Film-Maker Issues $1M Challenge to Museum to Repeat Radiocarbon Testing of the '...
source link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/04/17/199203/film-maker-issues-1m-challenge-to-museum-to-repeat-radiocarbon-testing-of-the-shroud-of-turin
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Film-Maker Issues $1M Challenge to Museum to Repeat Radiocarbon Testing of the 'Shroud of Turin'
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"It was one of the most eagerly awaited scientific announcements of all time, and it pitted the world of faith against the world of rational thought, under the glare of the media," remembers the Guardian.
So when cutting-edge carbon-14 tests found that the Shroud of Turin was a forgery, it seemed like the final chapter for a relic that had been revered for centuries as the cloth in which Christ's body had been wrapped when he supposedly rose from the dead at the first Easter almost 2,000 years ago.
But one man — David Rolfe, a film-maker whose documentary The Silent Witness had brought the shroud into the public eye in modern times, and who had converted to Christianity as a result of his research — wasn't prepared to give up on it. He was convinced the carbon dating, carried out in 1988 under the direction of the British Museum and Oxford University, had been flawed. And now he claims he has the evidence to prove it. This week sees the release of a new film, Who Can He Be?, in which Rolfe argues that, far from the shroud being a definite dud, new discoveries in the past few years have again opened the question of its authenticity. So convinced is Rolfe that he's issuing a challenge worth $1m to the British Museum. "If ... they believe the shroud is a medieval forgery, I call on them to repeat the exercise, and create something similar today," he says....
The sample used for the tests, Rolfe argues in his new film, was too small and taken from a corner where the shroud was likely to have been repaired over the centuries....
When it comes to the carbon dating, he's certainly not alone in his scepticism. Barrie M Schwortz, a photographer who documented the shroud in 1978, says "murky" would be a good word to describe the events of 1988. "Today there are at least six peer-reviewed scientific articles that challenge the results of the carbon dating," he says. In his view, the players involved were in a hurry to get the job done, because they wanted to get carbon dating on the map. "Those tests made it a household name, and today it's used widely in archaeology," he says....
The British Museum is less willing to get involved this time around. "Any current questions about the shroud would be best put to those who currently care for it in the royal chapel of the cathedral of Turin," a spokesperson said.
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It has no traceable history before the 14th century. It was denounced as a fake by church officials at the time. The weave is anachronistic for the 1st century. The image is wrongly proportioned for a real human and there's no distortion where the cloth would have draped over the body.
Oh yes, and dead people don't come alive again.
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Jesus did not die for our sins. At most, he gave up a three-day weekend.
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Most holy relics can be dated to the time between 800-1400, because that is the era when people actually cared about relics enough to fake them.
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Yes, but that means the Shroud of Turin was produced with the latest and greatest fake relic technology!
In the 15th Century fake relic technology collapsed like the tulip bulb market. Now if I can only work cryptocurrency and NFTs into the joke...
Say, would you like to buy an NFT of the first radiocarbon dating results for the SoT?
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And given that most saints seem to have had three to four heads, five to ten hands with an average of 17 fingers on each and a bunch of extra internal bones and such, it is safe to assume that either most so-called relics are fake, or early-day christians were all aliens.
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Or both. Both sounds good.
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Ever see "The Serpent and the Rainbow"?
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You do realize that movie is a work of fiction, right? It draws inspiration from the book of the same name, but the story in the book and the story in the movie are wildly different.
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You missed a couple.
The art is Gothic and dates to around 1100 - 1500 and was likely done as a bas relief of another piece. The person on the image is white and european, the exact thing white Europeans would have as their Jesus. The image has a different height from the back as from the front.
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Setting aside the fact that Levantines are white, I'm not quite sure how you'd even reliably distinguish a Levantine from a European in a cloth imprint.
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There is no such thing as the "Levantines". The Levant region which is likely what you're making reference to, was an area that had nine different groups of people. None of which were homogenous in culture nor ethnicity. And no, they were not all white. Not even close.
