Well, this bills itself as the official website for the 2010 exhibit of the Shroud of Turin. The English version leave much to be desired. You would have thought they would have found someone who speaks English to do the translations. Did they use Google Translate? Most tabs in English simply say translation is coming soon or are in Italian. Online reservations are only in Italian. There is a big Multimedia section that takes forever to load and looks really cool, if you know Italian. Here are some:
BTW: They seem to have forgotten to mention the dates altogether.
Welcome Service tab:
The Shroud exhibition is an important pilgrimage opportunity but a chance to better know the Church of Torino, its territory, the province and Piedmont as well. The diocese of Torino, just like for all the former exhibitions (1998 and 2000) has arranged many services and initiatives to welcome groups from other Churches and christian communities as far as both the liturgy and the reciprocal acquaintance are concerned.
Moreover, the local turinese and piedmontese authorities have planned religious and cultural touristic initiatives linked to the exhibition.
For any information on tourist welcome, please check Turismo Torino.
The volunteers will be the first to welcome the visitors in the city and all along the exhibition route from the beginning to the end at the exit of the Cathedral. The volunteers for the Shroud and those of the City will also be present in other points along the route and in Torino.
Exposition day and hours tab:
During the exhibition the Mass will be celebrated in the Cathedral, in front of the Shroud, every morning at 7 and the Lodi prayer will be said at the end.
The Holy Sacrament will be exposed in the penitentiary at Palazzo Chiablese (at the end of the exhibition route map, penitentiary) all day long. The chapel will be reserved for silent prayer and eucharistical worship.
Some priests will be at disposal to hear confessions and administer the sacrament of Reconciliation in the penitentiary.
The route will be open from the end of the Mass up to 8 pm to attend the Shroud exhibition (reservations are required). It will be possibile to enter the Cathedral by the main door but then the Shroud will be only visible from a distance. The nave will be reserved to prayers and silent reflections.
In the evening, according to the calendar, the Cathedral may be open in case of particular ceremonies or religious cultural events.
Getting here tab:
Oops!
Churches and religious functions tab:
Attend the Shroud exhibition is an occasion to better know the Church of Torino visiting its temples and sanctuaries as well. During the exhibition many churches will welcome other pilgrimage moments, before and after the visit to the Shroud. Here you can find all information you may need about services and contacts.
Penitentiary tab:
The «penitentiary» is after the Shroud route, inside Palazzo Chiablese and immediately before Piazzetta Reale.
All day long, some priests will be at disposal to hear confessions and administer the sacrament of Reconciliation.
The chapel, where the Holy Sacrament is exposed everyday, is near the penitentiary and reserved for silent prayer and eucharistical worship.
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Benjamin Radford is Managing Editor for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. He had written a fairly astute posting. It shouldn’t be ignored. While I don’t agree with his assessment on the Shroud, he is not out thumping recklessly, as we see in other skeptical blogs. Good for him. Now I would, also recommend reading Nickell’s book, but carefully.
Too bad about the last paragraph. It goes both ways, Ben. Are you tipping us off to an upcoming edition, the “March/April 2010 issue of Skeptical Inquirer,” nicely timed for the exhibition in Turin next spring?
I’ve emphasized some text in bold. But Ben, you know very well that the carbon dating is severely challenged. You know that there is significant history before the 1300s. You know better, as a free thinker, than to use the lack of evidence is evidence argument just like the folks who promote ID.
An Italian scientist and his team claim to have replicated the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus. Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia, used linen identical to that on the famous shroud, made an impression over a volunteer’s face and body, and artificially aged the cloth with heat. The result is a fabricated shroud that closely resembles the Shroud of Turin, made with materials and tools available at the time of the shroud’s origin.
I wrote a column on the topic for LiveScience.com, clarfiying some of the claims (for example, while Garlaschelli’s new research is interesting and important, it does not by itself prove the Shroud is a forgery) and adding context to them (for example, directing people to Joe Nickell’s research and books on the Turin Shroud). I also discussed the reasons to suspect the shroud is not authentic:
Just because the Shroud of Turin could have been faked doesn’t mean that it was faked. To cast real doubt on the cloth’s authenticity, there would have to be other reasons–some corroborative evidence–to think the shroud is a forgery. In fact, the shroud had previously been carbon dated not to the time of Christ but instead to the 14th century—perhaps not coincidentally about the time when the first record of the burial cloth appears. If the Turin Shroud really is the most important holy relic in history, it seems odd that no one knew of its existence for 1,300 years. There’s another very good reason to suspect that the Shroud of Turin is a fake: the forger admitted it. As Joe Nickell, author of "Relics of the Christ," noted, a document by "Bishop Pierre d’Arcis claimed that the shroud had been ‘cunningly painted,’ a fact ‘attested by the artist who painted it.’"
