitous, intellectually incestuous impromptu love fest. Something like this certainly happened because most of the papers published by STURP people were perfectly unpublishable, the acme of trash.

 

Tyranny thrives on such lapses by otherwise honest men, so let the editors deny it all. But one thing is certain. They certainly bent over backward not to suppress anything.

 

STURP members used their joint power to suppress one particular unpopular "unscholarly" dissenting view and turned a mere conclave of tinkering pseudoscientific weekend crackpots into a massacre of the truth that will live in infamy. STURP represents one of the great world atrocities of irrationality.

 

In order to carry out their program of selective exclusion of pertinent information, the true believers within STURP were required to submit their findings to the approval of the majority. Dr. Walter McCrone's refusal to soften his reasoning and his insistence on an honest presentation of his own results led him to resign from STURP. Their report would not have given any weight to McCrone's work anyway. So he was better off free of STURP. He could, and did, then publish his results independently.

 

Unwarranted, incredibly vicious attacks on McCrone were aimed at his person and his professional veracity. His conclusions were viewed with such alarm and fervor that denunciations were heard that usually are reserved for the destruction of heretics.

Many STURP members regretted inviting McCrone to participate in the first place. He was, after all, the sole representative of non-Shroud advocates to sit on this self-selected panel. When it was formed, a few STURP members thought it would be a good idea to get some expertise from outside their cozy little group. They thought that since the Shroud was surely genuine anyway, such a person would certainly agree with the majority. STURP's opinion had already reached more than a mere consensus of the genuine Shroud, it was dogma.

Shoud of Turin part 6

Shroud of Turin  Part 6

 

Walter McCrone concluded that the Shroud of Turin was a fake long before the Shroud was radiocarbon dated in 1988. This final proof was determined by three different top notch laboratories using blind sample and analysis techniques. Three completely different answers said that the Shroud cloth was not nearly so old as Christianity itself. The Shroud linen, a form of pure cellulose that was easily washed free of contaminants and presented to the radiocarbon assay devices as a pristine analytically pure substance, gave precisely the same result three separate and independent times. The conviction of all the skeptics who already knew of McCrone's work was merely confirmed. The Shroud of Turin came into existence in about the 14th century.

 

But the press did not notice that they and the carbon date workers had been scooped. McCrone's data are even more firm and reliable than the untouchable, invisible black box method that radiocarbon dating employs. There is nothing more solid or more simple and direct than the polarized light microscope McCrone uses.

 

With the combination of McCrone's irrefutable Shroud discoveries and the incontrovertible results of Church sponsored radiocarbon dating you might think that Shroud reverence and Shroud societies and Shroud Pseudo Science would just dry up and blow away. As McCrone said on many occasions, however, no matter how much damning evidence accumulates against the Shroud, some people will never be convinced. They will always try to invent complicated excuses, elaborate explanations, foolish scenarios, hairbrained theories and air-head accusatory anti-shroud conspiracies in order to maintain their belief.

 

One tidy little story goes something like this: The resurrection was a true phenomenon that had consequences beyond merely raising Jesus from the dead. Tremendous amounts of energy must have been released at the moment that life was restored. His body must have radiated a prodigious torrent of gamma rays, neutrons, x-rays, neutrinos, muons and every other kind of light and subatomic particle. In such a maelstrom of pure energy, anything is possible, even the transformation of elements. No, the Shroud wasn't reduced to ash. But, some carbon-12 was merely transmogrified to carbon-14. 

 

Then radiocarbon dating was done almost 2,000 years later. This analysis determines how much carbon-14 is left in the carbon bearing cellulose once it stopped incorporating this natural radioactive element into its framework since it was last alive. When the flax, in this case, was harvested and turned into linen, Carbon-14 from the atmosphere no longer was being replenished by the processes of green plant respiration. But the purported transformation of carbon-12 into carbon-14 vastly increased the natural store of carbon-14 in the Shroud's cellulose. This made it now appear to be much younger than its true age, once it was dated. The same process was responsible for fixing the image of Christ on the cloth, it is said.

 

The microscopical results of Dr. McCrone were dismissed in much the same way. So much electromagnetic and other energy suffused the Shroud at the moment of resurrection that hemoglobin in red blood cells was transfigured to iron oxide particles while destroying sodium and potassium and obliterating all other carbonaceous fatty and sugary components while leaving proteinaceous traces of real blood (what McCrone says is the tempera vehicle). Some atoms were transformed into mercury and others to sulfur in such a way that mercuric sulfide micro-crystals had to form.

Every time facts are marshaled to debunk the Shroud another ad hoc story is invented to rebut. There is no end to the ingenious creative attempts to alter the truth. It is because some people simply must have miracles in order to believe and because they must believe or their whole emotional system of self esteem and self worth will be crushed.

 

It is just for this reason also that people must have their circuses to pacify them in the big cities. It has been ever thus since cities were conceived. The Chicago Bulls, the Houston Texans, the Los Angeles Dodgers all are roving circuses as important to city life as Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, the World Soccer Cup or the ancient Coliseum of mighty Rome. So it is that faith sometimes is so weak that it must be bolstered by tangible, miraculous signs for many of the more desperate citizens of the City of God. Some of us are doubting Thomases at heart who want pathetically to believe and to see. We don't realize that the greatest show on earth is happening right inside our own heads and just outside our two dark blinking windows.

 

It's just so sad that so many must fasten onto science frauds with such tenacity that all the negative evidence in the world won't convince them of the lie. It is a great sorrow that the Shroud offers both false religious and scientific succor to nothing but the monstrous maw of eternal emptiness that gnaws at the heart and soul of every thoughtful person.

