The Shroud is not Miraculous

Inspired by “Shroud of Turin Debate: James Fodor & Real Seekers,”
a YouTube discussion posted by Tavo San Abri, 10 July, and James Fodor, 11 July.

The subject of this debate was, as introduced by Dale Glover, “Are the Shroud’s Images Best Explained via God or a Human Artist?” creating a dichotomy – Miracle or Man – which precludes some currently unknown but credible natural process which might involve earthquakes, thunderstorms, electrostatic discharges or vapours, coatings, and the warmth of a corpse or living body. The argument for a miracle was proposed by Glover and responded to by Fodor, but to my mind the debate almost completely missed the grounds on which most of the people who do believe that the Shroud was created by a miracle establish their belief.

Taking God’s side, Glover said he would first define criteria by which one might be justified in preferring a ‘Divine Design’ explanation for anything, and secondly he would show that the Shroud images meet those criteria. That, it appeared, would be enough. There was no consideration of whether a miracle, however possible, might not be the best explanation for the Shroud’s images, which I think was a mistake. There are many phenomena for which a miracle could be an explanation, but which is not generally considered to be so.

And then we come to the criteria. According to Glover, God is not unduly subtle about miracles. He does not require people to have PhDs in quantum physics before they can recognise a miracle. Miracles do not have to be proved in courts of law or established by complex mathematics. All that’s needed is that a “reasonable person” could recognise it. In fact, Glover specified that as long as one single ‘reasonable person’ recognised an event as a miracle, that was enough to establish that it was.

“I think that if even one reasonable person could be convinced that it’s a miracle – to rationally believe that it’s a miracle – then it must be a legitimate miracle.”

This is a staggeringly low bar. For Glover, an event is established as a miracle as long as one person thinks it is. And I suspect that the one person he has in mind is himself.

But by what criteria does the ‘reasonable person’ decide whether an event is a miracle or not?

1). The event must occur. I think that’s reasonable.
2). The event must occur within a religion-authenticating context. I think this is reasonable too, although it needs a little unpacking. If, as happened some years ago, a large crucifix fell on and killed a pilgrim, that sort of event, however otherwise improbable, could only serve to denigrate Christianity rather than authenticate it. It does not class as a miracle.

[At this point Glover got a little bogged down in a ‘religion-authenticating’ mire. The Virgin birth, for example, helps to authenticate both Christianity and Islam, which won’t do at all, so in this case, according to Glover, only the chronologically earlier religion can claim it. That being so, not one of the Old Testament miracles could be claimed as ‘authenticating’ Christianity, as Judaism can claim them on prior chronological grounds.]

3). The event must be extraordinary. I would have thought that was reasonable enough, but Glover finds it necessary to define ‘extraordinary’ in this case:
3a). The event must “take place outside of ordinary currently well-known or well-established naturalistic mechanisms/contexts.”
3b). The event must be such that a ‘reasonable person’ can “infer that explanations involving solely ordinary naturalistic mechanisms are improbable/impossible to be true.” Deep water. The ‘reasonable person’ must know enough about physics to guess where its boundaries lie, even those boundaries which lie beyond what is “currently well-known or well-established.” To help him choose, Glover offers three guidelines:
3bi). “A reasonable person could conclude that all currently well-known/well-established natural mechanisms are improbable to be true and/or to contravene a currently established law of nature.” Unfortunately, this is meaningless. It adds nothing.
3bii). “A reasonable person could conclude that an event’s occurrence is unique to ‘extraordinary contexts’ despite a ‘sufficient opportunity’ for duplication within an ordinary ‘naturalistic context.'” I think this means that finding a fish alive and thriving in a desert is very unusual, but finding one alive and thriving in a pond is not.
3biii). “A reasonable person could conclude that the external circumstances directly related to the event’s occurrence are ‘extraordinary.’ (e.g. the providential timing of an event may be ‘extraordinary’)” The Glastonbury ‘Christmas Rose’ springs to mind. There’s nothing odd about a rosebush blossoming in July, but in December it’s rather unusual.

[Generously, I’ll skip over Glover’s appeal to William Dembski’s bogus ideas about “Intelligent Design.” They do not help his argument, and actually undermine what little rationality it maintains on its own.]

