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August 23, 2024 - 2:40pm
The Shroud of Turin — the burial relic in which Jesus Christ is supposed to have been wrapped after his crucifixion — has long been a source of fascination and contention. The cloth, which appears to bear the imprint of Christ’s body and is duly revered, was denounced by John Calvin as superstition during the Protestant Reformation. In the Eighties, a radiocarbon dating led to the widespread consensus that the shroud was medieval forgery.
But as of this week, Italian researchers have found using the latest technology that the cloth could in fact date from the life of Christ 2000 years ago, and could really contain a miraculous impression of his body and face. They conducted the study using a cutting-edge X-ray technique, the new imaging from which has since been reconstructed with AI to produce a highly realistic image of what Christ may have looked like.
Perhaps just as fascinating as the discovery itself is the fact that it disrupts the widely accepted narrative of technological progress: that, the more science advances, the more apparently supernatural phenomena will be explained away. In this view, technology is an inherently disenchanting force that will chase away the last fairies from the “great enchanted garden”. The revelations of Turin suggest the opposite. Instead of furthering cynicism, innovation has opened us to the possibility of miracles once again.
In one of his poems, John Keats described “unweav[ing] a rainbow”: breaking down all mysterious phenomena into rational explanations, and in doing so dispelling their magic. During the Enlightenment, this took the form of the historical-critical method, which exploited contemporary archeological and textual evidence to discredit Biblical narratives as they had been accepted in the Christian tradition. Biology and physics later became methods to cast doubt on the existence of God altogether. The conviction that all religious belief would be eliminated by scientific discovery reached its peak in the New Atheism of the 2000s, with Richard Dawkins using the phrase “unweaving the rainbow” to describe his confidence in the profaning power of science.
This narrative has not gone unchallenged. For years the evolutionary biologist and philosopher Rupert Sheldrake has argued that scientific experimentation may reveal the universe to be far more mysterious than we once thought. It is the materialist dogma of modern scientific institutions, he says, which insists on explaining all of existence in the terms of chemistry and physics.
In The Science Delusion, Sheldrake explored a range of unexplainable phenomena including inedia (extreme fasting) among saints and holy men in India and Europe. For them to survive months on end without food and water should have been impossible. Yet overwhelming evidence found that they had lived in near-perfect health, revealing the existence of some other sustenance or energy at work. The deeper we delve into scientific experimentation, Sheldrake suggests, the more plausible supernatural occurrences become.
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SubscribeI have commented on Unherd before that I began my career as a chemist. Toward the end of my time in that line of work, I found it increasingly difficult to believe that a living cell exists, and functions over time, based on simple chemical and physical principles.
Technological progress in the area of biochemistry/cell biology has revealed ever-increasing levels of complexity. So-called “gene chips” allowed us to measure changes in the expression of thousands of genes in response to a simple stimulus. Other techniques allow us to view changes in protein expression, activity, and/or modification. There is now so much data about cellular responses to individual stimuli (such as addition of glucose to a cell culture medium) that the field of “systems biology” arose to try to synthesize and interpret that data.
Living cells and organisms are in a constant state of flux and are inherently unstable. They must coordinate a complex web of functions to remain alive. The great, unanswered question is how do living organisms function over time; how do they regulate all that complexity?
If there is a great, undiscovered “vital force”, it is a balancing force, a grand, unseen computer chip that constantly regulates immense complexity to produce a living thing that appears stable. If such a force exists, its action might seem so remarkable and improbable it appears God-like.
I have never believed there is an inherent contradiction between science and religion.
Yes there is no problem with ‘God’ as a kind of poetic expression of the Infinite, the Absolute, the eternal, the unifying balancing factor in the universe, the driving impulse within the universe itself. The problem is often just the weak reflection of these realities in human life & language, and the extent that they are manipulated into a variety of limited political forms by self-serving humans.
Thank you for this response. it is wise to remain open to the possibility of just about anything, including the existence of a force we can only collectively describe as ‘God”.
Oh no, it’s Russell Brand!