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Dictionaries beg to differ. [wikipedia.org]
You mean much like Europe which has hundreds of different groups of people. What is the point of that?
I'm sure they weren't, but this was about appearance, which is genetic, not cultural/ethnical.
It's not necessary for all inhabitants of the Levant to be white to be able to confuse a random one with a European. However, it *is* necessary for *none* of the inhabitants of the Levant to white to be *unable* to confuse a random one with a European. This is clearly not satisfied, so
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....white and european, the exact thing white Europeans would have as their Jesus.
I want my Jesus to be a strong, powerful, beautiful Black Woman with impeccable anti-racist credentials, radical haircut and own tiktok channel. So fuck you.
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"I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-shirt. 'Cause it says like, I wanna be formal but I'm here to party too. I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party."
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In fact Jesus was actually black, the evidence is clear from the Bible: He called everybody brother, he liked Gospel, and he couldn't get a fair trial. Couldn't be more clear-cut than that.
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Oh yes, and dead people don't come alive again.
Surely you've heard of zombies.
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Zombies aren't alive. They're reanimated corpses... they're also fictional!
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No they aren't, they are in Congress.
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Only Mitch McConnel
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For the believers out there John 20:5-7 the cloths used to wrap his body were separate for the head and body, after being raised up they were in 2 bundles.
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Also, being real or not has zero impact on Christianity, its theology, or the lives of any of its believers. Why someone is so hung up on this is baffling.
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Because they are desperate for evidence which supports their Mythology.
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No, they are desperate for science to confirm what they ought to believe by faith. If science confirmed the authenticity, then science, rather than God, would be the authority of truth. The moment there exists scientific proof of God's existence is the moment that God is no longer God. Oddly, many so-called Christians don't understand that the desire to have science validate God's existence is a violation of the first commandment.
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Not necessarily. If, as some physicists contend, the universe is an emergent property of maths, and there is a God, then God is maths. Since logic is a branch of maths, it's within the remit of the 1st Commandment, as God cannot be held above God.
(That there isn't a God is fine, as 0=0.)
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...they're desperate for publicity to fund and support their vanity project.
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Shhh. I don't want some moron realising their mistake and cancelling the Easter bunny. I happen to like chocolate.
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Except that one time. Remember, miracles cannot be tested, only attested. Because they happened just once. [smbc-comics.com]
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This may be down to the Grauniad's famously poor proof reading, but it seems to come from a quote from Rolfe.
"if this is a forgery it’s the most ingenious forgery in history – and of course it dates back almost 2,000 years, to a time of far less sophisticated forgery techniques."
If the Carbon-dating was right, showing it to be a forgery, then it's 'only' 6-700 years old, not anywhere near 2,000 years. It's only 2,000 years old if the dating is wrong and it isn't a forgery. That mistake makes me doubt Rolfe's reliability.
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Even if it were real, it would only be a kind of mild, "that's cool." It wouldn't be earth shattering or anything. We have textiles from that era, and they're pretty cool.
If the shroud somehow heals cancer, that would be mindblowing.
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Actually the textiles we have from that time are radically different. This is a much better woven piece than you'd come across in the 1st century.
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Thus, the fabric was woven using alien technology. Checkmate, atheists!
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Yeah, if it wasn't then it's a shitty forgery but the fact that it's not a forgery and yet somehow manages to have all the magical properties required to explain away the skeptics, it must have real magic indeed. Magic exactly like the real Jesus would bestow on it, checkmate, atheists!
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Even if the shroud is authentic, the identity of the person depicted in it still needs to be established for it to become the sort of holy relic some believers claim it to be.
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If it were found to cure cancer, I think it would be enough.
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Maybe a DNA analysis would reveal some anomalies that could be included in a true miracle cure.