More on this can be found in the March/April 2010 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. It often seems that the "Shroudies" are among the most fervent of believers, and for many of them there is no evidence that would convince them the shroud is not real. For as often as skeptics are accused of having closed minds, it is often the believers for whom no evidence will sway their convictions.
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Very amusing
ROME (Reuters) – An Italian scientist says he has reproduced a human being, a feat that he says proves definitively that humans, which Christians say are made in the image of God, are medieval fakes produced using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.
A scientifically-made mannequin, measuring 6 feet, 2 inches tall, looks eerily like Luigi Garlaschelli, the scientist himself.
"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as a human being," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.
A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.
The mannequin resembles the back and front of a bearded man with long hair with his arms crossed on his chest. He has two hands, two feet and a single head with two eyes and two ears.
Since Darwin, evolutionary biologists have believed that humans evolved along with other animals and plants from a common ancestor. But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain why some people smoke cherry flavored pipe tobacco since it offers no evolutionary advantage.
Garlaschelli, who received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics, expects people to contest his findings. “They didn’t believe me when I reproduced the Shroud of Turin, Quantum physics and the Egyptian pyramids, thus proving that they, too, were medieval creations. “
“It works for me,” said PZ Myers, pastor of the Morris, Minnesota Pharyngula Church of Fundamentalist Atheists. “I was getting tired of evolution, anyway. I believe everything I read in the newspapers so long as it doesn’t conflict with my beliefs. If humans are manmade, that’s fine. I still don’t need to believe in God.”
Garlaschelli said the funding for his work by his own organization of like-minded atheists had no effect on his results. "I always start with results," he said. “That way, I always arrive at the desired conclusion.”
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It was widely reported in the media that the Italian Fake exhibited the same 3D aspects as the Shroud of Turin. You decide. Hint, the Italian fake is on the left. Find the nose. Parts of both cheeks protrude higher than the nose. It is hard to see that here but it has been confirmed with grayscale density measurement.
Of course, it could not have the subtle grayscale, given the method with which it was made. And if you are familiar with height-fields as used in computer graphics, you quickly realize it can not produce anything like the shroud image.
The press merely reported what Dr. Garlaschelli said without, it seems, taking a look.
These images are courtesy of Prof. Giulio Fanti at the University of Padua.
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Petrus Soons, a very gifted shroud scholar, has commented on the the Italian Fake. It is thoughtfully presented and warrants full consideration.
In the last few days, a story appeared in the mass media that an Italian professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia (Italy), reproduced the image on the Shroud of Turin using materials and methods that were available in the 14th century, concluding that the experiment proves the relic was man-made. Basically, he used a linen cloth in scale 1:1, that was baked at 215 degrees C for 3 hours and then put it in a washing machine with water only. Then they put a person dirtied with RED OCHRE (IRON OXIDE) on the linen and corrected by hand the colored image. A chalk bas relief was used for the face printing, liquid tempera simulated the blood and sulfuric acid at 1.2% in water added with Aluminium and Cobalt modified the linen surface. An artificial aging was the final treatment before the pigment was washed. The final goal was to show that it was possible to create a fake in the 14th century.
Now, there is nothing new to this. In 1979, Walter C. McCrone (1916-2002), an internationally recognized microscopist and the director of the famous McCrone Associates Research Laboratory in Chicago, reported that the Shroud image was due to the application of RED OCHRE, also known as Venetian red (an earth color) a red artist’s pigment, which is a red IRON OXIDE, so probably Prof Garlaschelli took over this idea from Walter C. McCrone.
This theory was already disproved by the scientific STURP team (and others in the years after that) that conducted the investigations in 1978 on the Shroud of Turin.
Their conclusions were:
- 1) Adler reported that the " straw yellow color" of the body image fibers does not match the color of any of the known forms of ferric iron oxides.
- 2) Moreover, Adler reports that there is no correspondence of the body-only images to the concentration of iron oxide since the spectral characteristics of the body-only image are different from those of iron oxide.
- 3) The colors of the fibers, due to iron oxide, is also precluded by the fact that oxidation or reduction converts the yellow fibers of the body-only image to a white color.
- 4) Only rare particles of iron oxide are noted on the body-only image fibrils.
- 5) Large amounts of iron bound to the cellulose of the Shroud (not iron oxide) and Calcium were both present throughout the Shroud. This is believed to be due to the ability of linen to bind iron and water by ion association during the retting process (manufacturing process by which linen is immersed in water during fermentation). AN ESTIMATED 90 PERCENT of the iron and calcium exist in this form bound to the cellulose of the linen, AND ONLY A SMALL AMOUNT IS PRESENT AS IRON OXIDE.
