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Comment by aestetix | Hacker News Reader

I would be curious what Michael Shermer and others think of some of the more recent scientific investigations, as detailled by Fr. Andrew Dalton on Pints with Aquinas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAbuG-oVq1Q

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I doubt he’d think much of it. I’m about 2/3rds through it. It’s all more of the same and not terribly convincing.

Fr. Andrew Dalton is a Sindonologist(?), somebody who studies the shroud, but not necessarily from a scientific perspective. Sindonology isn’t exactly embraced by Shermer in his article, or, apparently, by the scientific community in general. I hadn’t encountered the term before, but at a glance it seems to have all the scientific rigor of ufology or cryptozoology.

What I’ve heard so far in the video isn’t new evidence, but enthusiastic re-hashing of previous topics that have already been discussed to death. The video offers precisely the kinds of suspicious arguments that Shermer talks about. Exactly, in the case of C14 dating, “French invisible weaves”, and corner-holding-contamination.

I hadn’t encountered the AZ 1 & 2 C14 differences though and I’d be curious to get more details. He only briefly mentions them and doesn’t provide anything further. Fr. Dalton seems to point people to shroud.com which he calls “the most scientific of websites’ - that statement seems dubious at best, and browsing the site doesn’t change my impression.

I do appreciate that towards the end of the video that Fr. Dalton completely acknowledges that there is no evidence dating the shroud to the 1st century. All the other discussion around the “historical facts” surrounding JC, such as the kind of crown we supposedly wore, the kind of cross he supposedly carried, etc. is very eye-brow raising. The discussion of Eucharistic miracles and the prevalence of the AB blood type is similarly…interesting.

At the end of the day the authenticity of the shroud is a matter of faith. Evidence doesn’t seem like it should be important.

Setting aside religious discussion, what I found interesting is that the shroud has a lot of things that we simply cannot explain. For example, we have been unable to replicate the image as it exists (I think he said 200 nm thick), using highly advanced UV technology. If we can't figure it out now, how on earth would someone have created it centuries ago? I found other details, such as the absense of the photo-negative impression where blood stains were, fascinating.

I also thought the debunking of the 1988 "findings" made a lot of sense.

I'm not saying that it is "authentic" in that it is the impression of Christ from the Resurrection. What I am saying is that using our best scientific methods, we still have no explanation for how it came to exist.

I suppose I should ask, what kind of evidence are you looking for that would make something convincing to you?

Thanks for sharing this!

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