Religion
Related: About this forum
Shroud of Turin
"Discuss amongst yourselves"
Scientists examine the SoT. (History Channel)
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)It would shatter their bubble if found to be fake. Besides, we have toast, sap, mold that resembles Jesus today. Who needs the shroud. LOL!
I can't give the history channel one minute of my time. The whitwash they gave the 9/11 story ended me watching it ever again. Besides, I thought they already carbon dated this rag, and found it was years off their fantasy story.
okasha
(11,573 posts)n/t
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)but I think the History channel.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)sounds doubleplus good for all! Even if you do not watch it one can be surrounded by those who do
defacto7
(13,485 posts)framed by a needy media and a dying cable show. Sounds believable.
not
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)It was a painting when it was made, it was a painting for the first group that looked at it, and for the second. But every year or so, some hack scientist who wants attention and to get on NPR gins up some new "interpretation" that he knows will play in to people's desperate and juvenile need for this to be something other than what it is, and get him his 15 minutes. Thankfully, they tend to be just as quickly forgotten.
JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)If I remember one debunking correctly it was produced in later medieval times. During that period such things would've been real cash cows. People put great store in the power of any kind of religious item. I wonder how many pieces "of the true cross" were floating around Europe at that time. I would guess enough to construct several Roman style crosses. 
What scares me is how many buy into such things in this day and age.
Julie
rug
(82,333 posts)McCrone's claim that there is has been pretty well discredited. He also made unsubstantiated claims about the Vinland map.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,322 posts)The arms and hands have been elongated to conveniently cover the genitals. That doesn't happen with a normal relaxed body.
rug
(82,333 posts)It has ape-like features, etc.
Nothing that's been stated is outside a normal range of human anatomy.
But my post was about paint.
okasha
(11,573 posts)I'm an (almost antiquated at this point) wet-darkroom black and white photographer. The image on the shroud, regardless of who made it when, is a photographic negative. When it was first photographed in the late 19th century, the image that appeared on the film--i.e., the "negative"--was a positive image, which means that lights and darks were distributed realistically, highlights light, shadows dark. On the shroud, the lights and darks are reversed, shadows light, highlights dark.
If it were a medieval painting, one would have to assume that someone who had never seen a negative image of a human being (or anything else, for that matter) could create a monochrome image with lights and darks precisely and correctly reversed. It's also difficult to understand why a medieval artist would paint a monochrome image at all, rather than producing a full-color painting. Since this image seems to have been known from the first quarter of the 14th century, one would also have to consider that the modelling--the treatment of depth and volume in the human figure on a two-dimensional surface--is considerably beyond any paintings known from that period. Compare Giotto, for instance.
If there is in fact an initiative to perform further tests on the shroud, I would like to see the image tested for silver salts. If they are present, one would have to assume that the image was produced by the use of the camera oscura, which was known in the fourteenth century. And then the questions get really interesting.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)And no, the image is NOT a true negative. Nor is it monocolor if you look closely. The blood areas have different pigment than the rest of the image. And no, it's not difficult to understand why a medieval artist would paint an image like this. There are other similar images known from the same time period. Just another fact that is blithely ignored by people determined to believe that the shroud is a miracle.
Read "Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters" by Charles Locke Eastlake. The technique, called grisaille, is described very nicely there. Or ignore all this and stay in the dark.
rug
(82,333 posts)Assuming you were not entirely wrong about paint at all.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)and stop parroting things from the people who've told you want you want to hear. Bottom line is, you have no understanding of the science here...zero. Neither does okasha.
rug
(82,333 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)what a shock
rug
(82,333 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)The carbon dating puts it in the time it 1st appeared. (not to mention it is highly unlikely to find a twill weave such as the shroud's fabric in the time and place of Christ) And I've read somewhere that the image is not anatomically correct.
But y'know... religious people love a clutter of contradicting suppositions (just look at any religious text) so the controversies serve to enhance their faith. They love muddy water.
It's obviously a fake to clear thinking people.
