Shroud of Turin Blog

at least on this point. It’s an interesting point:

The logic you’re using here is the same logic as that of the recent “debunkers” of the Shroud of Turin, whose basic argument seems to be that because they were able to produce a forgery of the Shroud, the Shroud itself must be a forgery as well. I will grant that our senses can be fooled, a fact which different people exploit to different purposes. But equally, the fact that our senses can be fooled does not mean that every single instance of witnessing something profound and apparently supernatural is necessarily an illusion wrought by a human actor only.

KHdN – Kenneth Hynek (dot Net) » Blog Archive » In lieu of posting new content…

We have what looks like the beginning of a new novel over at The Original Nappy-Headed Ho: Story Beginning

It’d been another long night. Yes, my passion was in this. Yes, I’d do it for free if I had other means of support. But after a string of nights seeing the dawn peaking through the lab window, I was getting hinky. I was irritated and short tempered.

Charlie, my partner in business and science, my friend for over 15 years, slid his chair back from his microscope and exhaled sharply. “I’ve isolated complete DNA strands from the Shroud of Turin.”

A pet project, Charlie had been intrigued by mysticism, religion and science over the centuries, and their effects on popular culture. Recently he’d gotten permission from the Vatican to sample a bit of the fabric of the Shroud of Turin. Not new material, but leftover material from the 80s when an attempt had been made to determine the age of the cloth. The results of the original test where that the shroud was no more than twelve to fifteen hundred years old, much too young to have been Jesus’s own burial cloth. The technology had been primitive to today’s digital microscopic standards, and Charlie insisted modern carbon dating put the date of the cloth at between 400 BC and 200 AD. Quite a difference.

"Say again?"

. . .

I’m not sure how long we stared at each other, but for two insecure scientists to look each other in the eye for anything more than a second was unusual.

"Charlie, are you telling me you think we have the DNA of Jesus?"

Read the whole post at The Original Nappy-Headed Ho: Story Beginning

Italian Scientist Reproduces Humans Using Materials Available in the Middle Ages Thus Proving that the First Humans Were Manmade

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian scientist says he has reproduced a human being, a feat that he says proves definitively that humans, which Christians say are made in the image of God, are medieval fakes produced using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

A scientifically-made mannequin, measuring 6 feet, 2 inches tall, looks eerily like Luigi Garlaschelli, the scientist himself.

"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as a human being," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.

The mannequin resembles the back and front of a bearded man with long hair with his arms crossed on his chest. He has two hands, two feet and a single head with two eyes and two ears.

Since Darwin, evolutionary biologists have believed that humans evolved along with other animals and plants from a common ancestor. But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain why some people smoke cherry flavored pipe tobacco since it offers no evolutionary advantage.

Garlaschelli, who received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics, expects people to contest his findings. “They didn’t believe me when I reproduced the Shroud of Turin, Quantum physics and the Egyptian pyramids, thus proving that they, too, were medieval creations. “

“It works for me,” said PZ Myers, pastor of the Morris, Minnesota Pharyngula Church of Fundamentalist Atheists. “I was getting tired of evolution, anyway. I believe everything I read in the newspapers so long as it doesn’t conflict with my beliefs. If humans are manmade, that’s fine. I still don’t need to believe in God.”

Garlaschelli said the funding for his work by his own organization of like-minded atheists had no effect on his results. "I always start with results," he said. “That way, I always arrive at the desired conclusion.”

Interesting. Worth reading.

We move in a world bursting with conflicts. Between rich & poor…black & white…West & Islam. However, perhaps the most persistent conflict is the ancient one between belief & doubt!

We of today’s technological age of wonders, wonder how the medieval peasant could wonder about perfectly explainable phenomenon, then call them "miracles." After all, once the magician’s trick has been duplicated by the audience, the audience should now know better.

And so, once again, the so-called miraculous Shroud of Turin has come center stage in this belief vs doubt debate. Italian chemist Luigi Garlaschelli reports he has been able to "duplicate the trick by simply using the materials available at the time the Shroud was discovered in 1360." For him, and other scientists, this finally nails it. Anything man can make is no miracle!

But of course this nails nothing. . .

Read the entire post. Taking a Second Look…: MIRACLES ARE SO MEDIEVAL. OR ARE THEY…?