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While Oxford University coordinated the test, the testing was done at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. The article fails to mention that 3 separate institutions did the testing. Also not mentioned is the "repair" hypothesis has already been debunked.
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Magical elves of secretly repairing part of a cloth with magical stitches that don't exist, just to weave some 14th century cloth into other cloth.
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Also the cloth uses a weave pattern not known to exist around the time of Jesus. Thus this cloth is truly magical.
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Sure why not, I mean these people think a dead man came to life so what you're proposing is hardly a stretch of the imagination.
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I knew someone involved in the testing. He said that the test was clear and didn't really require anything unusual. They published the result. The university had 0 interest in getting involved in a religious debate so they just left it there.
That said, if someone with access to a fragment, wants to pay the full cost of having it tested, sure, why not. But I wish they would spend their money on more productive science.-
Sure if the Cathedral wants to test it further. I guess that they think this is more a publicity stunt rather than real science.
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It also fails to mention that they all did the tests double-blind.
They were all given four samples of cloth to test (one ancient, one 14th century, one modern, one from the shroud). They all came up with the same results.
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And while we're at it, I challenge NASA to prove the Moon is not made of green cheese. All the rocks they "brought" back are suspect. Said NASA spokepersons: we feel the authenticity should be brought up with those who currently take care of the Moon. Obviously there is a conspiracy against the truth. Cue Fox!
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Mulder: Trust no one.
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Muld-R-XFL-3: Keep your laser handy.
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by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Sunday April 17, 2022 @03:48PM (#62454672)
evolution disproved the creation story which means there was no Adam & Eve which means there is no original sin so that means no need for a jesus to make a sacrifice, every museum of natural history in the world is a warehouse full of evidence
god is a myth
the bible is fiction
religion is bullshit
what do religious nuts have??? a dusty old bible written by goat molesters-
Just to put a point on it, why would Jesus have to die anyhow? Couldn't God just hold up a few fingers, "This is not the sin you are looking for". And while we're at it, Christians seem to believe the Jews killed Jesus (hint: the Romans crucified people). So if the Jews didn't kill Christ, then he wouldn't have died so we'd all be damned to some Christian version of Hell (Texas). And if the Jews did kill Christ, shouldn't the Christians be thanking them for giving them everlasting life...which miraculously doesn't occur here on Earth where the Christian ministers take the money of people who hope to go somewhere other than Hell when they die.
And if Satan rules the world, how come God doesn't put stop to it, or is She not All Powerful? And why are three religions fighting over a goddamn city in the Mid-East? It isn't as though God appears there regularly to see who's winning.
To get back to theology, there's God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spook. ..er, but they are all the same. So God destined Himself to die, but be reborn as God, but he's not God, he's the Son. BTW: even David of the Old Testament was called a Son of God. At the time of Jesus, the phrase merely meant one was "of God", i.e., devout. But a 100 years later, it lost its context and, shazzam, a new religion was born.
And if God guided the thoughts and hands of the Gospel writers, how come the 3 synoptic Gospels (Mathew, Mark, and Luke) have so many discrepancies? And reading the Book of Revelation (who's author was not John), it strikes me that was written after someone got a little too happy during the Summer of Love and overdid the magic mushrooms. And he was talking about Rome, not some latter musings of the Christian evangelists who never saw a checkbook after which they couldn't lust.
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The road to hell is paved with critical thinking skills.
The foundation of fundamentalism is this: One puts one's faith in God's revelations, and not in human reason, because humans are fallible whereas God is not. Case closed on all issues.
However, that raises the question: how does one know what God's revelations are? Answer: by reading the Bible. Well, did God himself personally hand you your copy of this Bible? Or did an ordinary fallible human do that?
How about the authors of the Bible? All fallibl
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I bet the 17th century version of the argument that God works through the authors of the Bible was really handy when the Sinners' Bible [wikipedia.org] was printed.
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And if you look a bit deeper, God is kind of a thin-skinned prick.
