"A question for all our atheist friends"

[notoc]

Thirty-four thousand billion watts ... so that's what killed off all the dinosaurs. Perhaps it also knocked the Earth off of its axis and caused it to orbit the sun.

... but the real questions for all our atheist friends are, why wasn't the chunky Kit-Kat Jesus mentioned in The Big Catholic Book of Relics before 1999 and why won't Nestlé give the scientific community unfettered access to the original chocolate snack?

[Undecided]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100125247/the-turin-shroud-is-fake-get-over-it/

"First things first. The "authenticity" or otherwise of the Shroud of Turin does not have any implications for whether or not Christ was real, or whether He was divine. If it was a medieval forgery, it doesn't mean the stories aren't true; if it really was made in the first century AD, it doesn't mean they were. Until we find a reliable method of linking the shroud with Christ Himself – a nametag stitched in it by His mum, perhaps – the existence of a 2,000-year-old cloth does not imply that a particular person who died around the time it was made was the Son of God."

"Regarding the ENEA findings, he is similarly sceptical."There are several possibilities, and it could just be a chance effect due to a number of different phenomena," he say. "But in archaeological science, being able to reproduce something doesn't imply that that's the technique used; it may simply show that you've got a new technique you want to try out." He adds that the confidence in the medieval result is such that, were it not suggested to be a relic, there would be no more discussion over its age."

[Mornac]

Mr Chivers is of course entitled to his opinion, but for the time being I'm going to agree with the conclusion of Science on the matter:


Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural

Michael Day, Rome
20 December 2011

Italian government scientists have claimed to have discovered evidence that a supernatural event formed the image on the Turin Shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists.

However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax.

Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic.

"The results show that a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin," they said.

And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: "This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date."

A statement by lead researcher, Dr Paolo Di Lazzaro, said: "If our results prompt a philosophical or theological debate, these conclusions we'll leave to the experts; to each person's own conscience," he said.

Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at Pavia University, told The Independent: "The implications are... that the image was formed by a burst of UV energy so intense it could only have been supernatural. But I don't think they've done anything of the sort."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-say-turin-shroud-is-supernatural-6279512.html