In which I mostly talk about the Shroud of Turin. Murray only spends seven pages on the it, so my review is not comprehensive. Actually, never mind. That's what the top sections are for.
Your lead question reminded me of Pascal. He also believed that reason couldn't get you to faith. In fact, he went further, arguing that the philosophers' god could never be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I've always found the Shroud to be one of the Church's most valid relics, mostly because it's one of the few relics the disciples would have access to and would also have been very likely to save.
As a former-Protestant-turned-atheist-turned-agnostic, I've never actually been among many pro-Shroud-sters, and I haven't even heard even my deeply miracle-seeing Catholic friends bring it up when I've asked for evidence (Fatima is what they point to), so you can guess my biases here!
But I'll say that the facts you listed, if true, would very much move me to be pro-Shroud. I'll read the book. For the moment, I'll list what I've heard that puts me on Team Doubt for this one:
1. It looks like a medieval drawing of Jesus.
2. When it first surfaced in the 1300s, it was denounced as a forgery; the local bishop allowed it to be shown publicly as something of an art piece, so long as there was no confusion as to its authenticity.
3. I'm told that the arms can't actually work — their position is impossible.
4. If I learned the resurrection happened, I wouldn't expect this to exist. If Jesus was resurrected, why would that shoot light, or whatever, out of his body? This feels natural with a folk-physics "life = energy" assumption, but I'm not sure it makes sense with what we now understand to be true of life.
Finally, there's one of the points cited that I've heard the opposite of: the weave of the fabric. I've heard it's a much better match for both the time and the local area. I think I heard that from either one of these Dan McClellan videos:
Five minutes of talking with ChatGPT seems to indicate that the weave issue is complicated. There's a join in the fabric that matches some stitching found at Masada. But as far as the bulk of the cloth. The Z-twist could have been done during both periods but it was rare. Still it was not unknown during the time of Jesus. Skeptics do point to a:
"A 3:1 herringbone twill linen fragment in the Victoria & Albert Museum that they say is the “only surviving parallel,” and it’s medieval."
The fact that there's only one data point does not exactly scream "much better match" But as I said this is just a cursory look.
I'll agree that I don't know my herringbone twills from my... actually, I'm so ignorant of this field, I don't even know how to end this sentence!
I'll only make the meta point that this might be the sort of topic on which ChatGPT — which draws claims from everywhere in writing — could be particularly bad. The internet (and books, actually) seem swamped with iffy claims about the Shroud.
If this seems like special pleading ("I don't trust AI when it disagrees with me"), I'll only say that I've seen something like this happen with young-Earth creationist claims (back in GPT-3), and that I'm very open to refutation here.
I'm one of those deeply miracle-seeing Catholics, who did not bring up the shroud because you specifically asked me not to clutter the table with miracles. You asked me to focus exclusively on Fatima and not bring up any other miracles. I have long been aware of all these arguments and I do not believe the counterarguments have much weight:
1) It's a photo negative. Impossible for medieval artists to draw - it's not even within the purview of modern techniques to recreate it.
2) The shroud has been attested since St. Helena and it was very plausibly brought to Europe after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, held by the Templars until the order was destroyed by order of the Pope in 1308 and entrusted to Godfrey de Charny.
3) The shoulder was dislocated. This argument has long been answered with medical precision regarding someone who was hanging on a cross for several hours
4) Since incarnate God doesn't rise from the dead on a regular basis, it's hard to say what we'd expect a real resurrection to look like.
5) The pollen tests point show pollens that have been extinct since antiquity. Medieval curators did repair the fabric from the fire. There's no chance it was created in the medieval period.
Hi, Georges! And sorry to have misremembered that. Ross, Georges and I are planning to dive deep into one particular evidence for the Shroud, and I'd like to give the choice to you. Of the evidences that Georges just wrote, is there one that, if it bears scrutiny, would most convince you that the Shroud is legit?
It's really hard to pick just one... So I'll offer up two and maybe whichever one you don't take I'll take.
1- The pollen: This definitely isn't covered by the "bleaching" methodology (mentioned in a previous comment if you didn't see it) and if it is as strong as is claimed it's pretty strong.
2- The "negative" aspect: This one is a little softer, but one (or maybe just me) hears that the Shroud was a minor relic not given all that much attention, sort of on the periphery until someone thought to take a picture of it, and then, when the photographer saw the negatives, suddenly the Shroud seemed much more impressive. Is this true? Was it a huge revelation to see the negative images of the shroud? Because if the most impressive way to view the Shroud is in a fashion no one thought of then that seems to strongly argue against the idea that it was a forgery.