But y'all have your fun pretending it matters whether it's real or not.
rug
(82,333 posts)I really have no opinion on the Shroud but there have been some very pointed criticisms of the radio carbon testing done in 1988 and the samples used.
You can look it up as well as I.
Why so adamant? Are you woried the results may not pan out as you expect?
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)claimed that the RC dating samples were taken from the later repair. Assinine. The shroud is one of the most meticulously examined pieces of fabric in the world. Does anyone believe that the people taking those samples didn't know very well where the repair was, or that they just hacked away willy-nilly at any old spot? That doesn't even pass the laugh test.
The testing itself was a blind test conducted by FOUR different labs, on the shroud samples and three others of known date. The labs got the control samples right, and agreed on the shroud date closely enough to put it in the mid 14th century. That's a far more careful and well controlled test than any of the hacks who criticized the RC testing did.
Shroud fundies and their apologists are just like creationists...no amount of evidence will ever convince them. They simply turn their brains off in the face of any evidence that doesn't validate what they desperately need to believe.
okasha
(11,573 posts)More of his usual.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)I repeat:
"But y'all have your fun pretending it matters whether it's real or not."
rug
(82,333 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)What is unusual about a religious relic? They're everywhere. They're all ridiculous and impossible to take too seriously. There's certainly nothing unusual about the Shroud of Turin. I can't believe the time and effort wasted on the thing. And why all this science? What about your ever-loving faith? Why would the faithful care what science has to say?
And I am completely open minded about really unusual phenomena, like the current consensus of how quantum mechanics can create matter and even space where there was none.
But old religious relics? Pu-leez.
WolverineDG
(22,298 posts)Regardless of when the Shroud was made, HOW it was done is remarkable.
Several years ago, the History Channel did a special about the making of a 3D image of the face in the Shroud. It was fascinating. Someone tried to have a discussion about it on DU, but it quickly degenerated because skeptics came in & called everyone stupid & wouldn't let anyone discuss it.
okasha
(11,573 posts)I've been shooting, developing and printing black and white film for sixteen years, now, so I'm satisfied that I know a photographic negative when I see one. If this is in fact the image that was presented as the burial cloth of Jesus in the mid-fourteenth century, then there is a very natural contemporary means by which that image could have been made: exposing a sensitized material--in this case a length of linen cloth--in a darkened chamber with a very small opening to a brightly lit original object outside the chamber. Testing the image areas of the cloth for silver salts and sulphides would be the easiest way to determine whether such a procedure was used. There seems to be a consensus that the image has faded over time, which would be in keeping with the character of a photo negative that wasn't archivally preserved.
What I would be most curious about now is whether the maker of the negative managed to print it to obtain a positive image, and if so, what happened to the positive, which would be easily recognizable to us as a normal black and white photograph.
I suggest that we simply ignore the ruder skeptics and go right on talking about what interests us.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)Needing so badly to call anyone who shows that she's dead wrong "rude". Tone trolling is the last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt, but it doesn't change facts.
edhopper
(33,592 posts)the Camera Obscure, had been used since ancient times. The use of it to actually produce a photo like picture, as opposed to only a projection, did not occur until the 19th Century.
You are proposing that an obscure artisan invented the photography process "out of whole cloth" and then produced this one surviving image. With no reoccurrence of anything like it for 800 years.
There is no evidence in any of the test for any of the compounds you mention and no evidence that such a process existed at that time.
Your theory is not physically impossible and doesn't fall into the category of the mystical mumbo jumbo believers say.
But there is really no evidence to support it, especially when other contemporary methods explain it as well.