I’m a practicing Roman Catholic and I don’t think the Shroud of Turin is really the burial shroud of Christ nor is the image on it of Him. It’s clearly not real. The image on it is not of a human being. It’s impressionistic, obviously a painting. I agree with N.D. Wilson, the son of well-known Calvinist pastor, Douglas Wilson, who demonstrated that the effect on the Shroud could easily have been executed by painting the image of the crucified Christ onto a sheet of glass and leaving the linen underneath it for a couple of weeks in the Levantine sun. This would create an image by leaving the original surface of the linen intact beneath the painted image while the remainder of the surface was bleached around it. This results in a negative image which, when viewed by VP-8 digital imaging, appears three dimensional. Wilson succeeded in creating his own images that appeared the same as the one on the Shroud with a pane of glass, white paint, a saw horse, some linen fabric, and the sun. Wilson also points out that the wrinkles in the linen can be seen in the image where the fabric was bleached unevenly. The slovenly forgers couldn’t even smooth the linen sufficiently. The age of the linen itself is immaterial – the linen itself might be 2,000 years old, looted from an old tomb during one of the Crusades. There is indeed real, human blood on the linen but this proves nothing more than the cheapness of life to 14th century crusaders.
Wilson wrote, back in 2003:
“The story is not hard to imagine. There was never a time when more lying, Christian scoundrels were roaming the Middle East than in the punctuated periods of crusading throughout the Middle Ages. Men with every degree of callused conscience were looking for any way to sell cedar chips as pieces of the true cross, any old bone as the femur of St. Peter, or bottles of ditch water as the tears of Christ over Jerusalem.
I do not find it at all hard to believe that some cloth recovered from Palestine (complete with Palestinian pollen) fell into the hands of an ingenious (or lucky) forger. Such a convincing forgery would open palace doors and command an excellent price or reward as the case may have been. Or the cloth could have originated anywhere and merely been bleached by a Middle Eastern sun beneath a painting by Templar artists. Many of them were eventually killed by Phillip the Fair for allegedly participating in sorcery or, as some say, worshiping the bearded image of a man. Baphomet, the image has been called.
The imagination is still not stretched to incredulity at the prospect of Templars beating and crucifying a Jew for a model, the stability of the wrists quickly discovered, along with the contraction of the thumb, and a spear feeling around for a release of blood and water. There is nothing in me that disbelieves that such scoundrels existed and adventured for holy profit in the holy land. Every history of the Crusades argues for their existence. Such men lived by the sword and what it did to the pieces of the enemy in front of them. We cannot retrospectively assume a patronizing tone, insisting that they had no understanding of the anatomy of a wound or a crucifixion. I sincerely hope my modern anatomical experience never matches that of a crusader.
They must have merely happened on the process. Some church looted, some stack of valuables in a courtyard beneath the sun; it would only take one crudely stained glass left on cloth to create such an idea. No knowledge of negativity is required. No knowledge of three-dimensionality. They may even have been disappointed at their inability to produce a positive image. All that is needed is linen, glass, paint, and a soft bristle brush.
Two men standing in two different positions may have painted the wounds or applied the blood to the cloth. Or one man may have done all the work from two different positions. The burial aloes may be present because of the mysticism of many of the Templars or because of a simple desire to do a job right. The cloth itself may have been stolen from a tomb. If Rogers is right and the cloth is much older than scientists told us seventeen years ago, something like that would have to be the case. Medieval forgers would have been working with an already ancient cloth.The dirt on the cloth around the area of the feet may be explained by the Christ being laid upon it. Or by a Templar lying down to measure out and match the heights of the two images. Or from the body of some poor fellow who thought he would be wearing the cloth in his grave forever but hadn’t been counting on Templars coming for a visit. Or from a crucified Jew laid out as a model. There are red dyes in the cloth. But is there any reason that forgers could not have used dyed cloth in such a process? There is blood. There is a very strange image.
