Post Any Evidence For God Here

[Snorri1234]

the human anus is obviously designed to fit a penis in it.

[2dimes]

the human anus is obviously designed to fit a penis in it.

Actually, I forget the number so I'll use 10.

My buddy who owns a pr0n shop said "it's (aprox) 10 times more elastic than a vagina."


Some women fire babies out of their vagina. I've seen it twice. So the back door is designed to let out what ever you've blocked up in there if it's not too sharp. So go ahead and finish that cheese! Yes, all four pounds. If you've got the abs to push it out.

[Snorri1234]

surely this designer wouldn't build the prostrate gland to give you a pleasurable feeling when stickign something up your bum if he didn't want you sticking things up your bum, right?

[PLAYER57832]

The illogic of the human design is one argument truly against and intelligent designer. However, the Bible doesn't claim "logical design", just a design like the creator.

So religion and science both aside... maybe we were all designed by alien scientists with a sense of humor.

[jonesthecurl]

The illogic of the human design is one argument truly against and intelligent designer. However, the Bible doesn't claim "logical design", just a design like the creator.

So religion and science both aside... maybe we were all designed by alien scientists with a sense of humor.

In the very first episode of Third Rock from the Sun, one of the aliens (now in human form) complains "How are you supposed to lick your back in THIS thing?"

[2dimes]

surely this designer wouldn't build the prostrate gland to give you a pleasurable feeling when stickign something up your bum if he didn't want you sticking things up your bum, right?

Fair enough but you'll have to ask him.

I'm still confused why I'm not supposed to have sex with some other dude's wife? That's a hetrosexual act right there yet... haraam. It's a puzzle. I think if I'm not allowed to have full release with everyone/thing including our nearest primate relatives and sea going mammels. It should be easier to direct those desires toward my wives. The way it is now I pretty much would like to have sex with everything but Playerdigits.

If he tells you PM me yes?

[Lionz]

PLAYER,

You've mistaken me for MatYahu possibly.

You said or at least suggested lies were tied to scripture by young earth creationists maybe. Is there a particular thing you would like to point out and discuss?

There might be fallen angels alien to earth who want us to think that they created mankind.

[BigBallinStalin]

PLAYER,

You've mistaken me for MatYahu possibly.

You said or at least suggested lies were tied to scripture by young earth creationists maybe. Is there a particular thing you would like to point out and discuss?

There might be fallen angels alien to earth who want us to think that they created mankind.

Agreed. MatisYahu is pretty good, ever seen him live?

[LikeYestrdaysJam]

PLAYER,

What does birth control have to do with what has been told in terms of lies?

Mainstream evolutionary teaching holds that whales evolved from wolf or cow like creatures or both perhaps.

Thread Brethren?,

How about go check out a young earth creationism thread and search to see what's apparently refuted in regards to index fossils being used to date sedimentary layers if you want?

no thats completely wrong whales do not evolve from cows and liek creatures
all life started in the ocean and wahles or things similar to whales are a much older genalogical line than land mammals
there would have been a water mammal similar to a whale, perhaps half of its genetic pool adapted and evolved to living on land, creatring land mammals and the othe rhalf stayed in the water evolving into what we know as whales today, you get your facts right, cows evolved into whales pfft what a joke!

[Army of GOD]

This thread is SO a few weeks ago.

The other religion thread is much more modern.

[Lionz]

BBS,

Never seen MatisYahu live maybe. : )

LYJ,

Did I claim a modern theory stated that whales evolved from cows? They did evolve from land mammals according to mainstream evolutionary theory perhaps... wikipedia actually claims they evolved from an extinct semi-aquatic deer-like ungulate maybe... I might have said stuff wrong, but what in terms of the fossil record suggests they evolved from an extinct semi-aquatic deer-like ungulate? It might be easier to believe they evolved from cow-like creatures than deer-like creatures.

[Calidus]

The following has been brought up in a different post, but I put it here because I'm showing a lot of evidence in detail.