You do provide a testable experiment to verify your theory. Unfortunately it probably won't ever be performed.
okasha
(11,573 posts)may have inadvertently provided a bit of evidence in favor of the photgraphic origin of the image. While the collagen medium he describes is not appropriate for tempera, it is the kind of medium (basically gelatin from animal sources) used to make photographic emulsion, the mixture coated onto the paper or other support that actually creates the image from darkened silver particles. I'm not clear yet whether McCrone claimed to find particles of vermilion or traces of mercury that he claimed indicated the presence of vermilion, which is extracted from cinnabar, a mercury bearing ore. If it is the presence of mercury he claimed, then again, we connect to early photo processes. Daguerre developed the first durable photo images in the presence of mercury vapor some 500 years later.
The lack of other early photographic negatives isn't surprising. If this one hadn't been carefully preserved as a relic, it wouldn't exist now, either. Bear in mind--it is a negative image. A negative image would not be intelligible to most people even today, much less medieval folk who had never seen one before. Look around your home or your office. If you display photographs, they're positive prints; the negatives are presumably tucked away somewhere in an envelope. To put it bluntly, there wouldn't have been any market for negative pictures of grandpa. Much better to get one of the clerks from the local monastery to paint a nice little tempera miniature of the old fella.
The other thing to bear in mind is that we have lost far more medieval and Renaissance art than we now have, including portraits of kings and queens. For example, Hans Holbein was working for Henry VIII by the 1530's. Presumably he would have painted Henry's second queen, Anne Boleyn, and probably her daughter, the future Elizabeth I. Yet those paintings either have not survived or have not been found. We don't have a verified picture of H's #5 wife, Katherine Howard, or of Jane Grey, the queen for nine days. And here we're talking about an era in which monarchs actively collected art and recognized its value.
Fiber art is of any kind is far more fragile. The sad truth is that even the shroud, if it had not been given into the custody of the ruling house of Savoy, would likely have wound up in a petticoat or as a tablecloth when the image faded and would have been lost forever. If there were any other such images, they likely met such a fate. As with actual paintings, we have very little in the way of fabric art from the medieval or renaissance periods. Many of the pieces that do survive are, like the shroud, unique.
If there is further testing, I hope the Bishop of Turin will allow a wider range of tests than previously. Actually, I hope the Church will relinquish custory of the shroud altogether. One thing Nickell says that is absolutely indisputable, and that is that the fabric is extremely fragile and should not be exposed to light any more than necessary. It needs to be stored flat, in a lightproof archival container, and kept in an environment controlled for temperature and humidity. And while I'm sure the Turin cathedral staff and sisters handle it with great care and love, it needs to be in the hands of professional conservators.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)It has been explained to you how a protein-based medium was used to produce the image. And if you had bothered to read even superficially about the things you ignorantly criticize, you would know that McCrone identified particles of vermillion pigment on the shroud, not traces of elemental mercury. And btw, dry-process vermillion (you have no idea what that is either, do you?) is not "extracted" from cinnabar, it is produced by grinding the mineral (which is mercuric sulfide) to a fine powder.
So no, it is not simply the presence of mercury that we're talking about, it is actual pigment particles, so there is no connection whatsoever to early photo processes.
Even on something so simple and basic, you are out of your depth, okasha. You keep repeating the same talking points over and over, as if they weren't completely at odds with the facts, and tossing in ad homs at every opportunity. As noted, tactics just like a creationist.
edhopper
(33,592 posts)as you describe, but there is nothing in recorded art history to show that anyone anywhere developed a photographic process this early.
Your theory that an isolated genius developed this process in Lirey, France, and then disappeared, leaving only the Shroud as a single example, and then it was lost for 500 years is problematic, to say the least.
You are also making some giant leaps considering a cloth that size could even be used for a phototype image. A pinhole, without a lens, could never focus an image that large, and the cloth is hardly the hard, flat surface needed.
That it looks like a photo negative is due to the rubbing process.
Why you have a hard time accepting this reasonable explanation, and trying to supplant it with a much more highly speculative, and problematic one is questionable.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)But she is viscerally unable to live with certain people on this board being right about anything, so she lowers herself to the depths of intellectual dishonesty rather than acknowledge the simple truth.
Sad, really.
okasha
(11,573 posts)My unwillingness to be persuaded by argument by tantrum? Would you be?