Somewhere in this lies a very intriguing story, and there remains much to be done to fill in its gaps, and problems remain to be explained. But this image-making process accounts for the greatest of them. Templars or otherwise, the technological simplicity of the method is beyond no one. The original forgers had no idea of the completeness of their art, but our blindness has complicated the riddle. They were men, and they did not notice the wrinkles…
I have not proved much…[T]he fact that it could have been faked does not mean that it was, though I believe it to have been. What I have done is close another door on the case for the Shroud. “Modern science has been unable to produce such an image” remains true enough, as I am no scientist. But no longer can it be said, “No one has ever shown how it could have been done.””
To me, this is sufficient.
Oh, and the bishop of Troyes, Pierre d’Arcis, knew this was nonsense back in 1389 when he wrote to the antipope, Clement VII, about it, saying:
“Some time since in this diocese of Troyes the Dean of a certain collegiate church, to wit, that of Lirey, falsely and deceitfully, being consumed with the passion of avarice, and not from any motive of devotion but only of gain, procured for his church a certain cloth cunningly painted, upon which by a clever sleight of hand was depicted the twofold image of one man, that is to say, the back and front, he falsely declaring and pretending that this was the actual shroud in which our Saviour Jesus Christ was enfolded in the tomb, and upon which the whole likeness of the Saviour had remained thus impressed together with the wounds which He bore. This story was put about not only in the kingdom of France, but, so to speak, throughout the world, so that from all parts people came together to view it. And further to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them, pretended miracles were worked, certain men being hired to represent themselves as healed at the moment of the exhibition of the shroud, which all believed to the shroud of our Lord.
Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination, he discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed. Accordingly, after taking mature counsel with wise theologians and men of the law, seeing that he neither ought nor could allow the matter to pass, he began to institute formal proceedings against the said Dean and his accomplices in order to root out this false persuasion.”
However, in 1506, Julius II, whom Machiavelli himself praised as an “ideal prince,” reversed the Vatican’s position on the Shroud declaring it real.
I leave it to the reader to ponder Julius’s motivations for this volte-face.
If it’s that easy to reproduce the Turin Shroud then do it!
The reality is that all the proposed methods – even using C21st century technology – would fail, as would your proposed method for various reasons. Light would not colour the cloth the way it is, nor to the shallow depth that the image is on the cloth. Then there are all the many other aspects about the cloth, the pollen on it, the 3D nature of the image, the fact the blood is from someone tortured etc etc.
So not only is it wrong to say it’s a forgery when we have no idea how it could have been forged, if it was a medieval forgery using a technique that was used once and lost, including all related understanding of how, of negative images etc, such that we still can’t repeat it now, then that itself is a kind of miracle.
The Gospels describe the tomb as sealed with a stone that could be used.
Only the very upper class had those.
‘But in Jesus’ time, round blocking stones were extremely rare and appeared only in the tombs of the wealthiest Jews.’
https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/did-a-rolling-stone-close-jesus-tomb/
Did Joseph of Arimathea have one? BTW, where was Arimathea? Nobody has ever heard of it.
Arimathea is thought to be a Jewish town (Luke 23:50) in the Shephelah hills area, approximately 20 mi. E of modern Jaffa, and it most likely is identical with either modern Ramathain (Jos. Ant 13.4.9) or Rathamein
Pattengale, J. A. (1992). div > p:nth-of-type(5) > a”>Arimathea (Place). In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 1, p. 378). Doubleday.
Is thought….
Arimathea is never mentioned anywhere in any Roman, Jewish or Greek records. In fact the Gospel of John has lots of places which have no provenance.
I wish you’d read what I wrote before you responded. Each of your objections are addressed there.
Simon Adams made very good points that were not addressed in your comment.
The methods you mentionned have been disproven by more modern examination and study.
Currently there is no known force or method that would produce the shroud.
As for ‘negative’ images, in the Medieval Age that was unknown, so how could someone knowingly created a ‘negative’ image when that idea was not known at the time.
Have they been? How, specifically, has more modern examination proved the Shroud could not have been produced by the methods Wilson used twenty years ago?
As for the negative image, why do you assume the men who produced the Shroud knew they were creating a negative image or were attempting to do so?
