Seeing Red

Guy Powell’s podcast is usually one of the more sensible platforms for authenticists to present their points of view, and this year’s parade has so far been worth anybody’s attention, be they authenticist or medieval in inclination. However, the latest invitee, making his second appearance on the show, is in a different class. This is nonsense of a high order: clumsy data, clumsy statistics, clumsy law and clumsy science. Here is the sublime logic of the truly irrational, on a par with claims for a flat earth, and seriously detrimental to anybody taking the Shroud seriously. It seems that even his host, charming though he was during the interview, found him instantly forgettable. The text introducing William Red below the video says that he “explores the rich historical, cultural, and theological context surrounding the burial of Jesus Christ,” and “breaks down ancient Jewish burial practices, the symbolism of the burial spices, and the significance of a royal shroud, providing insights that align with the Gospels. He discusses how advanced mathematical models, such as Bayesian probability, support the Shroud’s authenticity. With over 30 converging points of evidence, Red argues that the probability of forgery is astronomically low.”

But it’s all nonsense. It was nonsense when Red first appeared on Powell’s show last August (when I bit my lip and forbore to comment), and in the five months since, it hasn’t got any more intelligible. Red doesn’t say anything about ‘Jewish burial practices,’ he says nothing about the ‘symbolism of the burial spices,’ he says nothing about the ‘significance of a royal shroud,’ he doesn’t even mention, let alone discuss, any “advanced mathematical models, such as Bayesian probability,” nor present any “converging points of evidence” at all. Powell is either guessing wildly, or thinking of someone else altogether.

What William Red does say, at length, is that because quite a lot of quite reasonable people think the Shroud is authentic, therefore its case is proven. His premises, his inferences and his conclusions in support of that idea are hopelessly wrong, hopelessly muddled, and wholly without the reasonableness by which he claims to set great store.

He begins by making the point that only atheists disbelieve in the authenticity of the Shroud, and that since only 4% of the world are atheists, their views can be considered insignificant. That’s nonsense. His conclusion: “When the majority [of the world] have concluded there is a God, therefore the Shroud was created by God,” is ludicrous.

1). For reasons that will become apparent, Red sets great store by the ‘fact’ that only 4% of the world are atheists, and has found a statistic issued by the ‘Pew Report,’ to bolster his claim. But his statistic is out of date (from 2023, while the latest report, 2025, gives 5%), and applies only to the USA. Globally the proportion of atheists is closer to 10%.

2). 4%, thinks Red, is statistically insignificant, and can reasonably be ignored as if it wasn’t there at all. Consequently, it is reasonable to work as if 100% of the people of the world believe in God. Red seems to have found the terms ‘p-value’ and ‘<5%’ in a bran-tub of statistical terms and completely fails to understand either their meaning or their significance.

3). Next, and without any corroborative explanation at all, Red claims that “When the majority of [the world] have concluded there is a God, therefore the Shroud was created by God.” He seems entirely ignorant of the fact that the vast majority of those who are convinced that the Shroud cannot be authentic are Christians who use the bible as the principal justification for their belief, and many others, like myself, are Christians who think the Shroud is medieval on other evidential grounds.

4). His conclusion, claims Red, can be arrived at by the “juridical science method.” This term is meaningless. Obviously Red has no idea what juridical science means. I think he is confusing it with forensic science, but that doesn’t make much more sense. His argument seems to be that the process of law is the best way of determining what is reasonable, and that what is reasonable is – vox populi vox Dei – correct.

5). Next Red ties himself in knots with an attempt to define ‘reasonableness.’ Having seen it once it an elementary text book, he thinks that the Wednesbury principle, which he seems unable to source, defines the term in such phrases as ‘beyond reasonable doubt,’ which it doesn’t, being in fact a very high bar to the judicial overthrow of a previously determined decision.

This whole interview is nonsense of a very high order. It’s bosh and somebody ought to call it out.