OK, so what characteristics does the Shroud image have that might lead a ‘reasonable person’ to infer that no natural explanation is more likely than divine intervention? Glover lists seven:
1). The images have quasi-negative properties.
2). The images have quasi-3D properties.
3). The colouration of the images is uniform.
4). The images appear to mirror the appearance of a body.
5). The images are superficial.
6). The images are anatomically precise.
7). There is no image under the bloodstains.
…. Is that it? Weirdly, he has missed the most important one…
8). The images are not made of pigment.

Upon these evidences hang the ‘reasonable person’s decision that divine intervention is more probable than a human craftsman. But are they true? And are they extraordinary? Or has the conclusion been built into the observation?

1). “The Shroud’s body images exhibit some photo-negative or semi-negative (left/right and light/dark reversals) features vs. The blood stains are photopositive.” This is false. One cannot tell if there are any “left/right” reversals unless one assumes there was an actual body under the cloth in the first place, thereby rejecting the human craftsmanship option a priori, which is false logic. And although certain features of a photograph, such as the shadows in the eye-sockets or the sides of the cheeks, do appear “light/dark” reversed, the hair, beard, and bruises on the skin do not. This entire observation is better explained by Item Two.

2) “The Shroud’s body images contain ‘3D’ or topographical/depth information encoded in the degrees of image colour (i.e. lighter vs. darker).” Certainly a 3D model can be produced from the intensity variations on the cloth, but it is not possible to say whether the model represents anything really 3D. Several artists have simply painted an image with such 3D model potential, and several experimenters have found that altering the pressure of a pad on a cloth draped over a bas relief can achieve a similar effect. The 3D effect is not in itself evidence that there was anything under the cloth at all, and anyway it is easy to achieve, and has been achieved several times by experimenters.

3). “If a Shroud’s body image fibre is coloured, it is approx. 98% uniformly coloured (perhaps around its entire cylindrical surface) as per Adler 1996, 1999, and the max. densities/darknesses of both the frontal and dorsal body images are uniform (uniform max colour densities).” This is a mish-mash of different ideas, partially false, and what is true tends to support the ‘man’ over the ‘miracle.’ The Evans photographs showing close-ups of numerous fibres in close proximity show that they are certainly not 98% uniformly coloured, but vary greatly in intensity along individual fibres. This has been pointed out several times by Giulio Fanti, among others. The fact that the top and bottom images are similar in colour and intensity supports the idea that they were not formed by a body pressing hard downwards against the bottom layer of the cloth with the top layer draped much more lightly over it, but both in a similar fashion, such as by using a bas relief under the cloth for each ‘body.’

4). “The mapping of image features from the body to the cloth of the body image is more or less vertical corresponding to the direction of gravity.” This another example of presuming the conclusion. If there was a body under the Shroud, then a miraculous explanation for the image would be more understandable, but that cannot be assumed from the image. Copies of the Shroud, involving no body at all, have been fairly commonplace throughout history, and experiments with bas reliefs have achieved very similar mapping.

5). “The body images are superficial on the fabric, thread and fibre levels.” This has been shown to be easily achievable using numerous artistic media, and does not require or even suggest divine intervention.

6). “The Shroud’s body images contain highly anatomically accurate depictions along with some rather obviously apparent inaccuracies (e.g. one normal thigh and one chicken thigh, elongated fingers, etc.).” No, they don’t. Highly qualified and experience pathologists disagree about almost every aspect of the anatomy of the body on the Shroud, from its height to the position of the wounds, its posture and the angles of its feet. They are not wrong, but merely reading their own version of anatomical accuracy into the rather vague and undelineated colouration on the cloth, from which very little anatomically definitive can be asserted.

7). “Lack of evident body images under non-altered/damaged bloodstains + off-image bloodstains.” There are no unaltered bloodstains. All that remains of them are small clumps of particles clinging to fibres and wedged between threads. The evidence that no fibres containing these particles contain any discolouration due to the image is extremely poor. I am not surprised that there is a lack of evident body image under the off-image bloodstains.

8) The body images are not composed of pigment. The contribution made by residual pigment to the body images is contentious, but it doesn’t seem to be great. However, Luigi Garlaschelli has shown that it is possible to produce an image derived from the acidic medium of a paint, which remains even after the paint and the medium have been entirely washed off.

Reviewing these features, some true, some false, some irrelevant, and some predicated on the conclusion they are supposed to support, would a ‘reasonable person’ really think that the best explanation for them is the hand of God? I don’t think so, and the vast majority of those who do believe that the Shroud is a miracle have little or no knowledge of these features anyway. The Miracle of the Shroud hypothesis as generally understood by the man in the pew (or woman) is actually based emotionally and culturally on a “Burst of Light,” scientifically supported, in most people’s minds, by Paolo di Lazzaro’s “Trillion Watts” experiments. I shall return to this later.