The Shroud of Turin:



In the last 30 years 2000 scientists have studied the shroud, 95% have turned Christian with majority starting out as Atheist or Agnostic. I believe it is because of the following information that is known about the shroud.
It is has been studied for 600,000 hours, the most studied object in the world.
The Shroud is mentioned in scripture in all four gospels, Joseph of Arimathea (very wealthy) gave Jesus a fine linen (not normally typical and was more like a fine table cloth) in which to be buried.
The shroud is 14 feet 3in by 3 feet 7 in, in Jewish times = to 4 cubits by 1 cubit, perfect size.
Many people believe this linen was used at the last supper, because on just one side there are drip patterns from maybe sauce for bread passed. Note that Jewish men were only served on one side of the table because Jewish law prohibited passing food behind a person.
The image is of a man 5 feet 11 inches tall who weighed 175 pounds and scientists all say the man is between age 30 and 35. He is Jewish because of long hair with pig tail (typical of Jewish men devoted to prayer) also through magnification they can see a phylactery. Between the eyes is a little leather box containing parchment of scripture: the scripture says keep this before your mind and in your heart.
The image shows the man lay at one end of the shroud, head in middle and then other half folded on top. Then using other bands or rope he was tightened almost like a mummy.
Here are a few things to know about the Carbonating that occurred:
Carbon 14 dating: Church allowed it in 1988 October 14th, they were able to cut three postage stamp size pieces. They were supposed to come from three different areas. Results showed that the shroud should come in between 1290 and 1360 – people thought it was a fake (made by an artist.)
This is inaccurate for a few reasons: 1…Protocol was violated; the scientists took all the 3 pieces from only one area, 2…the shroud has been in 3 recorded fires. One example was the fire in 1532, the shroud was in a silver urn or casket and fire burned molten silver into the shroud (because it was folded up it burned 24 holes into the shroud).
Note: Silver melts at 920 degrees C.
In 1992 Russian scientists showed: taking separate linen that is known to be 2000 years old through carbon dating, they simulated the fire of 1532 and found there to be a 700 to 1300 year shift in the results.
It is shown that when linen goes through fire that intense, carboxylation in the glucose structure of the linen, which gives a different carbon 14 reading.
3…mummy linens appear 300 to 600 years younger than when they were wrapped (supposed to be same time of death), however scientists still don’t know why this occurs.
4…study in Texas showed micro-organisms found on the shroud, they were taken off the shroud cultivated and shown that there were bacteria fungi, which effect carbon 14 readings by at least 300 years
5… the sample taken for the carbon dating was from the most contaminated area of the shroud from finger prints, but that also this area had a different weave pattern than other areas of the shroud, this area might have been rewoven during the middle ages
6… if the shroud was authentic then the image was created by light radiation during the resurrection, this oxidized the shroud which is how we get the scorch image, (No pigments, no paint) Some scientists believe it was in fact created from the resurrection the rest don’t know how, but we do know that it has not been recreated since then. This radiation, if it did exist would also affect carbon 14 readings.
Support for authenticity:
1… the shroud has photo graphic negative qualities. In 1898 an amateur photographer photo graphed the shroud and when looking at negative plates he found a positive image. This negative image could be due to the burst of radiation from the resurrection. There are photo graphs of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped that showed photo graphic negatives on walls of parts of buildings were people walked near because there shadows were flashed onto it. If some “artist” made the shroud in the 1300s, then they would have to have known how to put a negative image on something without using paintings or drawings and without even the knowledge of photography which occurred in the 1800s.
2… the shroud was tested with 3D computer graphic technology. When pictures of mars or the moon were taken in space and then put under one of these 3D rendering computers you can see a vague 3d image. They used a photo graph of the shroud under a 3d analyzer. If you put any normal picture of something it would be analyzed and come out distorted, but the image on the shroud came out clearer. This shows that it must have been wrapped in a 3d manner.
3… there is pollen on the shroud. Max Fry, Swiss criminologist, took 58 species of pollen off the shroud, 45 from Jerusalem and the surrounding area, People think the shroud was made in 135 in Italy or France (how did this pollen get there?) 18 of the 45 are only found in the holy land and nowhere else.
