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Carbon Dating & The Shroud of Turin
BlackTyranny writes "The Shroud of Turin, carbon dated in 1978 by a team of scientists, may be far older than originally thought. Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, part of the original team, used samples given to him in 2003 from the Cardinal of Turin's scientific advisor. Roger's contends that the carbon dating might be faulty because "the people who cut the sample didn't do a very good job of characterizing the samples," that is, taking samples from many areas of the cloth." I think the shroud 'Patch' may be made of the big foot suit. ;)
It's pretty generally accepted already by all those without blind faith that the piece of fabric known as the Turin Shroud is not what Jesus was wrapped in. Further experimentation with and investigation of it seems to me an extraordinary waste of money.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
...and there really isn't any proof on it having been the one that some guy 2000 years ago was in.
relics were a big business, and still are.
there were literally tons of wood that was supposedly from the cross that jesus was supposedly nailed to.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
As an agnostic and a humanist, I feel nobody has the right to chastise other's for their beliefs. That goes for everyone, including CmdrTaco and the person offended by CmdrTaco. Though I admist that CmdrTaco's comment is a statement of opinion and not chastisment (but it could very well be interpretted as that), whilst the anoynmous coward's above statement is a blatant attack. so, to the autor of "Dumbest. Editor. Evar.", thus spake Zarathustra: "STFU".
"But there was virtually no vanillin left in the shroud, leading the chemist to calculate it could be far older than the radiocarbon testing indicated".
This is a chemical analysis along the lines of the fact that all the vanillin has disappeared, assuming it was there to start with, and that it disappears at a predictable rate (without knowing the temperature and other conditions it was stored in).
The carbon dating on the other hand measures the ratios of isotopes of carbon. The ratio of isotopes of carbon in all living matter is known, and it produces other isotopes at a predictable rate dependent only on time after death or harvest of the matter (cotton, bone, etc). This is a nuclear process that is independent of temperature, humidity, chemical environment, etc.
My money is on the physicists.
the british museum's dating was patheticly incompetent, failing to account for the role of accumulating bioplastic coating on the fibers, the preservation of the shroud in oil during the late renaissance, and now, as has been demonstrated by use of other dating methods, the selection of repair materials for the dating. the only reason it was ever accepted was that it's results were pleasing to the rejectionist viewpoint.
vanillin decay products demonstrate that the shroud is composed of materials of two distinct periods, one consistent with it's documented provenance (to the 13th century), and one consistent with its physical characteristics (1000 BC to 700AD).
given that it is the only proposed physical artifact of a pivotal event in human history, with profound import, compentent pursuit of an accurate and factual account of its characteristics is a very worthwhile endeavour, and entirely undeserving of the deceitful mockery of the poster.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
For those (like myself) who are secular, I wish to point out the single greatest problem in the religious view of the Shroud. The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus. This type of reasoning is "Assume the conclusion to be true. Then prove the conclusion." I thought that scientific inquiry is "We don't know what to expect. Let's probe and collect the scientifically provable facts. Then, we draw a conclusion from the facts."
Somehow I think bearing the Son of Man in your womb is a little different than coveting your neighbor.
Christians hate unmarried mothers and adultery and women who have children with men who aren't their husbands otherwise
Christians aren't supposed to hate anyone, but rather hate the sin. We're all sinners in this world. Becoming a Christian doesn't make one sinless - but hopefully makes them sin less. I'm sorry if your view of Christianity has been skewed by those who don't hold to true beliefs.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
Um, aren't you chastising Cmdr Taco's belief that he has a right to chastise Christian's beliefs?
Uh, no. Taco is allowed to believe he has the right to chastise Christians' beliefs, he's just not allowed to actually do it.
Of course, mainly it's just gauche. It's like a Jewish friend of mine who went out of her way to help a person who was having a spot of trouble at work. The person told my friend that it was "awfully Christian of her." Of course, my friend knew what she meant was something like "Your actions are in accord with ideals that I was taught by Christianity, and which are held by other religions such as Judaism." But it's rather like a segregationist telling W.E.B. DuBois that it was "awfully white of him."
The downside of the death of the idea of propiety is that it has stripped our culture of language and tools to describe situations like this. There is a great gaping whole on the continuum that starts at "OK" and runs through "morally wrong", "should be illegal" ending up at "downright evil". Between "OK" and "morally wrong", there is a whole range of qualities, including: gauche, impolite, rude, and offensive.
Mocking somebody's beliefs, depending on the context, falls somewhere in this range.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
especially the right to insult someone who has beliefs that are not based on anything real
Let me insult you now, because you clearly mistake "beliefs" with "knowledge". By definition, beliefs do not need to be based on anything real. If you want to base something on "anything real" - you need to have a certain belief, namely believe that there is actually something which is both real and accessible to your senses. It's a common belief, but still a belief - you might as well be a classic "brain in a jar" and see only simulacra. This belief is NOT based on anything real, because you base your perception of reality on this belief, so if you'd try to do it otherwise, you'd have a typical fool's circle.
there's nothing DUMB about joking about a piece of cloth that shouldn't really be worth anything to you if you believed it to be real.