I'd like to take up the pollen issue with Brandon, but I do insist that the photo negative issue should include the claims about the shroud image not penetrating the fibers, being no deeper than 200 nanometers, and containing no pigment, dye, or paint.
I know Brandon likes to focus on one topic only, but I'm going to have to throw in the Tilma of Guadalupe as a close cousin to this miracle which has equally befuddled the scientific community. The Knights of Columbus were kind enough to put together a fact vs fiction on claims about the Tilma of Guadalupe: https://www.kofc.org/en/news-room/our-lady-of-guadalupe/truths/index.html
1) drawings of Jesus tend to be pretty consistent at least back to the patristic era, so weak evidence.
2) yes this is a strong mark against; one of the best in my opinion. Something as special as the shroud should have left a better historical trail in general too. Possibly there's some mentions of it in Constantinople, but not clearly. You should expect scads of excitement/records at every location where it was stored.
3) I have also heard this, but it seems wrong? I got this thru twitter that the arms are too long, but also multiple people took pics of themselves mimicking the position themselves at home and it seemed totally doable. (Cavet emperator: was thru twitter, so the anti-shroud claimant may have just been dumb and there is a better argument here.)
4) also fair. Flash of light could happen because divine miracle, but it needn't be necessarily true. In soft support of the pro-light stance: the Bible loves images of light as linked with divinity and divine work, so God using light in the resurrection miracle does track the general theme.
On 1 I've looked around a little bit, and it seems like the claim was "It's a forgery and I know who painted it" But clearly whatever else can be said about it, we can say that it wasn't painted using any conceivable method, so why should we believe the first half of the statement if the second half is obviously a lie. But I should emphasis the "little bit" part of my own investigations.
See, this is the kind of high-quality online engagement that makes me a supporter of Ross's substack! Thanks for classing this place up.
I don't have any firm answers for any of this, but just in the hopes that I can further contribute to this hive-mind thing we're building:
On (1): I'd agree that drawings of Jesus are pretty consistent at least (as you said) back to the patristic era, but two things. First, I think we have a pretty good sense that the picture of Jesus in the patristic period isn't particularly likely to be a passed-down image of Jesus from earlier periods. We have some earlier images, and they're quite different. Also (and weaker), there's a good-sounding argument that the bearded Jesus we all know was based on Zeus. At least, this is what I learned from a fun conversation between Hank Green and Dan McClellan: https://youtu.be/9nPLAlqsWgM
On (3): I appreciate this pushback. I re-watched those videos I linked to, and see that McClellan specifically says that it's not possible for a lying-down person to cross their hands over their groin while their elbows are on the ground. That last bit is important because, he says, because when we loosen our muscles, gravity pulls our elbows down (I have tried this, and can confirm!).
What I don't know is whether this is exactly what we see in the Shroud. I'll take any pointers here.
Very kind! I do my best. Always interested in what is true; and an honest debate is great fun.
1) interesting. I’d heard about this, and then that it’d been debunked by some Christian traditionalists. But I must admit I never looked into it closely, so perhaps the Christian defence was worse than I’d heard second hand. I’ll concede insufficient knowledge here.
3) hmm, so the shroud does seem to show that the body is posed like soccer-pose style, hand over hand on the groin. The point about the elbows on the ground at least makes sense of the criticism now. Ok so I guess two likely responses: a) he definitely would have been wrapped in more than just this cloth, so if they had him in other wrappings, maybe those held his arms up farther off the floor. B) the one I have heard more commonly, is that crucifixion dislocates the joints, which would have lengthened them enough for the hands to cross at that position.
Oh I will say tho (and this is possibly totally unfair and McClellan has better videos in more depth elsewhere), but in the linked videos, I feel that he’s much more dismissive than he should be. Like at the very least the shroud is super weird, and he gives off the vibe of “ah those dumb religious rubes, ofc the shroud is a forgery”. One of the reasons I find religious evidence debates so hard is that almost everyone is confirmation biasing to the max all the time on all the sides.
I agree that McClellan often (not always) gives off those vibes, and I think it's unfortunate! I put up with those from him only because he's a REALLY top-quality communicator of the academic literature. He lucidly explains whatever the scholarly consensus is on a topic, and when he has his own take, says so. When he gets details wrong, so far as I've followed him, he admits it and apologizes. And his insights into the biblical text are often INCREDIBLE.