Note, in addition most of these pollens bloom in the spring.
4… again no pigments or paints on the shroud. The image is made of oxidation of the top linen fibrils, only the top 6 microns of the shroud (less than the thickness of human hair) No brush marks to show directionality. The image is not full contact image. Darker areas like the tip of the nose and parts of the back appear, but other parts were also not touching the body (half inch or an inch away…still an image). Fire and water don’t affect the image. Fire (like that in 1532) would have melted the paint and smeared it and the water to put out the fire would have done so as well.
5... ultraviolet light detects blood serum halos around every one of the scourge marks. This can only be seen with ultra violet light not a naked eye…why would an artist in 1350 create these?
6… the shroud gives some soft tissue information but also bone structure information. Through magnification you can see teeth through the area of the mouth…like an x-ray. Some other bone structures are visible like vertebrae, ribs, and bones in the hand and feet. The image of the thumbs can be seen through the hand (look at reason 10 for more about why)!
7… off body images… 1970s 3d imaging showed coins on the eyes of the man on the shroud… polarized image overlays with different ancient coins to see which match up… the same technique used to match finger prints on a gun or window sill to that of a person. The coin on the right eye was found to be a lepton, coin minted during the time of Tiberius Caesar under the reign of Ponches Pilot, (around 29 AD) also the phylactery was seen with this technology. Hundreds of flower images are around the body that blooms in spring at the holy land. (Probably put there by those who took Jesus down from the cross… the pollen on the shroud comes from these flowers)
8… no sign of decomposition on the body. When a body dies (like Jesus did while he was still on the cross) it enters a process of rigor mortis. This is shown on the shroud …lasts 2-3 days after the 4th day it begins to decompose. You would see deterioration if this occurred…seen on ancient mummy’s linen. This would correspond nicely to the resurrection which occurred 40 hours after Jesus was put into the tomb. They didn’t wash the body; blood is still detected, because his death occurred during the Sabbath. They were going to come back after the Sabbath to probably clean the body, when it was gone.
9… In 1978, it was proven that type AB blood (human) was on the shroud. Blood will only transfer to linen within an hour and a half or it will be too dry. This was said in bible because they had to be quick to put him in tomb before the sun went down.
10… Perfect anatomy found in the shroud image. In the head there are artery and vein bleed marks, something not understood until 18th century (way after the supposed painting). The thumbs are not shown on shroud accept through the palm. It has been proven that if a nail goes through the wrist then the thumbs during rigor mortis would move inside the palm region. The wound in the side shows blood, and clear blood serum which is on the shroud. Corresponds with scientific knowledge of what would happen when lung or heart was pierced by a sword. (This was said in scripture as well). It is also shown that the nail went through the half medium nerve. This is shown that it can support the body. There are no broken bones, and this is important theologically because the scripture says the lord was to have no broken bones. Also there is blood flow shown only done by gravity, and by someone trying to breathe on the cross in the position.
11… There is a peaceful expression on the face, not a painful one seen in many other crucifixions.
12… If you take the body out of the linen you would smear the blood. When Jesus was laid down the blood slowed into the small of his back, and if lifted it would open up more wounds and again smeared the blood. The only way that Jesus could get out was through the linen collapsing through the body of a glorified body, when he is resurrected.
13….the image also shows that the image was made by a weightless body, there are no pressure parts, and the burn from the resurrection burst showed no more burn marks on parts touching the shroud and those not touching.
14… They feel that the resurrection would come from light from above, and it is shown that the image could not be made from anywhere else (the side, beneath, or at an angle) other than from above.
15…There is also directionality from scourge marks from whippings from the soldiers under Jewish law there are only 40 lashings permitted, but under roman law they went up to 120 lashings. All are shown on the shroud.
16… there are puncture wounds from the thorns on his head, also creating more swelling… seen on the shroud.
17… there are scrape marks on the nose and torn up knees showing that Jesus falling face first while carrying the cross as well as dirt particles heavily in those areas.