 

Nonetheless, I believe that surely there is relief in God's Word.

 

It's just too bad that the forces of the shadows sometimes ensnare even the righteous in the grip of this kind of disgusting error. It is not often that the Bible and the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics are darkly combined to produce such a depressing Burlesque show.

 

But isn't this exactly how all pseudoscience persists? The Shroud of Turin Research Project is the most compact and concentrated occurrence of pseudoscience ever. The whole cast and crew and the entire set with all the production's props are still on hand, except for a couple of actors who had to leave early. Not only was this greatest show directed by a well identified and documented coterie of perfectly typecast pseudoscientists, they were actually real professionals when playing their legitimate roles. And the object of this circus act is still locked up in a vault in Turin, Italy. But of course, it has been moved temporarily after the fire that damaged the cathedral recently.

But we have the primary material object, we have all but two of the main stars, we have the ancient and modern documents and we even have the witnesses who can attest to this enormous, really global, masquerade's true nature. It is really quite a perfect example of how pseudoscience may be born, lives and grows but never dies.

 

The self-anointed STURP commission has repeatedly ignored facts, discarded data and resorted to unsound "uncontrolled" experiments. As performed by scientists working outside their fields of expertise and then by using techniques or instruments that were unsuited for the technological demands that were cynically made of them, their efforts turned out to be utter mummery.

But few speak out. Science was perverted and redesigned not to determine the nature of the Shroud image but to prove a fully prejudged outright pretension that the Shroud should be authentic. So, few seem to listen to any other voice.

continued

Shroud of Turin, part 7

Shroud of Turin, part 7

 

CONCLUSION

 

So, we hereby declare: every single result published by STURP scientists has been deliberately or incompetently misinterpreted and sometimes contrived. It is outrageous that some of this data were actually published in refereed scientific journals. Further, we say, STURP members, as referees, must have reviewed and approved each other's work. The editors must have been personal friends of certain key participants to allow such callow atrocities to be perpetrated using the weapons of the institutionalized professional press.

 

The story of the Shroud attains excess mythic majesty if left undisturbed to grow and spread. STURP only added to it. But as a nonsense myth, it will never be taken to heart by any significant portion of the human race because of its many smothering flaws.

 

 

Much has been made of the fact that the picture on the cloth represents accurately every biblical account of the crucifixion and resurrection that can possibly apply. This has been pointed to as conclusive proof of authenticity - as if the Bible must not have been available to any artists of the 14th century, especially not to illiterate French artists.

 

These Shroud fans' claims are an insult against France and against the French people. They belittle the bishops and the whole Church of France whose investigations of old have shown that the cloth is a fake. In the light of the testimony of witnesses from the time of its first appearance that it is phony, extraordinary proof of great quality and quantity is needed to reverse this condemnation. This proof is what STURP tried desperately to supply. But at best STURP'S evidence is inconclusive and if other facts are considered, such as Dr. McCrone's discoveries, the mass of evidence weighs more heavily against the Shroud. This even without the radiocarbon dating that corroborates McCrone.

 

Besides this and even besides the theological arguments against the Shroud, legion as they are, there is a certain wonder that the Shroud has got as far as it did for so long. In fact, that the Shroud has survived so long is often referred to as if its longevity (since the 14th century, at least) was further proof of its divine origin.

 

If the Shroud image is not divine, how has it been able to survive so long and why do so many people believe in it? The answer cannot be stated simply. Apart from this episode of High Pseudo science, the Shroud phenomenon can be adequately rationalized by analysis that explicitly takes into account the history, rivalry and politics between France and Italy. The true answer to the mystery of the Shroud of Turin resides most patently in the reasons for Geoffrey de Charney of France's loss and Savoy of Italy's gain. Besides being the greatest art fraud in history and one of the greatest scientific frauds, the Shroud of Turin ranks as one of the world's most battered political footballs.

 

It is more than a mere coincidence that the Shroud legally belongs to the exiled King of Italy and his family and that his House of Savoy stands to gain by the continuing political turmoil in that country. Royals love to meddle even if they don't have anything material to gain. This particular Shroud controversy was deliberately encouraged by King Humberto and his relatives as a means of keeping the royal family in the eye of the Italian public.

 

Careful analysis suggests that Humberto had used some unscrupulous or gullible scientists in Europe and America to maintain himself in a position to influence the course of events inside Italy. He dreamt of engineering a return to the Italian monarchy. In a country that is almost 100% Roman Catholic, the man who can successfully claim to own such a holy relic as a fully authenticated and universally recognized Shroud could parlay his "monopoly of Jesus" into, who knows? Machiavelli would be proud.

 

Just remember that there are a number of angles from which to view the cloth. When examining this case, though it is nothing more than an artist's picture, there is indeed much more to the famous Shroud of Turin than hits the eye. The late singer Dean Martin would agree that it is all ultimately a matter of faith and amore no matter how much the Shroud is likened to a bright, full, romantic rectangular moon or a big, oblong pizza pie.

 

 

 additional Keywords

 

artist, Buddhism, carbon‑14, Catholic, Christianity, counterfeit, crucifixion, fake, forgery, fresco, fronde, God, Hindu, hoax, image, ink, iron earth, cinnabar, iron oxide, Islam, Jesus, JPL, linen, logic, logical, Los Alamos, micro‑optical, microchemical, microscopy, phony, pigment, polarized light microscope, pseudoscience, pseudoscientist, radiocarbon dating, resurrection, science, scientific, scientific method, scientist, shroud, Shroud of Turin, Shroud of Turin Research Project, STURP, supernatural, tempera, Turin, Walter C. McCrone, work of art