I can empathize with anyone who doesn't like him — there are topics he talks about that make me frustrated, and I skip some of them — but I'm very happy I keep listening to him. I think that he'd be more effective if he took a slightly different tack.
Interesting. I'd be curious to see how this method does on the superficiality criteria.
"The image is bafflingly superficial; the color resides only on the top two or three fibers of a thread and never penetrates deeper than two microns (millionths of a meter)."
Beyond that it could potentially cover a lot of the points, but you still have the pollen, the limestone, the weave and the cellulose aging.
My initial reaction is that this method seemed pretty complicated to set up. And once you'd figured it out, it feels like the kind of thing you might do more than once...
Oh, good point. Had not considered that; good circumstantial evidence. It was Luther who said something like "there are enough pieces of the true cross of Jesus to make five crosses".
I'd be bold enough to say there are several hundred "true crosses." Even my parish here in Rochester MN has a chunk of the "true cross".
In Egypt there is a neighborhood called, "Saba'a Kana'is" it means "Seven Churches". Of which 3 churches are dedicated to St. George and have relics of St. George totaling more than one full human body. It could be that 3 different guys named George got martyred (plausible). It could mean we've got significant forgeries in walking distance from each other (likely).
There are tons of Veronica Veils. The consensus is that they are all forgeries.
My favorite is the stone containing a drop of the Virgin's breast milk. A somewhat salacious imagination cooked that one up and yet - AND YET - plenty of people believe it. I could gravel over my driveway with such stones.
But being in Egypt taught me that even though the Egyptian prejudice is true that many Americans are dim-witted and immoral - that fact doesn't prove that I am dim-witted and immoral, just because I am American. Likewise, the abundance of forgeries in the relic world does not prove that the Shroud is a forgery. It certainly should give us pause and cause us to weigh claims carefully.
As mentioned elsewhere in this post, the Catholic Church endorses the Shroud but does not stake a scientific claim that it actually is a miracle. It's worthy of credibility but it's not a sealed case.
Yes, this claims to be able to recreate the shroud - but please note that the author does not actually recreate the shroud. He's basically saying, "Oh yeah, it's easy as pie to recreate the shroud, so I'll leave it to you to do it for yourselves." None of this even comes close to standing up to scientific scrutiny. If an expert witness went into court and said, "This man is guilty of fraud, and I can reproduce the forgery." The defense attorney would immediately ask, "Show it to us." If the expert witness replied, "Well, I've never actually done it, but I'm sure anyone could." The judge would throw him out of court. I'm going to have to throw the whole article out for that same reason.
The thing that holds me up about the shroud is that I don't see the point. It seems like it's a divine by-product, not an intentional intervention for a purpose, and my best understanding of God---at least the Christian Trinity---is a controlled, purposeful one.
But I need to leave a wide latitude for "I just don't understand".
Really solid breakdown on the Shroud. The part about the superficiality of the coloring is what makes this so different from other relics becuase it cant be replicated with medieval tech at all. I always thought the radiocarbon dating settled things but the contaminated sample issue is pretty damning for skeptics, kinda shifts the burden back the other direction honestly.
Note - the miracle here is that scientific analysis that it is impossible to reproduce this image - even with modern technology. All you would need to do to debunk this claim is to produce a photo negative image of Jesus that contains no dyes or pigments and is less than 2 nanometers deep. Repeatability is the key that would disprove this miracle.
I am quite sure the possibility of a paintbrush was ruled out a long time ago.
Your faith in science is understandable, but it's still faith. "Some day, evolution will perfectly explain the God phenomenon, the near universal religious impulse, morality, the meaning of life (42), etc." Okay, but that is pure faith in science - based on what a person wants to believe and not reason.
Science is much more limited in scope. You are correct to seek 'repeatability' because that is what science does - it categorizes repeatable phenomenon. It does not and cannot explain psychology, sociology, economics, but rather proposes statistics about them - statistics which in our modern era don't even come close to solving the problems they are meant to solve. (I've heard this statement personally from one of the top statisticians in the DOD) Perhaps in the future, those statistics will get more useful, but there is no reason to believe they will be anywhere near as precise as what Asimov's Hari Seldon managed to do.
Ultimately, the line between science and science fiction gets crossed relentlessly in many of these debates.
The Catholic Church endorses the Shroud of Turin as worthy of faith but it will not proclaim it a miracle (i.e. a scientifically proven miracle) until the scientific debate surrounding it is settled. Every single saint that is canonized in the modern era has a miracle that is attested and documented by scientists and doctors as totally unexplainable by modern science.