There is a lot more pain described in the bible during the whole process of Jesus getting prepared to being crucified, only some proof to support this, but it is know that he was on the cross for only 3 hours a lot shorter than most people, to me this shows that there must have been a lot of blood loss from all the beatings that made Jesus die sooner than normal. Also the Romans would normally break the people’s legs to hasten death, but they didn’t have to because Jesus was already dead.
I believe this evidence shows that someone must have been crucified and somehow able to do some sort of disappearing act after being placed in the shroud. The bleed marks, swelling, scrape marks, scourge marks, and more described above are all seen on the shroud. These correspond quite accurately with the Bible and no other source. To say that it is a coincidence and that all this is not proof that the words from the Bible are true and right in front of us is ridiculous in my opinion. I see so much evidence, and so do 95% of scientists – again previously atheist or agnostic, from the shroud that is identified in the Bible. Therefore I believe that the shroud increases the validity of the Bible.

This alone is enough for me to show evidence for God.

[PLAYER57832]

This alone is enough for me to show evidence for God.

Key words: "enough for me". "Enough for me" is not the same as "irrefutable proof". I actually don't accept the above, but I do see other evidence for God. I will not, however, claim to have proof solid enough to convince someone who does not wish to believe.

Then again, some people still believe the Earth is flat, so.....

P.S. There is another thread on just the shroud.

[BigBallinStalin]

He's looking for a good trolling time

[Calidus]

I was simply showing evidence for God, not that I had "irrefutable proof." When one investigates a crime scene they have to gather all the evidence before proving anything. I have gathered a lot of evidence, but there is probably more out there and this is only about the shroud that shows Jesus existed. As you said there are other evidences out there for God - I just think this is enough for me personaly to believe in God or to believe that he exists.

But, on that note, irrefutable means: impossible to deny or disprove
I will say that the evidence itself is in fact irrefutable. None of the scientists have been able to falsify the evidence.

Also, I hope that you weren't suggesting that I am trolling. This is the first post in this forum that I have done and I'm not targeting people and trying to harass them.

[notyou2]

The shroud covered Jacques de Molay after the catholic church tortured him to death. It is not the shroud refered to in the scriptures as it is not old enough to be that shroud

[Neoteny]

My copypasta is better. If the shroud is evidence for god, then this should be evidence against it.

The Shroud of Turin: The Great Gothic Art Fraud — Because If It's Real the Brain of Jesus Was the Size of a Protohuman's!

Gregory S. Paul

Rarely on public display due to issues of light degradation, the shroud of Turin is again on temporary exhibit. The historical provenance and the radiometric measuring of its age place the creation of the object in the late medieval Gothic period. Although its owner the Catholic Church does not claim that the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, they have not explicitly denied its authenticity, as Bishop Pierre D’Arcis apparently did when he denounced a fake shroud in 1389 (but the neutrality may be changing judging from the new claim by Benedict that the shroud is a photographic document of the crucifixion of Jesus; www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World ... 22047.html).

The exhibition has inspired another round of claims by certain researchers that it really is the cloth that covered the deceased "Son of God." Some go all the way to contend that the image cannot be a work of art or even of nature, and must be the miraculous result of the Resurrection. The hypothesis that the shroud is the real deal was promoted in the notoriously biased, two hour History Channel documentary The Real Face of Jesus, which was broadcast shortly before the latest exhibition.

This note is intended to describe why, from an artistic and anatomical perspective, the shroud image is an embarrassingly obvious fraud committed by a Gothic artist following the standard conventions of his time. The artistic errors are so severe that it is impossible for the shroud to record the image of an actual human body—unless it was a very seriously pathological person with a brain the size of a Homo erectus.

As well as researching issues including the evolution of brain size, I am an artist who produces 2-D representational works (as opposed to 3-D or abstract pieces), and as such I understand that aspiringly realistic flat art is always a visual illusion based on a set of visual tricks. For example, some artists sculpt the animals they wish to portray in 3-D, and then light them in a manner intended to accurately determine the pattern of shadows in the hope of making the final color image yet more realistic. I never follow this process because, aside from not wishing to expend the extra time and effort, in the end it does not matter that much inasmuch as the human visual system is very sloppy and happily accommodates visual errors in artwork. So I guesstimate the shadow patterns, and no one has complained. The human visual complex is just not set up to carefully assess these matters because they are not important in the struggle to survive.

