For centuries belief that the Shroud of Turin really bears the likeness of the crucified Jesus Christ had to be a matter of faith alone. Then in 1898 it was photographed for the first time, and suddenly the negative image revealed an astonishingly life-like wealth of detail of a tall bearded man horribly tortured with whip, nails and crown of thorns. Virtually overnight, the age-old faith of the pilgrims seemed to be vindicated. Surely this was the very image of Jesus?

Who is the Temple of Mysteries? Here is a quote from the home page:

Learn about the enigmatic Knights Templar and their devotion to Mary Magdalene. Why did Leonardo da Vinci revere her and was he responsible for faking the known Templar artefact, the Turin Shroud?

Discover the secrets of sacred sites such as Rennes-le-Château and why it is of interest to groups such as The Illuminati and The Priory of Sion.

Find out whether the Templar descendant Prince Henry St Clair (Sinclair) sailed across the Atlantic in 1398 to discover America long before Christopher Columbus and whether there is evidence of his voyage encoded in Rosslyn Chapel.

The real mystery is who are/is these guy(s) ?  It’s not the $3.68. Any takers?

Artists’ self-portraits can tell us both what someone looks like and what makes them tick. He’s placed himself in front of a wall neatly covered with images. A picture of the dead Christ from the Shroud of Turin [far right in picture] might serve as a reminder of his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism. A reproduction of an Eastern European icon of Mary holding the Christ child and a photograph of Ukrainian dancers hint at his roots. He liked to paint from photographs — and memory.

Hat tip to Joe Marino.

But some here, notably Paulette, might care to take a glance at the paper’s introduction. Note the claimed 7cm difference in length of the front and rear images (see her earlier comment and the scorn she heaps on me for pointing out how obvious it is, even in the images avaliable on the internet). But first she will have to get down off that school ma’am’s high horse of hers ;-)

Ah, the soft rubber tip on the foil: the smiley ;-)  In looking at what Paulette wrote we see that she did not so much heap scorn on Sciencebod for pointing out anything but for not pointing out anything. It isn’t about a claimed difference in length between the front and back images or even if it is obvious. It is about his slapdash approach to analysis, which to my way of thinking is a perfect example of the gee-whiz science he so disdains. Why not say, “I’ve noticed . . . has anyone seen any research on this? . . any thoughts? . . . am I onto something?” Sciencebod seems rather to parry attacks and and declare touché. What does he expect?

Here is what Paulette wrote (I added links and images for clarity):

The author of science buzz tells us that his blog is primarily about his “scepticism re media-hyped gee-whizz science, especially ‘pseudo-science’, as previous postings will demonstrate, NOT religion…”

Well it certainly isn’t about science, either. Consider his 5th item in which he tells us, “Dorsal and ventral imprints may have been obtained from two different templates. Some claim dorsal and ventral images are not consistent. A quick play around with my laptop would suggest as much.”

He is out of his league. Look at the picture of the dorsal and ventral images that he put together in his blog (above). This isn’t scientific thinking. As a science teacher I would have given one of my 9th graders a failing grade if he turned in something like this. He has lined up the rightmost and leftmost edge of the cloth as though the feet were aligned to those edges. The best he can do is write, “some claim.” Who? What documentation? Forget the fact that hundreds of scientists spent thousands of hours studying the images on the shroud. Compare his “quick play around with my laptop” with the fifteen page paper, “Computerized Anthropometric Analysis of the Man of the Turin Shroud” detailing the real scientific work of Giulio Fanti, Emanuela Marinelli and Alessandro Cagnazzo of the Interdepartmental Center for Space Studies and Activities at the University of Padua. They are consistent.

Almost all of his 37 points are like point 5, not researched, not carefully thought out. Joe Nickell move over. You have competition.

In reference to  He’s back and it’s a doozy « Shroud of Turin Blog

Though my faith does not rest upon the authenticity of the Turin Shroud and though the practice of relics has never been part of my spiritual journey yet the story and debate about the Shroud has always fascinated me. It has been no problem for me to accept its authenticity and I rather like the image of resurrection power acting like some power almost unknown to man.

Alan Neale, was born in London, England. He received his first degree from the London School of Economics. A second degree in Theology from Oxford University followed. Ordained in Exeter Cathedral, he served in the city-centre church St. Andrew of Plymouth, Devon, The University of Christ Church, Southampton and St. Andrew, Stanstead Abbots, Hertfordshire. In 1988, with his wife Wendy and three children, he moved to Brookings, South Dakota. After thirteen years as Rector of St. Columba’s Chapel Middletown, Rhode Island, Alan became Rector of Philadelphia’s Holy Trinity in June, 2004.

I’m not sure why we should bother. Joe NIckel, Sciencebod and other skeptics like them have already made up their mind and just keep recycling tired old arguments. They enter the debate with closed minds that it’s a fake and then muster outworn arguments, coupled with mockery and derision, to try to make their case. This is not the way to do good science, and is a complete contrast to the objective, fair-minded and analytical approach taken by those working closely with the artifact. Most of Nickel’s other arguments are answered by reference to Ian Wilson’s most recent book “The Shroud”, Random House, 2010.