Maybe that slips under the radar of more adamant Atheists, but the Church as an institution has learned to be more cautious about weighing in on scientific debates and does not officially proclaim anything a miracle lightly.
That said, all modern Popes have encouraged Catholics to 'venerate' (please note that 'venerate' is a technical term meaning "have a lot of respect for" which the Catholic Church uses to exclude concepts of worship or idolatry) the Shroud as "an icon of the Lord's love' that poses "a challenge to the intellect".
It's about as endorsed by the Catholic Church as it can be.
Even many religious people believe in evolution, they just cling on to their creator god by hiding in the gaps.
"It does not and cannot explain psychology, sociology, economics"
Ok, now you're really just making stuff up. Those are scientific fields and, particularly economics, do explain a lot about the world. A lot more than religion does, that's for sure.
I'll grant you the Catholic Church sure does pose a "challenge to the intellect."
"It's about as endorsed by the Catholic Church as it can be."
No, it's obviously not, since the church is hedging on it.
Strong is obviously a relative term. What "level" would you ascribe to the evidence offered by STURP? Medium? Weak? Should any updating be done? Is any of the 16 items I mentioned relatively strong or particularly weak?
I'm open to reading the book excerpted by Shermer (though apparently it can't be had for less than $50 even on Kindle) would you be open to spending an equal amount of time on the STURP report?
Finally you lost me on the point about the LDS Church saying something formal about the Shroud. Is there some precedent or parallel I'm missing? Some formal statement they've made elsewhere that is analogous to one that might be made about the Shroud?
The LDS Church believes in a number of ancient artifacts. Most of them are not exactly available for examination, but it does believe in them.
Why does it not explicitly believe in the Shroud? Seems telling. (From my quick investigation, I couldn't find a General Authority opining either way.) Hell, it appears that the ***Catholic Church*** itself doesn't take a formal stance on the matter of its authenticity. That's a tell if you ask me, especially since they put a lot of effort into investigating saints and miracles.
The Shroud of Turin is not something upon which your testimony relies. There is no conceivable way a strange single artifact would change my priors to gain a testimony. You asked if there was a good rebuttal and that's the best one I could find, given that I think Shermer is a Reliable Source for such things for the opposing side.
Further, I would guess that if you did a Scott Alexander-style investigation you'd find--as he did with his sun miracles--that actually there are a ton of interesting relics that science just can't explain. Too many, really.
Yes, but all of the ancient artifacts the LDS church believes in are directly related to the LDS church and the testimony of Joseph Smith or attested to in scripture (for example we believe Noah's Ark existed, despite it not being unique to our faith). If the LDS Church had opined on a different extant artifact from a different denomination then I could see having an expectation that they should opine on the Shroud.
Perhaps you have a specific artifact in mind?
I hope I didn't give the impression that my testimony relies on the Shroud. As far as changing priors, a testimony is like a concrete conclusion. Bayesian reasoning is never going to get you to 100%. By priors I meant navigating the messy middle particularly if you were undecided between the two extremes.
No, I was agreeing that your testimony in no way relies on the Shroud of Turin. How could it? You just recently discovered it seems legit, or at least really interesting.
I'm just saying that it would be a little bit strange if this particular relic--which would be about as holy as it gets for a Christian--wouldn't be something of note for the LDS Church, were it believed to be genuine. But it doesn't even meet that bar for the Catholics! Which makes sense, because Europe was awash in all kinds of relics, and so purely by chance some of them would be strange objects with an unclear provenance.
My priors are tuned to something like: "No claimed miracle or relic will shift my priors any way but backwards, unless the Power of God can be reliably demonstrated in a repeatable manner." In other words, historical anecdotes and strange artifacts are right out.
Now, if someone produced, oh, say a magical compass that worked in a way totally unexplained by magnetism or GPS, or a device to translate written text automatically without known technology, then at a minimum I'd have to start believing in Ancient Technology and perhaps Aliens.
But an old piece of cloth with funny stains on it? Boring. Unless you can show it does like magical healing I guess. Was that in the book?
Your lead question reminded me of Pascal. He also believed that reason couldn't get you to faith. In fact, he went further, arguing that the philosophers' god could never be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I've always found the Shroud to be one of the Church's most valid relics, mostly because it's one of the few relics the disciples would have access to and would also have been very likely to save.
As a former-Protestant-turned-atheist-turned-agnostic, I've never actually been among many pro-Shroud-sters, and I haven't even heard even my deeply miracle-seeing Catholic friends bring it up when I've asked for evidence (Fatima is what they point to), so you can guess my biases here!