All the foregoing was merely to verify Criterion 1 above: The Event. Glover next addresses Criterion 2, whether the shroud “authenticates religion.” It is not really clear what this means precisely, but if it means that the Shroud supports the description of the passion and death of Jesus in the Gospels, then I’ve got no problem with that.

But that’s just me. A large proportion – and from their internet presence a large majority – of those who reject the authenticity of the Shroud do so because in their opinion it is incompatible with their religion. It is the opposite of religion-authenticating: it is religion-denying. It doesn’t match John, and it doesn’t match Isaiah, and if its images had existed after the Resurrection they would have been mentioned in the New Testament. Are none of these people ‘reasonable’? They may not have a PhD in quantum physics, or indeed biblical exegesis, but according to Glover, in creating a miracle “God would not place any undue epistemic barriers or cause any undue religious confusion.” Necessitating exegetical knowledge of the Septuagint or the semantic differences and similarities between σινδών and ὀθόνια, “would eliminate practically every human being and thus not be conducive to [God’s] own goal/purpose in creating humanity.”

Glover’s next argument is truly bizarre. It seems that he thinks the miraculous nature of the Shroud can be recognised by a ‘reasonable person’ simply because it illustrates the Gospels. He compares the Shroud to a talking Lego figure of Jesus, which we might agree could be a miracle, even though Jesus was not, in fact made of Lego. “I don’t need to establish a connection with the historical Jesus,” he says. So there need not have been a body under the cloth after all, contradicting his earlier evidence about the 3D appearance and the ‘vertical collimation.’ “On the basis of the scientific evidence relating to the images and their formation, and this independent religion-authenticating context, that’s sufficient for the ‘reasonable person’ to say ‘Yes, God designed these images.” No, it isn’t. Of course it isn’t, and nobody except Glover thinks it is, even if they agree the Shroud is miraculous. To claim that the images on the Shroud are as obviously miraculous as a talking Lego figure is so far beyond reasonable as to seriously alienate any support he may have gained so far – by ‘reasonable persons.’

And so to Criterion 3. Are the Shroud images extraordinary? Readers are advised to scroll back to find out how to tell. Glover would have been well advised to let us decide for ourselves. Yes, by almost any historical and artistic criteria, the Shroud is unique. Few people would deny that, and that’s all Glover needs. But no, he has to list a variety of possible artistic processes, explain that they don’t fulfil all his minimal relevant features, and thus dismiss all human artifice as incapable of having produced the Shroud images. From this, he claims that “a reasonable person would have reason to think that explanations solely involving ordinary natural mechanisms are improbable.” I disagree. I think that anybody reviewing these experiments’ even partial successes would have good reason to think that an ordinary natural mechanism was not only probable, but a much better explanation for the images than a miracle.

[Next Glover appeals to Thomas de Wesselow, a medieval Art Historian whose sensationalist book ‘The Sign’ earned him brief notoriety 15 years ago, but whose expertise in the subject has scarcely ruffled the waters of Art History since. He, and Glover, hope that some sensible comparison can be made between the Shroud of Turin and the Shroud of Besançon, which could only be true if we had the latter to compare it to, rather than crude reproductions of it in 17th and 18th century engravings.]

Finally Glover defends his miracle by saying that as far as we know, no other enshrouded cadaver seems to have left behind an image, an argument which may attack the naturalistic authenticist approach which he deliberately omitted from the debate in his opening words, but has nothing to say to medievalists, and also says that there have been “hundreds of artificial attempts to try and duplicate the Shrouds image MRFs [Minimal Relevant Features], but that “all such attempts have utterly failed.” This is faith, not reason, and depends on whether a ‘reasonable man’ agrees with the MRFs, and his definition of the words ‘utterly’ and ‘failed.’ I’m a reasonable man, and I don’t. The MRFs are subjective conclusions rather than objective observations, and at least two papers in peer-reviewed journals have demonstrated that human artifice can match them to within ‘reasonable’ tolerances.

James Fodor is also a reasonable man, a cognitive neuroscientist by trade, and has a thriving YouTube channel discussing various topics from an atheistic point of view. A year ago he took part in a ten-hour long discussion on the Shroud with Nathan Ormond at Digital Gnosis, part of a series called Bad Apologetics, whose declared purpose is to “take an in-depth look at the claims of religious apologists and how they overstate evidences from Science, Philosophy and History to reach a foregone conclusion.” Naturally they concluded that the Shroud was medieval.

