Shroud of Turin

Thank-you to any readers who have made it this far through the debate. As this is the final round I'll provide some final rebuttals and make a closing statemetnt.Rebuttals Please read these rebuttals with Con's Round 4 arguments open beside this one for easy reference.Once again Con is attempting to play the faith (or lack of faith) card. His insinuation is that people of faith cannot be faithful scientists because the team was made up of 39 devout believers and one agnostic. From the book Resurrecting the Shroud: [1]"With religious orientations ranging from Catholic to Jewish, Protestant to agnostic, many were highly skeptical at first and even believed the Shroud would be declared a fraud within minutes after they began the examination." Con wants you to believe that Devout Jews want to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Protestants want to give credit to the Catholic Church? The results of the investigations on the shroud have all been published in peer reviewed journals [2]. Does Con have equivalent counter sources? Nothing that he has presented yet. Just insinuation.As Con has yet to provide a valid means of how the shroud could have been created (and if he does I will not have the opportunity for rebuttal), the claim of a burst light is not rediculous. ENEA, the National Agency for New Technologies, published a report on 5 years of experiments. Their conclusions were that the image on the shroud could be reproduce using ultraviolet light. However, it would require 34 Trillion watts of power using a single laser. The highest power laser built today is no more than several billion watts. [3]Con raised the Bishop d'Arcy letter again. However, the letter was never signed or sent. The shroud drew pilgrims away from the bishop's cathedral and to the shroud. This cost the bishop great amounts of money for his diocese. He would have incentive to declare the shroud a fraud, but never carried through. Maybe his concience got the better of him, or he maybe could not substantiate cliams others of fewer scruples had presented to him. No signature, not sent - not binding in court.Con attacks Ian Wilson for the Masada-Shroud link. However it is not Ian Wilson who makes this claim but the Swiss textile expert Mme. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg in 2002 as referenced to in Reference 21 of this paper [4].Con notes that the Greek word othonion (greek letters do not show well) means small pieces of cloth.However, Strong's Concordance translates this as a piece of fine linen or a linen bandage or a wrapping. [5] Greeks used the word to denote a ship's sail. [5] The usage of this word in the singular (vs. plural in the resurrection accounts) can be found in Acts 10:11 - and he saw the sky opened up and a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the groud. And there were in it all kinds of four footed animals... We can clearly see that this is not a tiny piece of cloth! Con's Greek assertion does not hold water.I find it funny that Con should quote about the head cloth from the Gospel of John when I just used this exact quote in my previous argument. The Sudarium of Oviedo both answers the question of the head cloth and provide support to my argument. I once again thank Con for confirming my arguments for me.That Con should argue that the lack of cotton in linen in accordance with Deuteronomy 22:11 is meaningless is absurd. Atheists are always bringing this very verse up in mockery of Christians. Back in Round 3 I gave quotes from a jewish source that a fortune was spent on burial shrouds. This argument is just Con attempting to muddy the waters.Con has once again returned to the discredited Walter McCrone, whom we have shown didn't even bother to perform chemical tests when declaring what a substance was. There are fibrils of cotton in the shroud:"The shroud is a herringbone twill with a 3:1 weave, of probably 1st century Syrian design. The flax fibrils contain entwisted cotton fibrils from a previous work of the loom.The cotton is Gossypium herbaceum, a Middle Eastern species not found in Europe." [6]Yes incidental fibrils, not fibres with gum to glue them. And note that the species is not european.Ooooooo "shroudies". Say it with me "Shroudies". Its truly sad that Con has been reduced to a Grade 8 level of debate. "Oh yeah, well you're a shroudie."I agree that you cannot reliably date a cloth using vanillin. You can however give an applicable range. It was shown that the cloth would have to be between 1300 and 3000 years old to lose all of its vanillin. This range is outside of the C14 tests, but within the range of 33AD. Con argues incredible care was taken in the location selection for the C14 test. The team performing the C14 tests did not review the previously mentioned ultra violet photographs from the STURP analysis, which clearly showed that the test area was of