Despite Bishop D’Arcis’ most carefully worded letter of 1389 to Avignon Pope Clement VII, he was unable to provide a single documented reference supporting his charge that Bishop Henry of Troyes had looked into the matter “some 34 years ago or thereabouts” and found that it “had been cunningly painted”, Note that he is even unspecific about the date, even though any supporting documentation would still have been available to him. The truth of the matter is that very likely all the churchmen, Bishops Henry, D’Arcis and the Canons of Lirey, were all moved by avarice to meet their debts, as apart from the Shroud, they had missed out on the largesse of other relics seized from the sack of Constantinople. Pope Clement VII may have known more about it than he let on. He had a close connection with the de Charny family, and he enjoined D’Arcis to perpetual silence on the matter under pain of excommunication.

We do not know the history of the Shroud, as its original owner in the West, the gallant and most honourable knight Geoffrey de Charny was killed at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 defending his king, before he was able to reveal how he came by it. However Ian Wilson attempts a credible reconstruction of its history as the Mandylion of Edessa, and musters several sound arguments to support it. This may not suit the pedants who insist only on facts, but it is the unavoidable vagueness of the history of those turbulent times. That so much can be reconstructed is a credit to Wilson’s perseverance and energy.

Wilson also itemises several criticisms of the C14 tests, and describes the jostling for control between John Paul II’s chief scientific advisor Dr Carols Chagas and Turin’s Professor Luigi Gonella. Chagas’ well thought-out protocol was scrapped, and Gonella and the AMS laboratories had their way. Without even touching on the likelihood that the C14 sample was a patch, and not the original material at all, Wilson lists the following criticisms:-

1. Choosing only of labs using the AMS method, all three being clones of one another;
2. No involvement of a professional textile conservator in choosing the sample;
3, Taking just one single sample, from one single area;
4. Choice of site for the sample being well-documented as subject to prolonged repeated handling during the centuries;
5. No provision for any chemical analysis of the sample;
6. Unofficial purloining by Gonella and Riggi of unused portions of the sample for their own personal research purposes;
7. Denial of any other synchronous scientific approaches to the Shroud.

Nevertheless, no amount of logical argument will change the minds of the skeptics. They have made up their closed minds on the issue. And still retain the gall to call themselves scientists. Maybe they’d make good lab technicians, and not attempt to be more ambitious.

See: Correcting Joe Nickell « Shroud of Turin Blog

The word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious came to mind when I saw the wonderful improvements to Barrie’s shroud.com.  As you will recall Mary Poppins uttered that famous word rather than admit to being speechless. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

So I’m sure that everyone who keeps up to date on the Shroud has heard about the recent experiments by ENEA which were able to reproduce the superficiality of the Shroud image using bursts of light. My point in writing this though is to show the blatant fallacious writings of skeptic Joe Nickell, who is repeating the same false facts that I heard far too many Shroud skeptics tout:

“Given the tremendous evidence against the ‘shroud’ — its incompatibility with Jewish burial practices, lack of historical record, bishop’s report of the forger’s confession, the still-bright-red ‘blood’ which failed forensic serological tests, the presence of pigments and paints throughout the image, three laboratories’ radiocarbon dating of the cloth to the time of the confession (1260–1390), and much additional evidence — it would seem that Di Lazzaro is straining at a gnat and attempting to swallow a camel. Let him produce a shroudlike image according to whatever theory he can muster, and we’ll talk again.”

Let’s break this down line by line.

Here is one example:

30. .So-called 3D-encoded information is an artefact of the computerised imaging – which explain why the 1532 burn marks appear as a hologram-like 3D as well as the image itself.

So much for science. There is too much to take in with one posting. Maybe we’ll have to go through all 38 points one at a time.

If you can’t wait, you can go here and read all 38 points. science buzz: The Shroud of Turin – think of it, if you will, as a medieval EuroDisney, designed to attract thrill-seeking tourists, oops, sorry, devout religious pilgrims…

(Corrected)

It’s happening for me again, an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ moment. This time it’s an idea that fits within my own field of Painting. Yet this time, I’m completely at a loss as to how to test it. You see, it’s about a mysterious work recently identified as by that towering genius and trickster, Leonardo Da Vinci.

Since it’s no longer physically possible for me to travel, so as to go to see the original, I can only muse on printed reproductions of the painting titled ‘Salvator Mundi.’

So, in hopes of getting a reply from someone who can enlighten me, I’m throwing my possibly ridiculous thought out into the ether of Cyberspace. Here goes:

In every report I’ve read, experts refer to an object held in the left hand of the Jesus figure as a ‘globe’ or as a ‘sphere’ of crystal, representing the world. To my eye, this is clearly a round lens, such as that which is a component of the camera obscura, which Leonardo described in his notebooks and is now thought to have utilized in making the Shroud of Turin.

Can this crystal object be the playful clue he left – out in plain sight – to another of his cryptic jokes on us all?

Shhh! Don’t tell Picknett and Prince. They’ll need to revise their book once again.