And I'm sorry, but photography seems to be well out of your area of expertise.
To wit:
1. It's tempera, not photography, that requires a hard, flat surface. You can print a photograph on anything you can coat with photo emulsion: glass, cloth, rocks, coffee cups, paper, etc.
2. See my comments to Marrah G below. A pinhole without a lens not only can be but has been used to focus an image this large. The crucial element of focusing a pinhol box is to get the correct distance between subject and film--or cloth, in this case.
3. I never claimed that the image was created in Lirey. That is where it surfaced, in the possession of a Crusader's family. Optical science was considerably more advanced in Byzantium and the Muslim East than in western Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. My guess is that the image was made in Constantinople, or possibly in Damascus or Cairo.
4. The 500 year gap is a problem. But I prefer this problem to the problem that the rubbing image bears only a crude and superficial resemblance to the image on the shroud.
edhopper
(33,592 posts)my reasoned arguments are a tantrum?
I was referring to a flat surface in terms of focus.
And I have seen the results of pin hole photography on large linen.
Less impressive than the rubbing.
And again, there is no evidence that this process exited that long ago and outside of the shroud, where none of these chemicals have been found anyway. No examples or record of anything resembling photography exists.
Someone discovers that the use of photo emulsion, creates a single image and then disappears? You do see how incredulous that is?
You have no idea who I am, or what i do. So I would hesitate to make assumptions.
okasha
(11,573 posts)to your arguments as tantrums.
okasha
(11,573 posts)My bad. Dr. Nicholas Allen did in fact use a quartz lens when he made his life-size image of the plaster cast. Ancient Egyptians were using such lenses for magnification well before medieval times, though, so this wouldn't have represented a technological innovation for or by the person who created the image on the shroud.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Your claim is pretty much nonsense until you provide such evidence, egyptian quartz lenses don't qualify.
edhopper
(33,592 posts)Are you advocating that the shroud might be the real thing and not a 12th century forgery?
rug
(82,333 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)People have attempted to disregard his findings, or to dismiss them because they used utterly inappropriate techniques to try to reproduce them and failed. It's a plain and simple fact...there are red ochre pigment particles everywhere in the image areas and vermillion pigment particles everywhere in the blood areas and nowhere else on the shroud, and it's all in a tempera base. Where I come from, that's paint. Anyone whose claims for the shroud don't take that into account isn't worth taking seriously, nor are the claims of those who aim their big analytical instrument at it, fail to detect a tiny trace or iron amidst all of the cloth, and say there's nothing there.
Stripped of all of its religious baggage and the needfulness of its believers, the shroud is a fairly uncomplicated and uncontroversial artifact, and not any more difficult an analytical problem then those that are solved in university and museum laboratories every day. But as frequently happens, when religious beliefs are involved, facts are blithely ignored and special pleading is the word of the day.
rug
(82,333 posts)In fact, his work is the only thing here that has positively been demonstrated to be a sham.
okasha
(11,573 posts)his work on the shroud was never peer reviewed. Certainly it wasn't reality checked on the claim that the image was painted in tempera. Because it does not form a flexible paint film the way oils do, tempera must be painted onto a rigid support such as wood panel. The customary binder was and is egg yolk, not glue produced from animal skin. Tempera also requires gesso, wich would leave behind a considerable chalk residue.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)the American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry, in large part for his work on the shroud. Are you substituting your judgement for theirs on the validity of his work?