Fodor’s response to Glover’s argument was one of mild confusion. Since all Glover requires for a ‘reasonable person’ to believe the Shroud is miraculous is a) to affirm Christianity and b) to be extraordinary, then no counter-evidence is even admissible, let alone debatable. For example, Fodor thinks that the date of the Shroud’s creation could have a bearing on whether a reasonable person might decide it was miraculous or not, but Glover thinks it’s irrelevant.

On another tack, Fodor points out that a miraculous origin for the Shroud’s images does not explain any of their features; they just are. Why was the astonishing and undoubtedly faith-affirming appearance of the negative not available for the first 2000 years of its existence? Why does the 3D image look so much more like a bas relief than a full body? Why does the cloth date to 1350 rather than 30 AD? Unless a miraculous explanation can account for these features, it looks very much as if God was being obscure and deceptive, which is a contra-indication for a miracle. Glover’s counters to all these involve a detailed knowledge of the historical and scientific debate concerning them, which by his own criteria, the ‘reasonable person’ should not need. On the other hand, medieval human artifice readily accounts for them all without any convoluted re-interpretations.

Scarcely mentioned, let alone discussed, in all this, was the ‘Burst of Light’ hypothesis, which is not only the most common version of miraculous belief, but requires no justification or evidence. The researches of Paolo di Lazzaro, Bob Rucker and (considerably less well known) Christophe Donnet have helped to reinforce this belief, mostly mistakenly.

Superficially, the ‘Burst of Light’ has a lot going for it. For a start, it is not a miracle; it was an outward sign of the miracle of the Resurrection, reflecting endless biblical references to light and specifically the miracle of the Transfiguration. By this hypothesis, the Shroud also is not a miracle [miracles, anyway, are events, never objects], but a material trace of the burst of light. And the light from a miracle, it is supposed, could easily be responsible for the unpainted image, without us having to specify the exact number of fibres it might have penetrated or the exact energy and power required to darken them. Any assessment of the likelihood of this having happened does not rely on the image, but on a consideration of miracles generally and the circumstances described in the Gospels, and the force of the Shroud since it was made.

Although we may grant that God can do whatever miracle he wants in whatever way he wants, we can nevertheless deduce something of his modus operandi from the miracles described in the Gospels, and compare the Shroud of Turin to the shroud of Christ as it appears there. For example, three other resurrections from the dead are described in the Gospels, none of which are associated with a burst of light. What’s more, since nobody was present to witness the Resurrection, there was no need to accompany it with a burst of light. Its only purpose would have been to create the Shroud image, and Christ could have done that perfectly well without any light at all, let alone trillions of watts-worth. And all we know about Christ’s burial cloths is the confusing description of them as both σινδών and ὀθόνια, the fact that they were accompanied by a greater weight of myrrh and aloes than most people could carry on their own, and St John’s deliberate parallel story about the raising of Lazarus. None of these is clearly reflected in the Shroud, and all have been used by devout Christians to denounce it as a fake.

If miraculously created, the Shroud have some ‘religion-authenticating’ qualities, so it is surprising that it was completely unheard of for over a thousand years, and then immediately denounced as a fake. As a totem of the Savoy family it served much more as a ‘dynasty-authenticating’ object than anything to do with religion; from about 1655 to 1690, they spent most of their time savagely persecuting the Protestant Waldensians for not being Catholics, and even in 1998 the Waldensians, claiming to speak for all Protestants, denounced the Shroud as “being foisted upon the world by Catholics.” Since 1898, and the discovery of the ‘negative’ effect, the proportion of Christians in the countries most familiar with the Shroud has dropped from over 90% to about 75%, while in South American and African countries where the Shroud is least well known the Christian proportion has risen hugely. Not much authenticating going on there, in my opinion.

I’d like to end by saying that it is perfectly possible that the image on the Shroud was created miraculously; who could deny it? But I think that to claim that a miraculous formation has been proven, or even demonstrated probable, is far from the case, and that considering both sides, it cannot be said, by any ‘reasonable person,’ to be a better explanation than one of human artifice. If compelled to make a choice, the best an authenticist can do is plump for a possible natural cause, such as a meteorological/
geological electrical discharge or some sort of vapourous interaction. I wouldn’t go for it myself, but it’s a better explanation than a miracle.