But I'll say that the facts you listed, if true, would very much move me to be pro-Shroud. I'll read the book. For the moment, I'll list what I've heard that puts me on Team Doubt for this one:
1. It looks like a medieval drawing of Jesus.
2. When it first surfaced in the 1300s, it was denounced as a forgery; the local bishop allowed it to be shown publicly as something of an art piece, so long as there was no confusion as to its authenticity.
3. I'm told that the arms can't actually work — their position is impossible.
4. If I learned the resurrection happened, I wouldn't expect this to exist. If Jesus was resurrected, why would that shoot light, or whatever, out of his body? This feels natural with a folk-physics "life = energy" assumption, but I'm not sure it makes sense with what we now understand to be true of life.
Finally, there's one of the points cited that I've heard the opposite of: the weave of the fabric. I've heard it's a much better match for both the time and the local area. I think I heard that from either one of these Dan McClellan videos:
https://youtu.be/z416X_cmOHM
https://youtu.be/1BMiNvnPEL4
Obviously, I'm happy to change my beliefs on any of this! If the Shroud were real, it would be so WEIRD...
Five minutes of talking with ChatGPT seems to indicate that the weave issue is complicated. There's a join in the fabric that matches some stitching found at Masada. But as far as the bulk of the cloth. The Z-twist could have been done during both periods but it was rare. Still it was not unknown during the time of Jesus. Skeptics do point to a:
"A 3:1 herringbone twill linen fragment in the Victoria & Albert Museum that they say is the “only surviving parallel,” and it’s medieval."
The fact that there's only one data point does not exactly scream "much better match" But as I said this is just a cursory look.
I'll agree that I don't know my herringbone twills from my... actually, I'm so ignorant of this field, I don't even know how to end this sentence!
I'll only make the meta point that this might be the sort of topic on which ChatGPT — which draws claims from everywhere in writing — could be particularly bad. The internet (and books, actually) seem swamped with iffy claims about the Shroud.
If this seems like special pleading ("I don't trust AI when it disagrees with me"), I'll only say that I've seen something like this happen with young-Earth creationist claims (back in GPT-3), and that I'm very open to refutation here.
This wasn't GPT undirected this was GPT trying to confirm a claim already advanced by Murray. Still I take your point.
I'm one of those deeply miracle-seeing Catholics, who did not bring up the shroud because you specifically asked me not to clutter the table with miracles. You asked me to focus exclusively on Fatima and not bring up any other miracles. I have long been aware of all these arguments and I do not believe the counterarguments have much weight:
1) It's a photo negative. Impossible for medieval artists to draw - it's not even within the purview of modern techniques to recreate it.
2) The shroud has been attested since St. Helena and it was very plausibly brought to Europe after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, held by the Templars until the order was destroyed by order of the Pope in 1308 and entrusted to Godfrey de Charny.
3) The shoulder was dislocated. This argument has long been answered with medical precision regarding someone who was hanging on a cross for several hours
4) Since incarnate God doesn't rise from the dead on a regular basis, it's hard to say what we'd expect a real resurrection to look like.
5) The pollen tests point show pollens that have been extinct since antiquity. Medieval curators did repair the fabric from the fire. There's no chance it was created in the medieval period.
Hi, Georges! And sorry to have misremembered that. Ross, Georges and I are planning to dive deep into one particular evidence for the Shroud, and I'd like to give the choice to you. Of the evidences that Georges just wrote, is there one that, if it bears scrutiny, would most convince you that the Shroud is legit?
It's really hard to pick just one... So I'll offer up two and maybe whichever one you don't take I'll take.
1- The pollen: This definitely isn't covered by the "bleaching" methodology (mentioned in a previous comment if you didn't see it) and if it is as strong as is claimed it's pretty strong.
2- The "negative" aspect: This one is a little softer, but one (or maybe just me) hears that the Shroud was a minor relic not given all that much attention, sort of on the periphery until someone thought to take a picture of it, and then, when the photographer saw the negatives, suddenly the Shroud seemed much more impressive. Is this true? Was it a huge revelation to see the negative images of the shroud? Because if the most impressive way to view the Shroud is in a fashion no one thought of then that seems to strongly argue against the idea that it was a forgery.
I'd like to take up the pollen issue with Brandon, but I do insist that the photo negative issue should include the claims about the shroud image not penetrating the fibers, being no deeper than 200 nanometers, and containing no pigment, dye, or paint.