Like ruggie, you're out of your depth here. You're not an art or a paint expert, you're simply parroting talking points from people who have told you what you want to hear.
edhopper
(33,592 posts)than mere materialistic facts, dontchaknow.
okasha
(11,573 posts)One doesn't "believe" in the properties of art materials--those are physically and chemically established. In the case of tempera, they've been established for a couple thousand years. The primary fact about tempera that has a bearing here is that it cannot be painted onto a non-rigid support, such as linen or other canvas. In the absence of a rigid support, such as wood panel, the paint would simply craze (crack) and fall off. That's because the paint film formed by tempera is rigid. If the shroud were a tempera painting, the image would have been destroyed long ago by the handling, folding, unfolding, patching, sewing to backing cloth, heating and water drenching to which we know that it has been subjected. There's also no evidence that anyone has offered that the cloth was ever gessoed. Oil, tempera, acrylic and watercolor all require a coat of gesso on the support, whether the support is flexible (canvas for oil, acrylic and watercolor) or rigid (usually wood panel, which can be used with any of the four.) The exception is artist-grade watercolor paper, which doesn't require gesso because it is usually sized during manufacture. The shroud is not made of watercolor paper, even though the Fabriano mill in Italy has been making artist's paper since 1282 and later supplied custom paper to the likes of da Vinci and Michelangelo. It's damn good paper; I use it myself.
Which brings me to this: Modesty forbids me to call myself an "art expert." I am, however, a working professional artist, mainly in photography and watercolor. I have a good many art history hours under my belt, as well as a lot of independent study. There is nothing in this post that you can't fact check for yourself if you feel compelled to question it, and none of it that is disputed.
It's all mere materialistic facts, dontchaknow.
edhopper
(33,592 posts)Look at the work of Joe Nickles to see a method of how it could have been done using a cloth wrapped relief sculpture and DRY pigment.
okasha
(11,573 posts)Perhaps you could convince your excitable friend scott of that.
Meantime, do you have a link to images of Joe Nickels experiment?
edhopper
(33,592 posts)Probably in an old issue of Skeptical Inquirer.
And I have seen film of it, but it doesn't appear to be on YouTube.
I think as an artist you are being more specific using the term painting. As in an image created on canvas with a brush. Non artist might use the term more loosely. It is an image created with pigment. Not some otherworldly radiation as believers claim. We might call that a rubbing not a painting, but it is the same to others.
The final determination is the same. It is a man made object created as a fraud. Not a mystical relic.
okasha
(11,573 posts)is Joe Nickell's version--it's better than some attempts to reproduce the image, but it loses way too much detail to be a real possibility. I've seen other attempts using a contact process (the "hot statue" thing, eg.,) and they all have the same problem.
Art vocabulary is changing, by the way. Many pastel and colored pencil artists now refer to their works as paintings. It's a response to the unfortunate tendency of viewers and buyers to regard "mere" drawings as of lesser worth because they assume the pieces are easier to produce. They aren't.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)that Joe Nickell essentially agreed with Walter McCrone's findings about the nature of the image. He and McCrone had a minor disagreement on the exact technique used to produce the image, and that's all. That doesn't change the fact that it's a painting...a work of art, and nothing more. An interesting and skillfully executed one, to be sure, but still a purely human creation.
rug
(82,333 posts)Oh, yes, here it is, #3
The basic structure of such arguments is as follows: Professor X believes A, Professor X speaks from authority, therefore A is true. Often this argument is implied by emphasizing the many years of experience, or the formal degrees held by the individual making a specific claim. The converse of this argument is sometimes used, that someone does not possess authority, and therefore their claims must be false. (This may also be considered an ad-hominen logical fallacy – see below.)
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)Right? You can provide full refutation of Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud from someone who had looked at the evidence properly and without an attention whoring or religious agenda?
I'll wait.
rug
(82,333 posts)Try this:
L.A. Schwalbe, R.N. Rogers, Analytica Chimica Acta 135, 3-49, 1982.)
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)from someone who has no knowledge but what they can parrot, and even less evidence.
And unless your source can explain the presence of millions of pigment particles in all of the image areas of the shroud, and nowhere else, it doesn't even make first base.
rug
(82,333 posts)This shroud has really put you into an uproar.
Lol.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)and wouldn't have understood it if you did, and since I doubt that any of the sites you've googled trying to patch together a bluff on this made the comparison between his book and Dan Brown's, I can only assume that you pulled that out of your ass.