- 6) X-ray studies of the body-only image do not contain enough iron oxide to show up on the X-radiographs.
- 7) All of the iron of the Shroud, whether from iron oxide particles or from blood, proved to be 99 percent chemically pure, with no discernable MANGANESE, NICKEL, or COBALT.
The earth pigment, RED OCHRE (Venetian red), from either medieval or older sources that were being used, was contaminated with manganese, nickel or cobalt GREATER THAN 1 PERCENT!!!
The STURP team employed microprobe Raman spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, optical and infrared spectroscopy, micro FTIR spectroscopy, pyrolysis mass spectroscopy, X-ray and a variety of microchemical tests on the fibrils, and came to the conclusion that there was NO ochre or other pigments, dyes or stains on the fibrils of the Shroud.
Prof Garlaschelli told Republica he didn’t think his research would convince those who have faith in the Shroud’s authenticity. " They won’t give up," he said. Those who believe in it will continue to believe."
Well, the reason why serious scientists do not believe Prof Garlaschelli’s work has been explained.
Prof Garlaschelli explains the absence of any traces of iron oxide on the original Shroud by stating that the pigment on the original Shroud faded away naturally over the centuries. This is not a statement that you would expect from a serious scientist. The spectroscopic investigations being done in 1978 would even show the slightest traces of iron oxide present on the Shroud and it is a little bit "unscientific" to state that they disappeared "naturally."
Another little detail is the fact that on the original Shroud there is no image under the bloodstains, proving the fact that there were two image formation processes. Direct contact for the blood proper and another image formation process for the image itself. Prof Garlaschelli added the "blood" (liquid tempera) later on top of the image that he had created. Under Ultra Violet fluorescence photography (not known of course in the 14th century), the blood on the Shroud shows a serum separation, visible as a lighter ring around a darker center, which is typical of post mortem wound exudate. This is not visible with the naked eye. The proposed artist from the 14th century could of course not have known this fact, so he could not create it either.
Petrus Soons M.D.
Volcan
Panama
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Science by Press Release? An Editorial Response by Barrie Schwortz
I was away from my office and in Los Angeles yesterday when the story broke in the media that an Italian professor had "reproduced" the Shroud using techniques that were available in the 14th century. Although I didn’t have my computer with me, my mobile phone rang again and again with friends calling to read me the story, so I heard the news almost immediately.
Upon my return late last night, my mailbox was flooded with e-mail, my answering machine was nearly full of messages and more than 20,000 people had visited the website since Tuesday morning. I finally was able to read the story myself at around 1:00 am.
Normally, I don’t respond to this type of story, since the media rarely publishes the rebuttals anyway and the stories usually disappear by themselves after only a few days. In the end, giving it any attention at all usually only helps the author of the article and garners even more publicity for him because someone is publicly disagreeing with him. However, since so many viewers have written me, I decided to write this brief response in which I am expressing my own personal opinions on this topic. That is why I titled it an "Editorial" Response.
Frankly, knowing that the Shroud will go on public display again in around 6 months, I am not very surprised to see this type of story coming out, along with its resulting media coverage. This seems to happen every time the Shroud is about to go on public display. Yet whenever a serious scientific article about the Shroud is published in a peer reviewed journal, there is barely a ripple in the popular media. And now, once again, someone claims to have "reproduced" the Shroud, "proving" it is a medieval forgery. They made their claims via nothing more than a press release and got instant global media coverage. However, that is NOT the way science actually operates.
The author who made these claims states that he will make the details available "next week." In the real world of science, a researcher must perform his experiments, compile his data, draw his conclusions, write a formal paper and submit it to a scientific journal for peer review. The work is then examined by other experts, usually of the same discipline, before it is accepted for publication (or rejected). The data must provide a sound basis for the claims and be there from the beginning. Not "next week." And certainly not made public via a press release!
Sadly, in reviewing the article, it is apparent immediately that the author knows very little about the actual Shroud of Turin. He is not the first to suggest that the Shroud image was produced by red ochre pigment (iron oxide). In fact, he is at least the fourth to have proposed this theory in the last 30 years. Of course, this issue was anticipated by the STURP team in 1978 and a number of highly sensitive tests were performed that determined there was not enough iron oxide on the Shroud to be visible without a microscope. Iron oxide does not constitute the image on the Shroud. They also determined the image areas of the Shroud contain no more iron oxide than the non-image areas. It is more or less evenly distributed across the entire cloth.