I know Brandon likes to focus on one topic only, but I'm going to have to throw in the Tilma of Guadalupe as a close cousin to this miracle which has equally befuddled the scientific community. The Knights of Columbus were kind enough to put together a fact vs fiction on claims about the Tilma of Guadalupe: https://www.kofc.org/en/news-room/our-lady-of-guadalupe/truths/index.html
On these points:
1) drawings of Jesus tend to be pretty consistent at least back to the patristic era, so weak evidence.
2) yes this is a strong mark against; one of the best in my opinion. Something as special as the shroud should have left a better historical trail in general too. Possibly there's some mentions of it in Constantinople, but not clearly. You should expect scads of excitement/records at every location where it was stored.
3) I have also heard this, but it seems wrong? I got this thru twitter that the arms are too long, but also multiple people took pics of themselves mimicking the position themselves at home and it seemed totally doable. (Cavet emperator: was thru twitter, so the anti-shroud claimant may have just been dumb and there is a better argument here.)
4) also fair. Flash of light could happen because divine miracle, but it needn't be necessarily true. In soft support of the pro-light stance: the Bible loves images of light as linked with divinity and divine work, so God using light in the resurrection miracle does track the general theme.
On 1 I've looked around a little bit, and it seems like the claim was "It's a forgery and I know who painted it" But clearly whatever else can be said about it, we can say that it wasn't painted using any conceivable method, so why should we believe the first half of the statement if the second half is obviously a lie. But I should emphasis the "little bit" part of my own investigations.
See, this is the kind of high-quality online engagement that makes me a supporter of Ross's substack! Thanks for classing this place up.
I don't have any firm answers for any of this, but just in the hopes that I can further contribute to this hive-mind thing we're building:
On (1): I'd agree that drawings of Jesus are pretty consistent at least (as you said) back to the patristic era, but two things. First, I think we have a pretty good sense that the picture of Jesus in the patristic period isn't particularly likely to be a passed-down image of Jesus from earlier periods. We have some earlier images, and they're quite different. Also (and weaker), there's a good-sounding argument that the bearded Jesus we all know was based on Zeus. At least, this is what I learned from a fun conversation between Hank Green and Dan McClellan: https://youtu.be/9nPLAlqsWgM
On (3): I appreciate this pushback. I re-watched those videos I linked to, and see that McClellan specifically says that it's not possible for a lying-down person to cross their hands over their groin while their elbows are on the ground. That last bit is important because, he says, because when we loosen our muscles, gravity pulls our elbows down (I have tried this, and can confirm!).
What I don't know is whether this is exactly what we see in the Shroud. I'll take any pointers here.
Very kind! I do my best. Always interested in what is true; and an honest debate is great fun.
1) interesting. I’d heard about this, and then that it’d been debunked by some Christian traditionalists. But I must admit I never looked into it closely, so perhaps the Christian defence was worse than I’d heard second hand. I’ll concede insufficient knowledge here.
3) hmm, so the shroud does seem to show that the body is posed like soccer-pose style, hand over hand on the groin. The point about the elbows on the ground at least makes sense of the criticism now. Ok so I guess two likely responses: a) he definitely would have been wrapped in more than just this cloth, so if they had him in other wrappings, maybe those held his arms up farther off the floor. B) the one I have heard more commonly, is that crucifixion dislocates the joints, which would have lengthened them enough for the hands to cross at that position.
Oh I will say tho (and this is possibly totally unfair and McClellan has better videos in more depth elsewhere), but in the linked videos, I feel that he’s much more dismissive than he should be. Like at the very least the shroud is super weird, and he gives off the vibe of “ah those dumb religious rubes, ofc the shroud is a forgery”. One of the reasons I find religious evidence debates so hard is that almost everyone is confirmation biasing to the max all the time on all the sides.
I agree that McClellan often (not always) gives off those vibes, and I think it's unfortunate! I put up with those from him only because he's a REALLY top-quality communicator of the academic literature. He lucidly explains whatever the scholarly consensus is on a topic, and when he has his own take, says so. When he gets details wrong, so far as I've followed him, he admits it and apologizes. And his insights into the biblical text are often INCREDIBLE.
I can empathize with anyone who doesn't like him — there are topics he talks about that make me frustrated, and I skip some of them — but I'm very happy I keep listening to him. I think that he'd be more effective if he took a slightly different tack.
I am generally a shroud supporter, however, this did give me something to chew on. Haven't had a chance to deep dive it yet to see if it holds up.
https://derp.substack.com/p/how-the-shroud-of-turin-was-made
Interesting. I'd be curious to see how this method does on the superficiality criteria.