different chemical composition.Con references Walter McCrone again, who admitted to not chemically testing the samples, whereas the STURP team did and concluded the presence of blood. The red colour is the result of the highly elevated amount of bilirubin in the blood. "You now mix bilirubin which is yellow-orange with methemoglobin in its para-hemic form which is an orangey-brown and you get blood which has a red color. In fact, we have been able to simulate this spectrum in the laboratory by the process described above. This very strongly suggests that the blood stains are of a man who was severely beaten." [7]Crotch test revisited - Con now knows exactly how the body must have been lying and that the head couldn't have been tilted forward. Not even from rigamortis setting in on a dead body hanging on the cross with its head fallen forward. Nope impossible. Con argues that the buttocks are not visible. Let's look:http://shroud3d.com...; When I look at the negative image on the bottom I clearly see the buttocks covered in scourge marks. Maybe Con is looking at a different shroud.That con brings up art history is entertaining, to say the least. His claim is that the shroud was made to look like the byzantine art and not the other way around. Let's assume that you are a 6th - 10th century Christian and you want to paint an image of Christ. Do you paint him flawless with the short hair stylings of the times or do you paint him with large owlish eyes, an enlarged left nostril and an accentuated right cheek? Here is a list of the 15 Vignon Marks:http://img411.imageshack.us...Items like the two strands of hair are common. The funny thing is that they are actually two flows of blood on the forehead of the shroud. The only reason that you would create an image with these obvious flaws is that you have something tangible that you believe to be a true representation of Jesus. One finds that as the shroud travelled, the artwork changed to match it. Byzantine art is clear evidence on for Pro.You see Con's arguments make no sense. On one hand he says that the shroud is painted in 13-14th century europe, then he says that byzantine art supports his argument. Which is it?Concluding StatementDuring this debate I have shown the path through history of the Shroud of Turin and how it all agrees with biblical and historical evidence. This evidence has been augmented with correlations through the multiple disciplines of science, art history, textiles and Judaism.The Shroud and Sudarium of Oveido complete the fabrics said to be at the tomb. The stitching on the shroud is consistent with stiching that has only been confirmed to exist in 1st Century Israel. We have shown it in Edessa and how art changed to match its 6th century appearance in Edessa. The shroud was shown to be mentioned at the 7th ecumenical council and how it was later transferred to Constantinople.A drawing of it at Constantinople was included in the Pray Codex - which included the "L-Shaped" burn holes on the shroud. It was shown that the nephew of the Emperor demanded the return of the shroud after Constantinople was sacked by Crusaders. A descendant of one of the final high ranking Templars appeared with the shroud in France.I have shown that the C14 tests are the only piece of evidence that does not fit. That does not mean that it should be discarded, but it must be determined why. It has been shown that the area of the shroud where the C14 tests were conducted was shown to be different both by ultraviolet photography and examination from a remant sample from the C14 test. Additionally, the lack of vanillin in the fibres confirms the age of the shroud to be hundreds of years older than the C14 test states.The image on the shroud has been proven not to be paint and that the blood on the shroud is real blood of a man that was tortured. The method of formation of the image on the shroud has never been repeated by anyone and there is no known way either modern or ancient to reproduce the image.Con has an equal burden of proof in this debate. He has failed to provide a means of reproducing the shroud, and he has failed to provide an argument that could not be properly refuted. I ask anyone voting on this debate to remember that I will not have an opportuntiy to refute any arguments made by Con in this round. However, I do ask them to remember how throroughly I have refuted every argument put forth so far.Once again I wish to thank readers that have remained with this debate the whole way through. And I also wish to thank Wylted for his efforts in this debate. While we had some friendly debate banter, I believe that we both enjoyed ourselves in this first DDO Shroud of Turin debate.[1] http://tinyurl.com...;[2] https://www.shroud.com...;[3] http://www.freerepublic.com...;[4] http://www.acheiropoietos.info...;[5] http://biblehub.com...;[6] http://tinyurl.com...[7] http://shroudstory.com...;