Lucifer is banished to Hell because he dares to challenge God, God decides to commit global genocide and then apparently condones incest because how else would just a small group of people ever manage to repopulate the earth? And going back to the whole garden of eden story... humanity is kicked out of the garden because they eat the apple of knowledge. So, god goes to all the trouble of creating humanity, the garden of eden where they would
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Creationism itself wasn't a thing until about 200 years ago. It's a mostly American invention where the concept of scientific fact gets conflated with the idea of literary truth, & that's where all the misunderstandings & lunatic beliefs stem from. The Roman Catholic church along with many other Christian churches have reconciled themselves with science & make the distinction between scientific facts & literary truth. Whatever your beliefs, conflating the two can only lead to frustration, co
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What the hell. You take Americentrism to a new level. Not everything is about America, and certainly not creationism.
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Here's a long-ish read to get you up to speed: https://plato.stanford.edu/arc... [stanford.edu] Here's a little taste to entice you: "Catholics, especially dating back to Saint Augustine around 400 AD, and even to earlier thinkers like Origen, have always recognized that at times the Bible needs to be taken metaphorically or allegorically. Augustine was particularly sensitive to this need, because for many years as a young man he was a Manichean and hence denied the authenticity and relevance of the Old Testament for salv
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Dude. Creationism is prehistoric. 400AD is practically modern compared to creationism. Every culture, whether they have writing or not, has a creation myth.
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That's an over-simplification & mis-characterisation of what most well-informed people understand Creationism to be. There's a strong distinction to be made between creation stories/myths/allegories & creationist claims.
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There was an Adam and an Eve. Probably started off as Adam, a especially primitive single celled organism. Then Adam and Steve through many generations of mitosis. Then finally Adam and Eve after Steve completed sequential hermaphroditism to change sex.
Not that some people who ripped off Babylonian and Egyptian mythology, could have guessed any of that. They aren't even very consistent on practices that persisted throughout their own oral history, starting off as polytheists before settling on monolatrism a
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People believe silly things because they surround themselves with others who believe the same thing.
They should pause to consider what the followers of other religions believe, and why. Everyone can plainly see that "they" subscribe to a bunch of b.s., while "we" know the truth.
Or maybe the guy with $10^6 to blow is confusing Easter with April Fools.
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Or he's trying to establish a new holiday: Easter Fools.
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no need for concern. this is yet another huckster pushing a trendy pseudo-intellectual mass-market "theory" for fun and profit. best to just ignore it.
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Or maybe the guy with $10^6 to blow...
If you read the fine print of his offer, it is clear that this is a publicity stunt to stir up interest in his documentary. He has no intention to pay $1M to anyone.
To wit:
1. He is challenging the British Museum, which does not have the shroud.
2. In addition to a new radiocarbon dating, he also demands that the shroud be recreated with technology from the 14th century. So he can always claim that the recreation is not good enough, and welch on his offer.
Since his challenge is insincere, no one will take it up, and he can then say, "See, I told you so!"
But he has already accomplished his primary goal: Getting his documentary mentioned on major news sites.
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I dyed eggs for your sins, motherfucker. Happy Easter.
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Naah, everyone knows it was the Easter bunny who died for our sins.
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Never lived? He straight-up said he liked drinking lots of wine and eating lots of food and hanging out with prostitutes. He lived plenty!
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Jesus existed. He is a historical figure that is well documented.
You can decide what do do about his claims.-
Jesus existed. He is a historical figure that is well documented.
There is exactly one credible historical reference for Jesus (as in, the reference is credibly dated, not that the report is credible) and it is a literally third-hand account by Josephus. Despite this most historians accept the idea that such a person probably existed, mostly because it's easier than constantly arguing with Christians about how their part of Abrahamic religion is unsubstantiated, unlike either the Jews before them or the Islamics after.
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There's no good historical evidence for the existence of Moses either, and big parts of the Jewish faith seem to have been fabricated, shock amazement. Muhammad on the other hand...