"The image is bafflingly superficial; the color resides only on the top two or three fibers of a thread and never penetrates deeper than two microns (millionths of a meter)."
Beyond that it could potentially cover a lot of the points, but you still have the pollen, the limestone, the weave and the cellulose aging.
My initial reaction is that this method seemed pretty complicated to set up. And once you'd figured it out, it feels like the kind of thing you might do more than once...
Oh, good point. Had not considered that; good circumstantial evidence. It was Luther who said something like "there are enough pieces of the true cross of Jesus to make five crosses".
I'd be bold enough to say there are several hundred "true crosses." Even my parish here in Rochester MN has a chunk of the "true cross".
In Egypt there is a neighborhood called, "Saba'a Kana'is" it means "Seven Churches". Of which 3 churches are dedicated to St. George and have relics of St. George totaling more than one full human body. It could be that 3 different guys named George got martyred (plausible). It could mean we've got significant forgeries in walking distance from each other (likely).
There are tons of Veronica Veils. The consensus is that they are all forgeries.
My favorite is the stone containing a drop of the Virgin's breast milk. A somewhat salacious imagination cooked that one up and yet - AND YET - plenty of people believe it. I could gravel over my driveway with such stones.
But being in Egypt taught me that even though the Egyptian prejudice is true that many Americans are dim-witted and immoral - that fact doesn't prove that I am dim-witted and immoral, just because I am American. Likewise, the abundance of forgeries in the relic world does not prove that the Shroud is a forgery. It certainly should give us pause and cause us to weigh claims carefully.
As mentioned elsewhere in this post, the Catholic Church endorses the Shroud but does not stake a scientific claim that it actually is a miracle. It's worthy of credibility but it's not a sealed case.
Yes, this claims to be able to recreate the shroud - but please note that the author does not actually recreate the shroud. He's basically saying, "Oh yeah, it's easy as pie to recreate the shroud, so I'll leave it to you to do it for yourselves." None of this even comes close to standing up to scientific scrutiny. If an expert witness went into court and said, "This man is guilty of fraud, and I can reproduce the forgery." The defense attorney would immediately ask, "Show it to us." If the expert witness replied, "Well, I've never actually done it, but I'm sure anyone could." The judge would throw him out of court. I'm going to have to throw the whole article out for that same reason.
The thing that holds me up about the shroud is that I don't see the point. It seems like it's a divine by-product, not an intentional intervention for a purpose, and my best understanding of God---at least the Christian Trinity---is a controlled, purposeful one.
But I need to leave a wide latitude for "I just don't understand".
Really solid breakdown on the Shroud. The part about the superficiality of the coloring is what makes this so different from other relics becuase it cant be replicated with medieval tech at all. I always thought the radiocarbon dating settled things but the contaminated sample issue is pretty damning for skeptics, kinda shifts the burden back the other direction honestly.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/science/shroud-of-turin-oresme-philosopher
This whole thing strikes me as a more advanced version of Jesus on Toast.
Please provide strong evidence of actual miracles please. Repeatability would be nice.
Note - the miracle here is that scientific analysis that it is impossible to reproduce this image - even with modern technology. All you would need to do to debunk this claim is to produce a photo negative image of Jesus that contains no dyes or pigments and is less than 2 nanometers deep. Repeatability is the key that would disprove this miracle.
I bet science could repeat it if we could go back a few hundred years with a paintbrush.
The “miracle” doesn’t need to be disproven. Even the Catholic Church doesn’t accept it.
Change their mind first.
I am quite sure the possibility of a paintbrush was ruled out a long time ago.
Your faith in science is understandable, but it's still faith. "Some day, evolution will perfectly explain the God phenomenon, the near universal religious impulse, morality, the meaning of life (42), etc." Okay, but that is pure faith in science - based on what a person wants to believe and not reason.
Science is much more limited in scope. You are correct to seek 'repeatability' because that is what science does - it categorizes repeatable phenomenon. It does not and cannot explain psychology, sociology, economics, but rather proposes statistics about them - statistics which in our modern era don't even come close to solving the problems they are meant to solve. (I've heard this statement personally from one of the top statisticians in the DOD) Perhaps in the future, those statistics will get more useful, but there is no reason to believe they will be anywhere near as precise as what Asimov's Hari Seldon managed to do.
Ultimately, the line between science and science fiction gets crossed relentlessly in many of these debates.