Every conceivable objection is addressed in my previous comments:
-Age of the linen: It can actually be a 2000 year old linen from a Judean tomb. Such intact linens, while rare, are still found in cave tombs around Jerusalem today. Is there any reason Europeans visiting the Holy Land couldn’t have looted an ancient tomb and made off with authentic ancient grave clothes?
-Negativity/three-dimensionality of the image: “They must have merely happened on the process. Some church looted, some stack of valuables in a courtyard beneath the sun; it would only take one crudely stained glass left on cloth to create such an idea. No knowledge of negativity is required. No knowledge of three-dimensionality. They may even have been disappointed at their inability to produce a positive image. All that is needed is linen, glass, paint, and a soft bristle brush.”
-“If it’s that easy to reproduce the Turin Shroud then do it!”: N.D. Wilson did twenty years ago and wrote about it showing his results which included a negative, three-dimensional image.
-Real blood on the linen of a tortured man: Crusaders could easily have tortured and killed a man in the 14th century and then put that poor man’s blood on the linen.
-Ancient pollen from the Levant: See Age of the linen.
-The glass required wasn’t available in the 14th century: This is incorrect. Both the French and English were making sheet glass by the 13th century.
Not to mention that a contemporaneous source, the Bishop of Troyes, wrote about the Shroud in 1389. He said it was known to be a forgery at that time made to attract pilgrims to the church in Lirey and that he met the man who created it. It wasn’t until 1506 that the deeply corrupt and irreligious Pope Julius II proclaimed it to be real for what seem in retrospect to be obviously commercial purposes.
Also, look with your own eyes. Is what’s on the Shroud the image of a real human being? Look at the face. Look at the fingers. It’s clearly the image of a painting. The only real mystery is how medieval forgers could have transposed a painted image onto a piece of cloth without painting it directly onto the cloth. Wilson explained how this could have been accomplished using resources available to 14th century people. As Wilson openly admits, this doesn’t prove it was made the way he describes but if your argument rests on negativity and the three-dimensionality of the image, he showed how such an image could have been produced with simple implements available to medieval people by producing such images himself using those implements..
If it’s so miraculous, why doesn’t the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a member, proclaim it to be so? The reason is not flattering for the Church. The answer is, they know it’s a forgery so they don’t want to make themselves look stupid while simultaneously keeping those who believe it’s real in their faith-based delusion. They play the same game with the chalice held in the cathedral of Valencia. They won’t say it’s the Holy Grail but neither will they say it’s not the Holy Grail. They like to have their cake and to eat it too.
Modern, scientific people have a huge blind spot, which is that we tend to think anyone who lived more than 75 years ago was a moron. We also think that if science can’t give us a clear answer, there is no clear answer.
I prefer to keep my mystery’s mysterious. Faith in god belies human comprehension. Therefore I don’t look too closely at the trappings. And I wouldn’t pay cash to see such a thing or own it. Except as a mark of past generations faith in such objects and what it allowed them to become.
Yeah, OK, I’m sure that happened. Nice AI image though. It should be noted that these guys have had previous research retracted.
Still, the shroud is fascinating whatever it’s origins.
The cloth has a documented history going all the way back to 1354.
Nobody thought to mention its existence until then?
As it happens, the first person in history to discuss what Christians meant by resurrection simply scoffed at the idea of a corpse coming back to life.
Paul made clear that Adam was formed by God breathing life into dead matter, but that a resurrection was an entirely different process. He obviously couldn’t give any eyewitness details, but his theology told him that resurrected beings are not made of flesh and blood.
1 Corinthians 15 :-
47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Amen
The erroneous argument being made yet again, that because science “can’t explain everything” there must be room for faith.
The one does not follow the other. Neither is that what science claims.
The shroud is an interesting artefact, but indicative of nothing but our curiosity.
Agreed.
One further point though: if we knew everything, there would be no further point to science.
The error of scientism is that only that which can be abstracted to quantity is real, that everything is only the aggregate of it’s smallest parts, with some magic “emergence” that then happens for consciousness, maths, music, life, beauty, geometry etc. It’s this reduction of everything to the ontological horizontal, and complete blindness to the vertical due to 700 years of assumed nominalism. It’s been a useful tunnel vision in order to interrogate and control the material representation of things, but entirely a religious like belief to assume that this can ever describe what “puts fire in the equations” or the first person experience of being in living organisms.
