Neither Science nor Catholic

A review of
A Catholic Scientist Champions the Shroud of Turin
By Gerard Verschuuren
published by the Sophia Institute Press, New Hampshire

Gerard Verschuuren is a card-carrying biologist specialising in genetics, and must have a fine, practical working knowledge of scientific method. However, since the turn of the century he has concentrated on books linking Science with his Catholic faith, and, with the clouding of vision so common to the genre, his latest book is less than objective, and in spite of a preface declaring that he “will weigh the claims that science makes for and against the authenticity of the Shroud,” this book is unequivocally one-sided.

By beginning with Biblical history, it is difficult not to make the unspoken assumption that the Shroud is genuine. “What We Know About Roman Execution” is largely based on the marks on the Shroud, from the guards who stood on each side applying strokes alternately, to the helmet of thorns and the nails through the wrists. A chapter on ‘Historical Analysis’ consists largely of questions, with little serious attempt to supply answers. A common, wrong but significant claim is that the Shroud was folded in 48 layers during the 1532 fire. Although the sketchiest examination shows that this is incorrect, and a detailed analysis of the folding has been published at shroud.com, it has been repeated in dozens of publications from the 1970s until today. It is significant because it shows that Verschuuren is happier to rely more on what he had read than what he can see for himself, which cannot inspire confidence in his scientific impartiality.

It is not long before ostensibly open queries are answered definitively by “we know that the Shroud was in Constantinople […] in 1204,” which we certainly don’t, and “what we do know is that the Shroud stayed in Athens until 1225,” which is nonsense, and the merest, wholly unfounded, speculation. A letter allegedly from Theodore Comnenus Ducas (of Constantinople) to Pope Innocent III requesting the return of the Shroud, which Verschuuren quotes verbatim, is a transparent forgery, and has been recognised as such for a hundred years. We even “know that around 1150, the emperor in Constantinople had shown the Shroud to a group of Hungarian dignitaries, one of whom made a sketch of it.” This is such sheer fantasy that we are tempted to abandon this review right here: there is nothing ‘scientific’ about this ‘Catholic scientist’ at all. The chapter goes on to mention St Paul taking the Shroud to Rome (see 2 Timothy 2:14), more or less simultaneously St Thaddeus taking it to Edessa (the legend of Abgar), where, following Ian Wilson, it became the Mandylion, in spite of almost every pilgrim to Constantinople distinguishing clearly between the Image of Edessa and the burial cloths of Jesus. The idea that the ubiquitous pantocrator image was based on the Shroud is dragged in, with a handful of Vignon markings, without the slightest suggestion that both are spurious, and this whole chapter concludes with a weak pseudo-philosophical argument that historical assumptions may validly be assumed to be facts unless they are specifically disproved, which is a grotesque distortion of how historical research is established.

Chapter Four is a weak overview of some of STuRP’s investigations, beginning, as usual, with the erroneous attribution of the VP-8 image analyser to NASA. As usual, the fact that the intensity of the discolouration can be converted to a 3-D representation is treated not simply as evidence, but as proof that “the man in the Shroud had to have been wrapped by the linens” (my italics). Actually this only ‘works’ if the cloth was loosely draped, not wrapped, and if the information was transferred only vertically up and down, and not emitted sideways. No matter, objections like that are simply proof of the Shroud’s miraculous nature.

And so we go on. The next chapter is on anatomy. “Being nearly five foot eleven (1.65 meters) the man in the Shroud would have been about six inches taller than the average male at the time.” Really? Five foot eleven is 180 cm. What kind of scientist would not notice that? An analysis of 192 individuals from Jericho at about the same time resulted in an estimate of 1.69 m as the average stature of the males (Arensburg and Smith in Hachlili and Killebrew, 1983, Palestine Exploration Quarterly). To be fair, the rest of this chapter is an account of the differing conclusions that forensic pathologists have come to, although, naturally, we are also told that such differences should not be allowed to dent our faith that the Shroud is authentic.

Textile analysis, pollen analysis, carbon, blood and DNA all come in for similar treatment. Sure, the evidence is conflicting, but faith should trump doubt.  The evidence is the usual set of misquotations from Gilbert Raes (the presence of Levant cotton does not make it “extremely likely that the cloth had been made in the Middle East”), Mechthild Flury-Lemberg (who knew very well that the stitching on the Shroud was not only found at Masada, but is common everywhere), and the usual set of long-discredited claims, such as Ian Dickinson’s Assyrian cubits and Max Frei’s pollens. The carbon dating controversy is loaded towards Harry Gove’s resentful account and misrepresents both the actual data and the papers derived from it. The “it can’t be a painting” discussion brings up brush-strokes and outlines and superficiality and clots, all of which are irrelevant, and some flagrant absurdities such as the “paint particles we are not detected as part of the Shroud but rather laid on top of it.”

Many of the chapters, and most of the long concluding one, contain a convoluted discussion about the nature of Science and Scientific Enquiry, and an important list defines what “Science cannot do.” Although Verschuuren enumerates ten points, most of them are the same one restated. The main point of the list is to claim that unsupported guesswork can be as valid as evidential conclusion, which is as thorough a misunderstanding of the whole concept of Science as a philosopher can possibly make.