In fact, the visual system is so accommodating that the viewer will recognize even a badly executed still life as a representation of some fruit and flowers in a vase. The same is true of a human figure even if the artist makes no attempt to be realistic. For example, no human actually looks like Charlie Brown, but because the mind is so flexible viewers of art are remarkably accepting of even deliberate artistic distortions of the human figure to the degree that the some alterations become common conventions that no one thinks about. Some of these distortions are subtle. Illustrations of attractive women in fashion ads regularly hyper-elongate the neck well beyond the degree present in any actual female, and I will guess that you have viewed countless such fashion ad figures without giving it a thought. Likewise, thoroughbred horses are sometimes given longer than actual necks in painted portraits.

While humans are highly tolerant of artistic deviations from the real-world norm, we are not tolerant when it comes to actual humans. If a living person with the proportions of the cartoon Charlie Brown walked down the street regular folks would react with intense disgust and pity for this grossly deformed human. Even subtle deviations from normal extremes are noticed because most humans are genetically programmed to scrutinize the condition of other humans in order to determine their genetic fitness, health, possibility of being abnormal or a threat, and so forth. Those whose proportions are far enough out of the norm are considered freakish to the degree that they may have commercial value via commercial exhibition. If a woman had a neck as long as in fashion ads she would be considered bizarre. Because we are so attuned to spotting deviations they are often widely noted when present in well-known persons. The unusual proportions of Abraham Lincoln provide a famous example; his body, arms and legs were so long that it has been suggested he suffered from some sort of disorder, such as Marfan's syndrome.

There is no explicit description of the appearance of Jesus in the Bible, but if the references that exist (Hebrews 2:17, Isaiah 53:2-3) are accurate then there was nothing out of the norm for the Semitic population of the region at that time; (this is in accord with the need of Judas to directly identify Jesus to the authorities). Nor do the accounts suggest that Jesus was seriously intellectually deficient.

The shroud is 4.4 m (14 ft) long (at least before the 2002 restoration). The total height of the shroud figure cannot be directly measured from the front view because the feet are indistinct and their posture uncertain, but it is not possible for the figure to be significantly under 1830 mm (6 ft) because the lower legs would then be overly short relative to the upper legs and to the body as a whole. The rear view shows both the top of the head and the heels, and provides a height a little over 1860 mm (6 ft 1 in). The proportions of the trunks and legs are normal and represent a fit person whose muscles are well, but not excessively, developed, and who lacks excess body fat. Body mass for a person of this height and form should be in the area of 75-80 kg (165-175 lbs). The considerable height of the shroud figure is a significant problem because it is tall even by modern First-World standards, and it is well above the norm for a person living in the Roman-occupied Middle East. If Jesus were of these dimensions he would have towered over most of those around him and would have been easily identified by those searching for the dissident, yet there is no mention of this feature in the testaments.

Although suspiciously tall, the total height and weight of the shroud figure are not abnormal. The dimensions of the head are. It has long been noted that the body is overly long relative to the head. Joe Nickell pointed this out in his 1998 Inquest into the shroud of Turin. The disparity is readily visible once one is aware of the incongruity. It has been less noted, however, that this is primarily because the head is too small in height as well as width—the cranium being quite narrow relative to its height—both in absolute terms, and even more so relative to the body. Deleting some hair atop the head and trimming off the end of the short beard, the height of the head is about 225 mm (8.85 in). The width is only some 130 mm (5.1 in). In normally proportioned adult males the body height is 7-7.5 times greater than the height of the head. The total height of a person with such a short head should be 1575-1688 mm (5.2-5.5 ft)—a short stature even for Gospel times that should have been noted in the Gospel accounts. In the shroud the total/head height ratio is an abnormal 8.3. This exceeds even the remarkably high 7.9-8.0 ratio of Abraham Lincoln (measured from the only full figure photograph taken before he grew a beard). In most adult males the head is in the area of 245 mm (9.6 in) tall and 150 mm (5.9 in) across. These values apply to Lincoln. Judging from frontal photo portraits, his cranium was not unusually narrow. The President had a normally large head despite his high body/head height ratio because, at 1920 mm (6.3 ft), he was so tall.

