religious; scientific @ 27 Mar 2007 08:33 am by DrBill
         It is no secret, as I near the release of my second book on Christianity (“Roman Baptistâ€) that I am a fervent believer that Jesus Christ is who He said He was, that He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Messiah, and that He died as atonement for my sins and proved that by His resurrection on Easter Sunday. Moreover, I believe that Christianity is a cogent faith. My foundation was built on Roman theology, and from there I entered a more cogent understanding through scriptural studies … thus the subject of my book.
One of the most curious aspects of our modern society is that during my life time, and certainly exemplified in the past few years, there has been a multitude of attempts to prove Jesus a fraud. Be it the swoon theory, that Jesus… after being tortured and crucified had been given a chemical on the cross and recovered within three days to perfect health. Never mind that those three days were spent in a cold damp cave … or last year’s installment, the DaVinci Code, in which it was again postulated that He had survived the cross to marry and have children. Then there’s this year’s sequel … the bones of that family have been found in an ossuary.  These attacks beg the question: why the mania? Why would people spend millions of dollars rationalizing these absurd theories? Why is it so important to ‘kill’ this faith? Perhaps the character of Herod in “Jesus Christ Superstar†was prophetic when he sang … ‘this Jesus must die’. Â
         I have a challenge for all of you skeptics … study the Shroud of Turin. These are the scientific facts about this purported burial cloth of Christ with His image mysteriously imbedded within the herringbone weave of the cloth. According to www.shroudstory.com/faq: The 1988 carbon dating that ascribed the cloth to originate from the medieval time was true … but surprise, surprise, these scientists were testing a medieval patch and not the shroud itself. Testing of sufficient new threads (carbon 14) and constants for the loss of lignin to vanillin now scientifically date this cloth to the first century. Furthermore, the images are no thicker than 1/100th of a human hair and are made by no known method in photography or pigmentation. They have also ascertained that the blood stains are real human blood. In addition to the image of the entire body is comparable to that of a crucified naked male in exactly the manner described in the gospels (crown of thorns and all). The same source claims: “There is sufficient historical proof that the Shroud of Turin is the Edessa cloth (544-944 AD) and the Bucoleon Palace grave cloth of Constantinople (944-1204 AD).â€
Furthermore, according to www.shroudstory.com, “… If the Shroud of Turin is a burial cloth, then historical records are sufficient to infer that the Shroud’s enigmatic images of a naked, much wounded man are of Jesus of Nazareth.â€Â Wow.Â
Finally Episcopal theologian John T. Robinson sums up the case: “The Turin Shroud was examined with visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence, spectrometry, theromography, pyrolysi-massspectometry, lasermicroprobe Raman analyses, and micro-chemical testing. No evidence for pigments (paint, dye, or stains) or artist’s media was found anywhere on the Shroud of Turin.â€Â Â
While science will never be adequate to prove a miracle … such as the resurrection or the image on the shroud … science has long been capable of revealing a fraud … and it has proven this is not a fraud. Most importantly the only problem with this artifact seems to be that mankind may decide to worship it, rather than what it signifies … but, if, as Augustine and Aquinas said, that science is truth and that all truth emanates from God … when science and the bible disagree … just wait a while … science will eventually catch up.Â