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Citation needed.
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"Jesus existed. He is a historical figure that is well documented."
No, it's not documented at all.
You're wrong, we have lots of Roman documents, nothing points to anything, no census was called either.
It's a myth.
There's no heaven nor hell, unless having to deal with people like you. -
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Because it's a third-hand account. Josephus wrote that someone else told him that someone else told them about Jesus.
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It would seem to me - if you say you're a Christian but you're basing that on a belief in some icon rather than on Christ's teachings, you're looking at the wrong thing and setting yourself up for a fall.
But, regardless, this seems pointless. Most Christians couldn't care less about the Shroud of Turin; the iconodules who do care aren't going to be swayed by a carbon date (regardless of what it is); and non-Christians aren't likely to suddenly become believers just because some cloth turned out to be 2000 y
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Most Christians couldn't care less about the Shroud of Turin;
Most Christians couldn't care less about the Bible.
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Certainly not the followers of the Prosperity Preachers who believe if you aren't rich, you not devout enough. Hard to shake down poor people, but people with money. ..all you need do is convince them God cares so much about them personally that he made them rich, so they should cough up a bit-o-wealth for the PPs. Even the former alleged president had his own PP, Rev. Paula White, as his spiritual advisor. Fill in your own joke here, there's a million of them.
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I don't thing the alleged president (though I think we have enough evidence that he's no longer merely alleged) actually had any religious beliefs here. It is more likely based upon his earlier and later actions that he chose whichever pastor was the biggest cheerleader for him and his team to come to the alleged White House.
Remember, he also had anti-vax quacks on his advisory team about covid-19, not because of their expertise in immunology, but for their cheerleading.
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I think a lot of these attempts to prove artifacts aren't necessarily about belief, but as a proselytizing tool. Ie, there used to be a lot of people convinced Noah's Ark was up there in Armenia, and the books they wrote really seemed to not be along the lines of cool archaeology, but more of a "wow, this would mean the Bible was right!"
Except that the Ark was in Genesis, the first of 66 books in the Bible (more or less depending upon denomination, creed, religion, etc). So knowing that it inspired some s
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More like in Atra-Hasis [wikipedia.org]. Also, it was round. [theguardian.com]
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If people stop believing in "faith" then how will the "faith leaders" get to rule over people? 1 Million is a pittance compared to having millions of loyal followers
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I am a physicist, and happen to know people from two of the three groups that did the original tests. From discussing with them, my understanding is that carbon dating, at least at that time, was not particularly accurate, and left quite a bit of room for interpretation. Furthermore, as the measurement was very "political" and attracted lots of media attention, there was significant pressure on the labs to give a "safe" answer. There were some rules when doing the test, i.e. labs were not allowed to talk, a
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Ya, this guy on Slashdot says it was all lies. You go girl!! Tell them!!
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I am a physicist, and happen to know people from two of the three groups that did the original tests. From discussing with them, my understanding is that carbon dating, at least at that time, was not particularly accurate, and left quite a bit of room for interpretation.
Anonymous "scientist" guy on the internet heard from some guy that some science was not accurate in the ye olden days of 1988.
Furthermore, as the measurement was very "political" and attracted lots of media attention, there was significant pressure on the labs to give a "safe" answer.
I would disagree as giving the answer it was almost 2000 years old would have been the "safe" answer.
Carbon dating was also not thought to be the best method for dating a "recent" sample accurately.
As a physicist what is the "best method" for dating the shroud then? Here's how I know you are not a physicist as no physicist would say that.
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One more physicist here, with some experience into radiocarbon dating, and other methods.
Besides all the philosophical/religious/free-thinking/[put here your preferred stuff] arguments, we are dealing with a piece of cloth that, during the Middle Age, has been exposed to public in a church, exposed to flames coming from candles, oil lanterns and such. These are devices that burn carbon-based substances, and produce plenty of volatile carbon either as CO2 or soot. May also remember the 1532 fire, that nearl
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Even if it was dated to 2000 years ago it still is a forgery.