Obviously, if the image were made in the manner detailed in the article, we would still find thousands of particles of iron oxide embedded into the image fibers of the linen and these would be clearly visible with just a good magnifying glass. Yet the microscopy done directly on the Shroud in 1978 revealed no such thing. These particles just don’t go away on their own. STURP’s instruments could detect parts per billion (a very small amount) of any substance on the Shroud and ALL known paints and pigments (including iron oxide) were excluded by the data. Interestingly, iron oxide is also a by-product of retting linen and the minute quantities found on the Shroud were pure and most likely the result of the retting process. The iron oxide used in red ochre pigment has many impurities and is rarely if ever found in its pure form.
I have stated on more than one occasion that making images on linen is relatively easy. However, making images on linen with the same chemical and physical properties as the Shroud is another story. Considering the massive amount of scientific data that now exists about the Shroud of Turin, anyone making claims such as these must submit their work for careful scrutiny and comparative analysis before drawing such dramatic conclusions. That has not been done in this case. Anyone making such claims must create an image with ALL the same chemical and physical properties as the Shroud, not just a few, if they wish to be taken seriously.
It has been demonstrated scientifically that the bloodstains on the Shroud came from direct contact with a body and are all forensically accurate. It has also been shown that the bloodstains were on the Shroud BEFORE the image was formed since the blood and serum acted to inhibit the image formation mechanism. There is NO image under the blood and serum stains on the Shroud.
However, to make this new "reproduction," the "blood" was added (using a different pigment) AFTER the image was created. Obviously, it is much easier to add the blood to the image than to first create the blood stains and then create the forensically accurate image around them, which is exactly what a medieval forger would have had to do to duplicate the actual physical properties of the Shroud!
Many of the bloodstains on the Shroud show a surrounding halo of serum stains that are ONLY visible with UV fluorescence photography. Also, the blood has been chemically analyzed and determined to include components of actual blood, NOT pigment.
A proper, detailed scientific response to this press release is now being drafted by the online Shroud Science Group and I hope to publish an in-depth article by true Shroud experts addressing these claims in the near future.
However, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the press release also stated the researcher "received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics but said it had no effect on his results." This is an interesting statement from someone representing a segment of the skeptical community that has frequently charged the STURP scientists with religious bias, implying that their data was somehow flawed because some of them happened to be Christians! Until such time that the data is made available so it can be properly examined and compared to the known data about the Shroud, I will not take these claims very seriously. And neither should you.
Barrie Schwortz
7 October 2009
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Myers, who once asked readers of his blog to pilfer a consecrated host from a Catholic Mass (he called it a God Damned Cracker) so he could desecrate it, which he (thought he) did by nailing to a Quran and throwing it in the trash with coffee grounds, now writes:
I get thrown the miracle of the shroud of Turin on a regular basis — just last week someone confronted me with it, basically saying "A-ha! Jesus existed because there’s an old scrap of cloth with a face on it!" It doesn’t matter that I point out that it’s been dated to the 13th century, and was nothing more than a profit-making ‘relic’ for churches that would also hawk Jesus’s foreskin and John the Baptist’s pinky bone. They’d usually retort that it was not humanly possible to make the shroud, so it had to be a religious miracle.
Now I’ve got more ammo. The Shroud of Turin has been recreated, using simple medieval technologies. No magic, just acidic pigments.
I know, it won’t stop the kooks, but it’s still useful to know.
More ammo? Kooks?
Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He writes one of the most fascinating and most popular evolutionary science blogs on the Internet. But he strays. He is vehemently anti-religious. When he strays he demonstrates a profound lack of knowledge about religion, an unparalleled fundamentalist-atheism agenda, and a knack to surrender all scientific principals.
Suppose some professor in Italy had claimed to find proof that the Theory of Evolution was wrong. Would Myers salute the claim without thinking. Of course not. And he shouldn’t. But this is just what he did with the claim that the shroud had been reproduced. It wasn’t of course. That has already been demonstrated. But Myers accepts the claim without any qualification.
I doubt very much that someone actually said, “A-ha! Jesus existed because there’s an old scrap of cloth with a face on it!" The absurdity is obvious.
Myers is a good writer about biology. He should stick to what he know.
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Lamaitre and the pope
The idea that the Big Banf might have something to say about God creating the universe was apparent even though that was never Lemaître’s intent. Pope Pius XII referred to his findings as a scientific validation of the Catholic faith. Lemaître was put in the spot of having to clarify and disagree with the pope.
As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in nonsingular places in space-time. For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God . . . it is consonant with the wording of Isaiah’s speaking of a "Hidden God," hidden even from the beginning of creation. (10)
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Recent Entries
- Awful 2010 Exhibition Official Site
- Brother Dimond refutes claim that Shroud of Turin has been duplicated
- New Shroud of Turin Claims | Center for Inquiry
- Viral Humor: Italian Scientist Reproduces Humans
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- Barrie Schwortz on the Italian Fake:
- PZ Myers: Shroud of Turin is not a miracle
- Lamaitre and the pope
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