Customer Reviews

The Shroud of Turin and the C-14 Dating Fiasco

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I was going to grade this book with four stars, since recent evidence published by researcher Ray Rogers in a peer reviewed journal established that it was a reweave... not the physics of a fire, bacteria or miracle... that altered the carbon-14 dating of 1988. Thus, one star should be deducted for delving into explanations that weren't necessary... for the inept carbon dating of 1988.

But since this book has been given two poor ratings by skeptics, someone should make up for their bias.

What? How could two individuals, untainted by faith, ever be considered "biased?" Easy. Lack of faith is a faith unto itself, Agnosticism and Atheism are religions by another name. Skepticism is a hymn sung by true believers.

Open minded skepticism should be the standard... not a close minded, "that's impossible until you prove otherwise" skepticism.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," the skeptics love to say. But THEY appoint themselves as judges... as to what qualifies as "extraordinary." They know all the workings of the natural universe, and nothing shall violate their borders.

Here is the indisputable proof that skeptics are biased... they quote the thoroughly discredited conclusions of Dr. Walter McCrone.

McCrone never studied the Shroud in person. He looked at sticky tape fiber samples under his old fashioned microscope. Eureka! He saw a few paint particles! He saw iron oxide! his findings were a favorite topic of his OWN journal, "The Microscope." No need for scientific peers to get in the way, is there?

McCrone determined that the Shroud's blood was made of "Vermillion"... he saw a handful of these particles. Guess what? There also happen to be pink nylon fibers found on those tape samples. Was he certain the blood wasn't comprised of pink nylon? After all, if particle evidence is the ONLY STANDARD BEARER here...

Oh yes, the iron oxide particles McCrone observed were also evenly distributed over the Shroud, not concentrated witin the image area. They were found to be too "chemically pure" to have been pigment related... instead, these particles were the end result of "rhetting"... the ancient manufacture of linen.

But of course, what would a particle analyst know of ancient forms of linen manufacture?

Luckily, the other researchers of the Shroud of Turin Research Project were more comprehensive and less myopic. (And NO... they were NOT a bunch of zealous Christians, anxious to validate the relic... just ask Orthodox Jew, Barrie Schwortz! Their official findings never linked the Shroud to Jesus... read the PEER- REVIEWED journals for yourselves.)

STURP researchers utilized tests such as ultraviolet and infrared photography, VP-8 image analysis, topographic imaging, low energy x-radiology, x-ray fluorescence, thermography, microdensitometry, electron energy dispersive spectroscopy and wet chemistry: generation of porphyrin fluorescence; cyanmethemoglobin and hemochromagen tests. For a short list... theirs is much longer.

Unlike the touted McCrone, these researchers were THERE... standing at the Shroud... taking direct measurements and making direct observations. All Walter McCrone observed was a collection of stiky tape samples lifted by the researchers he would eventually go to war with...

This is the verdict of Science... The Shroud of Turin's image is a dehydration of the topmost linen fibrils. The blood is human, type AB, rich in Bilirubin... the "jaundiced" quality victims of torture acquire (thus, the unnaturally "red" quality of the blood stains). The carbon dating of 1988 was contaiminated by medieval reweaves within the extracted corner sample.

Science cannot say the Shroud is of Jesus... only logic and faith can. But Science CAN dismiss this nonsense about the Shroud being a medieval painting... and has DONE SO convincingly.

Jeff Messenger, author of the novel "the Shroud of Torrington."

If this were another object, no one would have dared challenge the findings of the scientists who dated it at approximately 1300 AD. But that is not the case - this is the cloth in which Jesus was buried! Notwithstanding the utter absurdity that a blood-stained cloth from a crucified leader of a small band of Jews would be whisked away to Europe and retained by a band of monks, one of the Gospels (they contradict each other) states that he was wrapped in cloths (plural). But first a word about the man who started it all.

Kouznetsov claims that a fire "changed the atoms" of the cloth and that he has validated its authenticity. THis Russian has been thoroughly discredited. He's been a Creationist since 1983 and attempted to "prove" his theories ever since. Fraud has been the hallmark of his work. References include documents and books that do not exist; he invented outside sources to support his findings. He was then declared persona non grata in Russia for claiming that several non-existent Russian museums provided him with old cloths that he then dated. Yet this fraudulent scheme laid the groundwork for his claim that the shroud is original.

He found his calling among those who rejected the findings of the original dating. The cloth HAD to be a relic - not a shrewd creation from the early Middle Ages when it first appeared in history. This is yet another chapter in the dreary process of "proving" Christianity through scientifc rather than moral or theological means. The author explains his side of the story and then give us an interesting conversation with another scientist as they discuss the issues.

The information about Dr McCrone, whose book on the scientific aspects of the carbon dating is excellent, is both biased and quite selective. It is pitiful to see scientists substitute the alleged findings of a hack for the rigorous tests of the laboratory. The neutrality of the author is a joke but in a work about scientific evidence, this bias is deadly.

Within the first few pages of the book, the direction of Mr. Case's, well, case, was obvious. A few quotes from his summary (entitled "Physics of a Miracle", of all things) shows quite well that Mr. Case is utterly assured that the book is already closed on the Shroud investigation...despite all the evidence against it still unexplained.

On pg. 13, Mr. Case speaks of the most outspoken anti-authenticity scientist, Dr. McCrone, mentioning his analysis of a Viking map of the New World, which he proved to be faked. The author immediately attempts to cast doubt on Dr. McCrone's work (he being the favored whipping-boy among "Sindonologists") by parenthetically mentioning that "there is some question about his negative judgement". The "negative judgement" in this case (unrelated to the Shroud) was by a rather small group of people who generally had stake in the validity of the map...including Yale University, the owners. Many others outside of Yale agreed that the map was faked, but this is not mentioned. Mr. Case then refers to ideology entering the scenario...and mentions only "A small group of skeptical journalists and scientists" There is no mention of the considerable influence of religious ideology (skepticism is hardly an ideology, for that matter).

Throughout the book, Mr. Case refers to the "Image", not the "image", on the shroud. Unless there is some peculiar usage of capitalization here, this seems an obvious assumption of a divine origin of the image.

In all, this is a difficult book to read if you are looking for an unbiased view of the results. Half of the book is dedicated to Mr. Case's own assessment of the data, while the last half is the transcript of an interview with Dr.'s Heller and Adler. It is for this information alone that I give the book more than one star, for being able to learn some of the thinking of those who did some actual testing on the Shroud.