Well, if you take the assumption that the Shroud is a medieval counterfeit (and this is also my belief, if you ask) - you'd have to assume that someone in Middle Ages was tortured to death and his dead body was somehow proto-photographed on the linen, which might be possible technically even then. Anatomical details are just too accurate for the Shroud to be merely a paintwork coming from the artist's imagination (medieval painters in the era of Giotto di Bondone simply did not know how to paint human body accurately, this knowledge was rediscovered in late Renaissance). So watching the Shroud, you watch a recording of someone's pain and death. If you find someone's torment and agony funny, I'd say that you are dumb indeed (that's for the insult).
Faith and science are two totally different and incompatible methods of acquiring knowledge.
Faith is not a method of aquiring knowledge, it's a method of retaining a belief.
AccountKiller
First, let me say that I am a Christian, and I hold my faith to be a guiding and supporting influence in my life. As to the authenticity of Shroud of Turin, I personaly have doubts about its authenticity, but I refuse to pass final judgment on the matter as I doubt we will ever have all the facts. In the final analysis however no proof, scientific or other wise will matter.
"For those who do not believe no proof is sufficient. For those who do believe no proof is necessary." -- Unknown source
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
I'd remind the readers that science is fallible.
Of course. But you sound like you're using the fallibility of science to justify what you already believe. In other words "it MUST be the real Jesus shrowd, not that I have any evidence it is.. but eventually science will show the counter-evidence is wrong because.. well it MUST be". That's not how science works. Sure, it's possible the science is faulty.. but you don't just assume it is because the evidence doesn't back up your own, unsubstatiated beliefs. That's just patently dishonest.
In science you take all the evidence and make a conclusion based on that with the understanding that it's not the final word on the matter. In other words, you don't get to use science only when it backs up what you want to believe, but claim faulty science when it doesn't.
AccountKiller
Somehow I think bearing the Son of Man in your womb is a little different than coveting your neighbor.
:-) In both cases, the woman is following a primal need to reproduce and found a mate based on ability to provide and stability. It's actuallyl a story right out of a Harlequin romance, if you ask me.
:-)
Well, maybe not really.
Becoming a Christian doesn't make one sinless - but hopefully makes them sin less.
Aha, finally a Christian comes up with a testable theory! Let's see. Theory: Christians do less crime than others. Let's consult the stats. Any takers?
If true, then this one fact would justify the religion in my view. If not, well, just another crazy fad.
Currently hooked on AMP
It's a pity that this sort of uninteresting pseudo-science keeps cropping up on
I'm not a scientist, but surely there are more interesting things going in the world than this?
I couldn't agree more. And I'm pretty confident that Jesus would also agree wholeheartedly if he were alive today. I suspect he'd be dumbfounded as to why God's children still seem to be mesmerised by idols and symbols when they should really be focussing on all the death, torture, war and oppression in the world. We'll spend money on investigating a dirty old piece of cloth but we're not prepared to stop all the prejudices and greed-fuelled, self-interested warmongers in the world. I'm not a Christian btw (far from it in fact) - but I have zero time for anyone claiming to be a Christian that actually has no idea what Jesus Christ's own ideals were.
Please excuse the rant but really - even Jesus himself would mod this story down.
Most of the religious justification for hating gays comes from Leviticus, but damn few people ever read the whole text. The people who wrote it were freaking nuts. It's like a read from Rev. Moon's writings -- control for its own sake. Superstition and common sense mixed together with a massive dash of fanaticism.
- The very people who maintain the Shroud as a holy artifact
- Who by definition believe in its authenticity
- Who have every reason to want it to be proven authentic
- Who control access to it, and
- Who only permitted research on it after a long and difficult negotiation with the scientists involved,
didn't allow anyone to have the proper things to test?Isn't it easier just to believe that the claims of authenticity are false, and that people are clinging to it because of what they want to be true?
Rogers looks like someone who will believe regardless of the evidence, and is thus someone whose "scientific" results are not trustworthy. The McPaper article quotes Rogers saying " the blood spots on it are real blood", when the actual material of the "blood stains" has been proven to be red ochre. Am I also being asked to believe that Jesus bled red ochre?
Refusing to accept the reality that the "artifact" is a 14th-century creation says nothing about the dating process, and everything about your prejudices. It's not what its keepers think it is. Get over it.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed. Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen com upon thee.
a nation that managed to thrive and grow to eventually produce movements which now dominate most of the world.
I'm really confused by the "mingled seed" comment.
Civilizations which planted multiple crops on one field, used crop rotation and cross-bred plants were very successful in agriculture, and I don't see how that would be unsanitary.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I thought it was the word of God. Are you trying to tell me that God had a lacking scientific understanding? I thought he was omniscient.
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
First to makes things clear: I am a Christian, and personally have many doubts about the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. I'm really nervous when many extreme Christians, or fanatics for that matter will try to use the Shroud of Turin as proof for anything. We Christians absolutely DON'T need this artifact to be of any proof of our faith. If it turns out to be consistant with the time-frame that my personal savior was killed on the cross, then that that's great, hopefully there would be more believers, but if it isn't...so what? It is just an artifact. This message board has placed too many emphasis on the relation between the Shroud of Turin and Christianity as a religious whole. I really hope everyone, nonbelievers and believers can sever this relationship.
While the science of "born with it" may be more driven by politics than real (isn't it sad people have to say they were born with something just not to be thrown in jail?) nevertheless there's no reason to suggest it is something that needs to be "treated".
In a free society, the people do not grant the government the power to regulate sexual activity.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.