The two separate images - front and back - are like photographs in that they have been 'taken' from a distance away from any 'body'. If the cloth had been in contact with the face then the nose and ears would look completely differently. The two images are then joined at the head with no room left for the top of the head.
We do not know how the two images were produced, but it certainly was not by any mechanism that believers claim. The most like-
What you are describing is photography, which was not invented until long after 1400CE.
It's certainly not impossible that an ancient artist from that period could have stumbled across a photographic technique for producing imagery centuries before photography was officially invented, but it is suspect that there are no other records of such a technique being used for artwork in the interim.. For most, that's still an easier incredulity to swallow than the alternative.
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How does that even work? Did jesus decompose on this shroud in 72 hours?
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There was a great light and radiation that burned the image when he was resurrecting.
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Which of the parties involved has a stake in this being "A true thing", and which of the parties couldn't care less if it's true or not.
The latter has an enormous advantage in being believable right off the bat.
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To paraphrase HHGTTG
'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.'
'But, says Man, the Shroud of Turin is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have been forged. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic.
See? The LAST thing a devout Christian would want is proof the shroud is real!
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by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Sunday April 17, 2022 @05:43PM (#62454924)
No amount of actual evidence will sway someone blindly faithful to bullshit. -
The proposed test, that of recreating the shroud using current technology, would not be probative. On the one hand, if someone were successful, that would show that it could be a forgery, not that it is. On the other hand, if no one could duplicate it, that would not show that it could not have been forged in the Middle Ages. Medieval artisans may have used techniques that have been lost and materials that we are no longer familiar with or that are no longer available. It is only within the past 25 years that metallurgists have succeeded in producing wootz steel, which was developed over 2,000 years ago in Southern India. The technique for making Dhaka muslin was around 1800. Only in the past few years has it been rediscovered. The technique for making the dye known in Hebrew as tekhelet, used on the garments of the High Priest in Jerusalem, was lost in the Middle Ages. Some people believe that they recently have rediscovered the technique and identified the organism from which it is made as Hexaplex trunculus, but this is disputed, and is probably impossible to determine conclusively since we have no samples of the ancient dye.
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Keep those samples coming. Test it every week!
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Challenging scientist to create a replica is simply daft. The only reasonable challenge would be test using radioisotopes again, but with modern technology. But of course the guy who's willing to put money on it would not like it because it would have to be his way or the highway.
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"The evidence points to a conclusion that I don't like, so the evidence must be wrong."
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Some people choose to believe alternate facts.
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On a positive note, none of this has any bearing on actual reality.
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tl;dr:
A film maker who made money making a film about a fake artifact and has a new dubious film out now is trying to drum up publicity by repeating previously debunked bullshit claim.
He made it to/. so for whatever reason, it works.
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If he truly thought that testing was flawed, he would have offered the money to re-test with supervision from people who believe that the Shroud is real.
The fact that he's offering the money as a challenge to create a second forgery, not to verify the truth of the first forgery, means that it's just a PR move. He is worried that actual testing will again prove it's false, and it's easier to just later try to twist the fact that the challenge was declined into "proof" that the Shroud isn't fake.
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...(and please hold the "Total Perspective Vortex" jokes - Doug's had his day above)...
Why argue about this? This is one of those things I file away as "mostly harmless". Like flat earthers, they strike me as people that should just be left to their own fun. It costs us nothing, I'd go so far as to say that the television show "Bones" has made the world stupider than Turin-ists (?) ever did.
Worry about people that believe questionable things that matter. These folks are just enjoying themselves. Let them be
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Not just on/., but in the Guardian and everywhere else this non-story is picked up. It's Easter, so Christianity gets clicks. This film-maker guy may not make very good films or know much about science or history, but he's no slouch at PR.
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It is what? Fake or real?
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