The distinction between “Science” and “Truth” is rarely lost on actual scientists. They know that their endeavours ultimately serve the concept of a single, unified, coherent, comprehensive, universal and timeless model of “all that is,” which, they are perfectly aware of, is an axiom. The exploration  of science has not been, largely, the pursuit of truth itself, but the construction of a model of it, which, for our purposes, serves to satisfy our curiosity and to create useful things to make life easier for ourselves. The idea that the universe is coherent, timeless and universal fits rather well with the Christian, and particularly the Catholic concept of God, and has helped to ensure that Religion and Science have been close bedfellows since the time of Augustine of Hippo and before, and, in Catholic theology at least, continue to be.

In claiming that Science is imperfect or incomplete or does not apply universally, therefore, Verschuuren confuses faith in the rationality of God and his creation with our rather limited understanding of it. Number 1 on his list is that Science does not “prove” things, although he dos not clearly explain what he means by ‘proof,’ and the concept is fairly trivial anyway. Science models things; it describes things according to its philosophy of comprehensiveness. If the description is consistent with both observation and the philosophy, we call it valid, if not, we reject it or research it further. Whether the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus or not is not a question of proof. The question is the extent to which our understanding of it is consistent both with our observations of it, and our faith in the rationality and comprehensiveness of the universe.

A couple of Verschuuren’s list boil down to the effect that Science isn’t all there is. Number 2 says that Science cannot prove itself universally valid and Number 3 that it cannot claim itself universally valid. The first is true but the second is false. It is an act of faith, not logical proof, that the universe can be modelled as the universal, timeless, comprehensive and coherent ‘Science’ I describe above, but the fact that two or three thousand years of human endeavour have succeeded in producing such a model, whose gradual refinement has been shown to apply ever more closely to observation and prediction, does permit us to claim that, as far as we know, our faith is indeed universally valid.

Number 4 says that Science cannot discard worldviews which are unscientific, and Number 5 that it cannot discard methodologies which are unscientific. Neither of these is true. By definition, worldviews and methodologies which are coherent with ‘Science’ are scientific, and those which are not, are not. Verschuuren’s own examples illustrate this opinion better than they illustrate his own. Firstly, he says that lung physiologists should not discard genetics as a part of science, which of course they don’t, and then he says that scientists should not reject religious statements as unreasonable or unfounded, which, of course, depends on whether they are unreasonable or unfounded. If they are incompatible with the model, then of course they should be rejected. On methodology, Verschuuren says that blood-tests are not the only method of assessing someone’s health, which of course is true, and mentions X-Rays and MRI scans, both good, valid examples of scientific methodology. Tellingly, he does not suggest any unscientific methodology at all. I wonder why not. Various lists of “ways of knowing” are easily compiled, but they boil down to Science, Personal Intuition, Divine Revelation and Authority. Whether any particular piece of knowledge acquired by any of these is valid, credible, or likely to be true depends, mostly, on observation, reason, and other scientific processes.

Numbers 6, 7 and 8 are about materialism, a common straw horse dragged across this argument, to the effect that not everything in the world is explicable in material terms, and gives the example that a metal-detector cannot detect plastic cups. This is fatuous. If Science is comprehensive, coherent, universal and timeless, then by definition everything is scientific, and at least in theory explicable in scientific terms. If the word material means something less than the entire fabric of the universe (metal, for example, but not plastic), then every scientist will agree that there is more to science than the material. In denying the attainability of Stephen Hawking’s goal: “a complete understanding of the events around us and of our own existence,” Verschuuren is confusing the target with the mission. The goal may never be attained, or even attainable, but it is a fundamental tenet of Science that it really exists.

Number 9 quaintly attempts to determine the boundaries of scientific inquiry in terms of a draft of the statutes of the Royal Society in 1660. “Knowledge of natural things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanik practices, Engyries [misquoted; “Engynes”] and Inventions by Experiments – (not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politics, Grammar, Rhetorik, or Logic.)” This is, typically, both a misquote and an oversimplification. Robert Hooke was not, here, defining Science, but only the business of the Royal Society, which was indeed, to stick to what we would term materials science, not because the other subjects were ‘not science,’ but because they were not, at that time, regularly discussed in scientific terms. Things have changed.

Number 10 settles down to a discussion of Science versus the Supernatural, another straw horse in which “the Supernatural” is set up as a challenge to “the Natural,” without any real consideration of the meaning of either. The claim that Science “cannot explain issues such as the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Redemption and so on,” is touted as a matter of fact, when it is really no more than a statement of belief. If they happened, Science can, and probably will, explain them. If they didn’t, it will find it more difficult.

To conclude, there is, genuinely, a discussion worth having about the coherence of the Universe, and nature of God, but this book is not the place for it, nor do a succession of denigratory references to Science’s perceived failings constitute a defence of the authenticity of the Shroud.