There’s no need to explain what you think needs explaining; and then there’s art, which is the age-old means of describing how it is to be human. Belief is mere wishful thinking, and can be (as we see everyday in the news) dangerous and divisive.
Further: because you can’t explain something, even if you feel it necessary, absolutely does not lead to the iniquity of relying on religosity, which arises from our projecting of ourselves onto a supra-human entity. It’d be quite humorous if it weren’t so damned dangerous.
There’s a spiritual dimension to our lives which is perfectly able to to be appreciated without religion.
As an ex atheist, one who was fairly certain that it was all fairy tales for the weak minded, I understand your position. As such I know there is no argument that can change your mind because the human mind has not evolved to examine multiple assumptions at the same time (not useful when a lion appears outside the cave). It’s only at the end of the tether that we can step back enough for that.
“There’s a spiritual dimension to our lives which is perfectly able to to be appreciated without religion.”
Without religion perhaps, but not without God.
You’re missing the point yet again.
Everything is faith, including faith in science.
The extent that science can reduce the world into objective certainties is absurdly limited, and most of human life and experience will always remain faith-based (including your own naive Boomer faith in science)
Science is a method, an approach. It’s always up to be questioned, improved, expanded upon, and sometimes, quite often proven incorrect. Well,that’s how it’s supposed to work. Dogma is the death of reason, and therefore kills actual science.
Yes but people participating in the scientic method are only human. Clearly there is always going to be plenty of dogma and groupthink in the sciences.
Scientists used to be eccentric Great Uncle Bertie making alarming and strange whizz-bangs and smells in the West Wing,no interest in clothes or money or food. Just a totally disinterested seeker after truth.
Now scientists.are men and women of working age with mortgages to pay,spouses to support,even maybe an ex-spouse,houses to equip and maintain, children to feed and educate and travel to do but nothing as vulgar as a holiday.
If the State, or Political Administration the scientist is located in wont or.cant pay for applied science there are other rich people who will. Like,it’s a name that often crops up,Bill Gates. And as they say ” the one who pays the piper calls the tune”.
Exactly, the scientific revolution and enlightenment were fuelled by eccentrics like Henry Cavendish and Adam Smith, following their personal obsessions, not by careerist professionals or strivers
Reading and studying scripture it’s quite clear God eschews dogma.
Aside from that, there is a great deal of dogma in the sciences and religion, probably in equal measure. Plus faith is required to believe either one.
Thank you for this comment, Benedict. I’ve added it to the Newcreate page of quotes about (secular) faith, which can be found here.
Thankyou, that looks like an interesting page. Bookmarked
“as fascinating as the discovery itself is the fact that it disrupts the widely accepted narrative of technological progress: that, the more science advances, the more apparently supernatural phenomena will be explained away.”
What is supernatural about the Turin shroud? Even if it were the shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, a documented historical figure, it wouldn’t be magic. Nor would it be so if it were an imprint of the face of any one of thousands of people crucified by the Romans in the same period. Nor would it be if it was from a crucifiction of some poor man by forgers in the middle ages.
None of these unpleasant deaths are mysterious or magical. It is the meaning applied to Jesus’ death after the event that gives it spiritual significance, not the fact he died by crucifiction – many did, and most likely many of those who had surviving family were buried afterwards, thereby saving the Roman army the cost of preventing corpse-borne disease in warm climates.
‘. It is the meaning applied to Jesus’ death after the event that gives it spiritual significance….’
Paul was pretty scathing in Romans 13 about people who were crucified by the Romans
3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
Does this sound like he thought the Romans crucified Jesus?
The New Testament has more continuity errors than an episode of that budget soap opera ‘Crossroads’
Paul, as a Roman citizen enjoyed the protections of the Roman authorities. This is why it’s speculated he advised followers to come under authority. Some say Paul didn’t even write this passage. Regardless Nero later tortured and murdered Christians by the thousands, but the followers did not rebel as Paul had challenged them to be obedient. Whether he was right to do so is questionable.
