The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Updating the Date of the Shroud

New techniques have yielded a date for the Shroud of Turin to the time of Christ.

newgeology.us/presentation24.html

Well, not exactly new – the tests date from the late 90s to the early 00s. Still, I keep track of Shroud tests at least casually up to date, and I hadn’t heard of fiber tensile strength tests before! :sunglasses:

There is a metric ton of scientific data pointing to a suitably ancient origin and scientifically unknown process, unduplicatable by ancient methods, for the generation of the Shroud; and really only test against an early date, the Carbon Dating tests. There is conflicting information about those tests: for example, the people who did them (I’ve read their reports) are VERY VERY CLEAR that they did NOT test the medieval patchwork: they were careful about not taking material from it or its seam, and they could have easily told the difference when setting up the test that they had the wrong material. On the other hand, the two men chiefly responsible for inventing the two kinds of standard Carbon dating methods available, both have agreed independently that the tests had been botched somehow and should be redone.

It’s grimly amusing to watch modern reconstruction artists trying to claim they’ve proved how the Shroud was made by managing to mimic a few key details – while being totally unable to mimic all the key details. (And their methods are mutually exclusive so couldn’t be combined to create the end results.)

Indeed. Assuming the Shroud of Turin is a 14th-century creation, I do not see why people cannot easily re-create it using 14th-century techniques. All the supposed recreations I’ve seen are pretty sad.

I remember back in the 1990s going to the Shroud center of John Jackson (member of STURP) just an hour’s drive north of me in Colorado Springs. (Click: shroudofturin.com/index.html ) He said that if the Shroud were fake, the STURP team would have examined the Shroud for about 20 minutes before finding that it was obviously and inescapably a 14th-century creation. Instead, the more they looked the more amazed they became.

I’m not committed to the Shroud being authentic, but I lean towards authenticity.

Ditto. :mrgreen:

I learn towards it being genuine. But I would have to look at two factors first:

What is the consensus of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches?
What is the current thinking, of the scientific community? With all their tests, run so far?

Personally, I don’t place that much faith in carbon dating. It is accurate only if particular questionable assumptions coincide with fact. Please consider the following:

From “the Scientific American”:
scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dating-gets-reset/

From “LABMATE”:
labmate-online.com/news/news-and-views/5/breaking_news/how_accurate_is_carbon_dating/30144

From “Amazing Discoveries”:
amazingdiscoveries.org/C-deception-carbon_dating_radiometric_decay_rates

I didn’t say it was authentic. I said it might be. It depends on whether or not, future scientific discoveries, invalidate or refine, Carbon-14 methodologies.

I do remember, LLC saying on this forum, something to this effect: that Carbon-14 dating, is full of holes.

And if you Google “is carbon 14 dating accurate”, you find scientists, etc., that side with LLC.

But I don’t know. I never dated someone named Carbon-14. :laughing:

I have no basis on which to judge with certainty whether or not it is authentic. For that reason, I have no thoughts on the subject of its authenticity.