The Catholic Church endorses the Shroud of Turin as worthy of faith but it will not proclaim it a miracle (i.e. a scientifically proven miracle) until the scientific debate surrounding it is settled. Every single saint that is canonized in the modern era has a miracle that is attested and documented by scientists and doctors as totally unexplainable by modern science.
Maybe that slips under the radar of more adamant Atheists, but the Church as an institution has learned to be more cautious about weighing in on scientific debates and does not officially proclaim anything a miracle lightly.
That said, all modern Popes have encouraged Catholics to 'venerate' (please note that 'venerate' is a technical term meaning "have a lot of respect for" which the Catholic Church uses to exclude concepts of worship or idolatry) the Shroud as "an icon of the Lord's love' that poses "a challenge to the intellect".
It's about as endorsed by the Catholic Church as it can be.
No, secular faith is not the same thing as religious faith.
That's a common trope, but if falls down pretty quickly upon examination.
https://ftsoa.substack.com/p/why-atheists-need-no-faith
Even many religious people believe in evolution, they just cling on to their creator god by hiding in the gaps.
"It does not and cannot explain psychology, sociology, economics"
Ok, now you're really just making stuff up. Those are scientific fields and, particularly economics, do explain a lot about the world. A lot more than religion does, that's for sure.
I'll grant you the Catholic Church sure does pose a "challenge to the intellect."
"It's about as endorsed by the Catholic Church as it can be."
No, it's obviously not, since the church is hedging on it.
https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/the-shroud-of-turin
Plus, if it were real, wouldn't The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have something formal to say about it?
Strong is obviously a relative term. What "level" would you ascribe to the evidence offered by STURP? Medium? Weak? Should any updating be done? Is any of the 16 items I mentioned relatively strong or particularly weak?
I'm open to reading the book excerpted by Shermer (though apparently it can't be had for less than $50 even on Kindle) would you be open to spending an equal amount of time on the STURP report?
Finally you lost me on the point about the LDS Church saying something formal about the Shroud. Is there some precedent or parallel I'm missing? Some formal statement they've made elsewhere that is analogous to one that might be made about the Shroud?
The LDS Church believes in a number of ancient artifacts. Most of them are not exactly available for examination, but it does believe in them.
Why does it not explicitly believe in the Shroud? Seems telling. (From my quick investigation, I couldn't find a General Authority opining either way.) Hell, it appears that the ***Catholic Church*** itself doesn't take a formal stance on the matter of its authenticity. That's a tell if you ask me, especially since they put a lot of effort into investigating saints and miracles.
The Shroud of Turin is not something upon which your testimony relies. There is no conceivable way a strange single artifact would change my priors to gain a testimony. You asked if there was a good rebuttal and that's the best one I could find, given that I think Shermer is a Reliable Source for such things for the opposing side.
Further, I would guess that if you did a Scott Alexander-style investigation you'd find--as he did with his sun miracles--that actually there are a ton of interesting relics that science just can't explain. Too many, really.
Yes, but all of the ancient artifacts the LDS church believes in are directly related to the LDS church and the testimony of Joseph Smith or attested to in scripture (for example we believe Noah's Ark existed, despite it not being unique to our faith). If the LDS Church had opined on a different extant artifact from a different denomination then I could see having an expectation that they should opine on the Shroud.
Perhaps you have a specific artifact in mind?
I hope I didn't give the impression that my testimony relies on the Shroud. As far as changing priors, a testimony is like a concrete conclusion. Bayesian reasoning is never going to get you to 100%. By priors I meant navigating the messy middle particularly if you were undecided between the two extremes.
No, I was agreeing that your testimony in no way relies on the Shroud of Turin. How could it? You just recently discovered it seems legit, or at least really interesting.
I'm just saying that it would be a little bit strange if this particular relic--which would be about as holy as it gets for a Christian--wouldn't be something of note for the LDS Church, were it believed to be genuine. But it doesn't even meet that bar for the Catholics! Which makes sense, because Europe was awash in all kinds of relics, and so purely by chance some of them would be strange objects with an unclear provenance.
My priors are tuned to something like: "No claimed miracle or relic will shift my priors any way but backwards, unless the Power of God can be reliably demonstrated in a repeatable manner." In other words, historical anecdotes and strange artifacts are right out.
Now, if someone produced, oh, say a magical compass that worked in a way totally unexplained by magnetism or GPS, or a device to translate written text automatically without known technology, then at a minimum I'd have to start believing in Ancient Technology and perhaps Aliens.
But an old piece of cloth with funny stains on it? Boring. Unless you can show it does like magical healing I guess. Was that in the book?