The beauty of the Bible and its teachings is we do debate, search and question. Unlike other religions, including atheism, who have a dogmatic approach to faith.
Also, you picked one of the most debated passages in the NT and then likened the whole NT to Crossroads. Which tells me a lot about your thinking.
Or they may not.
A Friday afternoon article if I ever read one.
And complete fake news.
Radiocarbon dating is very reliable. On the other hand this report only claims that this might be older if the fabric had been preserved under a very unique and highly unlikely set of environmental conditions for around 1000 years:
“Scientists say that the shroud can conclusively be said to be 20 centuries old only if there is further evidence showing the relic was kept safely at an average temperature of about 22C and relative humidity of around 55 per cent for 13 centuries before it emerged. A “more systematic” X-ray analysis of “more samples taken from the Turin Shroud fabric” may be required to confirm their conclusions, they caution.”
Furthermore, the researchers (as reported in the article referenced) only comment on the possible dating of the fabric. They make no comment on what the images on it (if any) actually show. Though the author states that they do.
What’s this author doing here ? And equally, what is she doing at Cambridge ?
“ Radiocarbon dating is very reliable”. That’s an interesting statement – what is it based on? The reality is that Egyptian mummies often have C14 dates many centuries off. In fact the same sample can have differences of 1000 years between different labs. There is a HUGE difference between C14 analysis of a piece of wood, and analysis of cloth that has been handled and displayed near candles and incense. Let alone the fact that the Shroud of Turin had repairs done to the edges at some point after a fire.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-science/dna-dating-0017174
If you think it’s a medieval fake, do let us know how it was made. That would be an easy way to clear this up using all the power of C21st science?
OK, let’s sanity check these numbers then.
Egyptian mummies: you claim the error is “centuries” on object which are at least 3000 years old. Worst case, that’s an error of around 10%.
Turin Shroud: radiocarbon age is 1300AD; “required age” is 33AD. Required error in radiocarbon dating = 2000/800 – i.e. over 200%.
Actual Turin Shroud radiocarbon dating gave a range of 1260-1390AD with a confidence level of 95%.
You seriously suggest that radiocarbon dating can have an error of over 200% !!! That’s “not even wrong” as a famous scientist once put it.
I gave no opinion on whether it’s a mediaeval fake. I literally don’t care. There are, however, hundreds of fake religious relics in existence, so it’s got to be a possibility, hasn’t it ?
Stephen Shoemaker in ‘Creating the Qur’an’ gives a good summary of recent studies that suggest that radiocarbon dating is nowhere near as reliable as had previously been considered. It would seem that some of the assumptions traditionally used in the technique are inappropriate.
I guess the image results trump the radiocarbon dating. The cloth is from the 1300’s from the C-14 data. That’s all you need to know. The imaging is a red herring. No mention of the age of the cloth in the article. This myth was debunked in the 1980’s.
I’m not sure that AI image is anything but a romantic reimagining. It’s ages since I saw a picture of the actual marks on the shroud, but I remember them as being cruder and more tortured than that perfect representation of the post medieval Christ. It would have been a good idea to juxtapose the two. And as for the real meaning of the shroud? Shakespeare (as ever) had it. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’. And will always be.
Brilliant article … it does indeed seem that there are complex, unexplainable and mysterious happenings throughout our modern world at present. The Shroud is possibly one from the ancient past.
A revolting fraud which discredits those who “believe” in a scrap of cloth. If you are looking for Christ you won’t find him there. It is beyond even a Peterson or a Pageau to defend this sort of vain superstition with sophistry.
UnHerd has many top-quality pieces which justify the subscription. But this:
” Italian researchers have found using the latest technology that the cloth could in fact date from the life of Christ 2000 years ago, and could really contain a miraculous impression of his body and face. They conducted the study using a cutting-edge X-ray technique, the new imaging from which has since been reconstructed with AI to produce a highly realistic image of what Christ may have looked like.”
does rather make me wonder if it has editors capable of doing the job. Italian researchers (meaning scientists) have found (“using the latest technology”) that the Shroud “could really contain a miraculous impression of [Christ’s] face”. That the possibility of a miracle has been confirmed by scientists using the latest technology is not so much newsworthy as oxymoronic. That a miracle has occurred (or even: has possibly occurred) is scarcely something confirmable by science and technology. That’s rather the point of a miracle.