And please, quote where the article you cited explains the presence of pigment on the shroud. If you can.
rug
(82,333 posts)Well scottie, I guess we're done here. I have to go to Benjamin Moore now and check some chips.
damyank913
(787 posts)...They only used to display it every few years and my ship happened to be in San Remo Italy, just a few miles away at the time. I thought it was a crock back then. And that was before we had these fellas with their fancy book larnin'...
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
dimbear
(6,271 posts)The Shroud is only a medieval artifact. The Spear of Destiny goes back to the seventh century, so it's far more likely that it was used to kill Christ than that the shroud should have been used to wrap Him. Two or three times as likely.
There are at least four spears which were used to kill Christ, BTW. That may be some sort of miracle in itself.
uriel1972
(4,261 posts)From the splinters of the true cross and the nails used to bind him to that cross.
MellowDem
(5,018 posts)And it's followers are gullible. Then again, when gullibility is part of the belief system, that's what you'll get.
What pisses me off are all those sheeple that were screwed over by the Church for centuries when it had much more power, and gimmicks like this were just one of the many methods of manipulation of an ignorant, mostly illiterate lot. Shame, shame, shame.
rug
(82,333 posts)edhopper
(33,592 posts)are there people on this thread actually arguing for the veracity of the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus?
Really?
okasha
(11,573 posts)Do you see any posts here that state that the authors are "actually arguing for the veracity of the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus?"
Does the fact that there are no such posts lead you to the obvious conclusion?
edhopper
(33,592 posts)That is why I asked. There seems to be a few posters who are trying very hard to refute any of the evidence that has debunked the shroud. So I ask what they think. Do they think the shroud is real?
I think it has conclusively been shown to be a 1000 year old fraud.
A simple straightforward question
okasha
(11,573 posts)What rug and I are arguing against is the specific assertion that the shroud is a painting. See my post in response to your "mere materialistic facts" comment for why it cannot be a tempera painting as McCrone claimed.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Do you believe it was created by a regular human being using an physical art technique?
okasha
(11,573 posts)for how I think the image may have been made.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Could you copy it to this subthread where I can see it?
okasha
(11,573 posts)computer. Posting now from Kindle.
Short version: camera oscura photographic negative on sensitized cloth.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)I was just curious if you agreed that it was a human-created work of art, or thought that it could actually be a real burial shroud.
So the whole dispute is just whether or not the word "painting" is applicable?
okasha
(11,573 posts)who claims it is a tempera painting is solely about the medium which was used to make the image. For a number of reasons, for which see above, the tempera hypothesis is untenable.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)and reflect a compete ignorance of the method to which I referred (which method has
been used to produce images, on fabric, very much like the one on the shroud). This was not a case of a relatively thick layer of pigmented tempera base being slathered on a surface. Obviously that would all flake off of fabric, and nobody is suggesting that the same sort of base was used here that would have been used on panel. This is a case of a very dilute solution of protein and suspended pigment being applied to the fabric and coating individual fibers in a very thin layer that doesn't flake off (and despite your fact- free claim, does not require gesso).
I'm sure your thought process will be as immune to these plain facts as to all the rest presented here, but you seem to enjoy that.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)Pretty damned ingenious!
I'd love to know if the person who made this image went the next step and made a positive print. I don't recall the gentleman's name--I read about this in an actual book in an actual library, presently closed for the weekend--but the head of the art dept. at a South African university made a reasonable approximation of the shroud image on sensitized linen using a toolshed sized camera oscura and a full-body plaster cast of a man the same size and build as the subject on the shroud. The main problem he encountered was the long exposure time required. I'll try to have the reference for you Monday if you'd like to follow up.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)okasha
(11,573 posts)that most closely resembles the actual shroud is Dr. Nicholas Allen, then (1988) dean of the Faculty of Art and Design at the Port Elizabeth Teknikon. He describes his experiment in The Turin Shroud and the Crystal Lens ,1998.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)
rurallib
(62,431 posts)to be taken off the air.