And the results, fed into an AI, have produced a “highly realistic image of what Christ may have looked like”? In what sense “highly realistic”? Nobody knows what Christ looked like. Or “highly realistic” only in that the resulting image produced by the AI does look like a real human being with facial characteristics familar to us from 1500+ years of representational Christian art (those, as another commenter perceptively notes, shared by Russell Brand)? Well yes, of course, just like most of what emerges from an AI when it is prompted to produce images of human beings looks highly realistic.
To call this paragraph tosh would be generous. Did someone at UnHerd read this and think it was passable copy?
Quite so. I looked at the AI image and didn’t see a Semitic face. So we end up with a very convoluted chain of circumstance. If Jesus existed, and if he was wrapped in a shroud, and if the Shroud of Turin was actually much older than it tests, and if AI wasn’t primed by centuries of Eurocentric art, then this is what he could have looked like. It’s a miracle (of wishful thinking).
Quantum physics has known for quite some time now that at its deepest level, reality has become, well, unknowable – and possibly not real at all, in any sense that we can understand.
I don’t understand how reality (which I understand to signify that which is real) might possibly be not real. For that is to say that it is possible that a contradiction is true. I suppose what is meant is that what appears to be real might not be really real, or that there might be something more real, more fundamental (so to speak) ‘underneath’. But even if there is something which lies (so to speak – note the unavoidability of spatial metaphors here) ‘behind’ appearances and is real, the fact that appearances appear as they do is also an aspect of reality. At any rate they are not simply illusory. Maybe it is better simply to say that reality is (or at least appears to be) inexhaustible. At what point our cognitive capacities give out in the endeavour to understand it is, I suppose, an empirical matter.
Fair enough. But there are philosophies that wonder if everything, even our very understanding of time and individual existence, might be an illusion. Obviously, beyond speculative, but still interesting. A book called The One, by Heinrich Pas, is interesting, though I confess to only the skimpiest understanding of the ideas he offers. Same with The Matter With Things, by Iain McGilchrist.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:15
“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”
Harry Emerson Fosdick
The problem with science for some is that it has been made into an intolerant religion that no one is permitted to question.
Science has its role in describing the physical world but there is no scientific evidence that there is no non-physical (spiritual) world.
Science and spirituality can co-exist.
They describe different things.
For the Shroud of Turin the original raw data was hidden for 27 years.
Newer tests discount the older tests that the Should is from Medieval times and modern tests show that something very special happened.
However going by the comments here some will never believe because they have shut their minds to everything except the Science religious faith.
Science has its place but does not describe everything, especially the non-physical world.
For another point of view please view (65) Scientists Finally Reveal Shocking Truths About The Shroud of Turin – They Can’t Hide This! – YouTube
There are other websites that discuss the Shroud.
Indeed. There is clearly, to me at least, far more to reality than reductive scientific thinking would have us believe. Science is important and describes the mechanics of our world as we understand them but there are other things connected to us/ going on in our world which we can glimpse but can’t comprehend at present.
Whatever the date of it’s creation, it is impossible to show that the image is that of Christ.
The hardcore atheist assumption is commendable and advisable as a rule in the approach that science should assume. But lurking in the background is J.B.S. Haldane’s wise and cautionary comment [paraphrased] “The universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.”
In that “can” may lie a worm or two.
The Turin Shroud probably is 2,000 years old and if the right parts of the cloth has been tested (for various reasons the parts tested might not have been) radio carbon dating would have confirmed that.
The reductive materialists and their know-it-all atheist pals will never rest. It’s their bread and butter.
I think Rupert Sheldrake was trained as a botanist not an evolutionary biologist. Not that it matters. I very much enjoy his work. One might also explore Stephen Meyer whose recent work, The Return of the God Delusion, relates how modern science is raising more questions than answers.