That the shroud head is too small is visually obvious when it is compared to normally proportioned humans on the same scale. The dimensions of the small and narrow head of the shroud are about nine-tenths the male norm. This may not sound like much, but because of the square-cube law modest differences in dimensions result in big changes in volume, so the capacity of the cranium was at least 30 percent below expectations.

This is where matters become interesting to the point of being absurd. The size of the face measured from eyebrow to chin in the shroud figure is normal. The shortness of the head is due to an abnormally low forehead; this too is visually obvious once it is realized. In normal humans the head from the top to the eyebrows is over a third to over 40 percent of total head height, or 80 to 100 mm (3 to 4 in). In the shroud figure the top of the cranium is about one forth overall head height, around 60 mm (2.5 in). Having done some work in the evolution of brain size, some calculations were warranted. In modern adult male humans the volume of the brain averages 1250 cc with a minimum of 1050 cc (Allen J et al., 2002 Amer. J. Phys. Anthropol 118:341-358). This is why adult male heads are genetically forced to be so large, especially above the face; they have to be in order to accommodate such big brains. Ergo, the volume of the shroud head is too small to contain a large brain, which would have been only 900 cc or so even if the low forehead were not taken into account, and in the area of 800 cc if it were. In either case the volume is below that of male H. sapiens.

Matters are actually worse than this, however. In general, the bigger a person is (excluding excess body fat) the bigger their brain following scaling rules measured and compared by the Encephalization Quotient (EQ). In nonpathological H. sapiens the EQ is in the area of 4.5 to 5.0, thus the shroud figure's brain should have been 1350 to 1500 cc (towards the high end of the human range). Using the method for calculating EQ in Ruff, E. et al. (Nature 387: 173-176) the EQ for the shroud figure is 2.6; assuming the brain were 800 cc, it is still a pathetic 3; at 900 cc, it rises to only 3.3 even if we optimistically boost brain volume to 1000 cc; and it is still just 3.5 if body weight is also dropped to 70 kg. Achieving a value anywhere close to that of modern man is not possible given the dimensions of the figure on the cloth.

The EQs as well as the forehead height are in the range of archaic species of Homo dating to the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene. (Late Pleistocene H. neanderthalis were as large brained as H. sapiens). Therefore the shroud figure is pathologically hypocephalic. As far as I know a specific medical condition in which the head and brain are so small yet not seriously deformed in shape does not exist. Microcephalics have severely distorted and reduced crania above the face, shallower than even the shroud figure. If the latter were an actual human, and if its brain functioned by the same basic means as in other people, then his brain volume was so low that the intellectual capacity would have been seriously impaired, and obviously so in any surviving accounts.

There are other proportional problems in the shroud image, some obvious and others subtle. Concerning the obvious, one lower arm is much shorter—by about a third—than the other. This remarkably gross distortion cannot be attributed to differing postures and angles of the arms in their repose. You can check this out by trying to mimic the differential with your own arms, being careful to position your hands and arms exactly as in the image, preferably while lying on a hard surface as you imitate a corpse. In a successful attempt to replicate the shroud image using means available at the time of its manufacture, and using an actual human body, the lower arms are, not surprisingly, equal in length. (Read more: "Scientists reproduce 'fake' Shroud of Turin to prove cloth is man-made")

Which brings us to the more subtle yet serious defect. In the front image the hands are used to prudishly cover the genitalia, with the elbows bowed significantly out to the side, and the shoulders spread out to the side in a normal manner. Judging from the rear image the elbows were not in contact with the surface that the alleged corpse was resting on. This arrangement may look natural, but it is not and is an artistic illusion. In order for a person to cover their genitalia in the manner of the shroud figure, the shoulders need to be hunched forward a little, and the arms strongly extended towards the crotch, with the elbows tucked in. This does not match the nonhunched shoulders, and is not possible for a corpse. Again, get down on the floor and try to match the pose of the image. If you try to be a relaxed corpse it is impossible; your elbows will drop to the floor and your hands cannot then reach the groin. Nor would it be feasible to get a body in rigor mortis, which begins to set in three hours after death, to assume the posture seen in the shroud. Only if the dead body were supple and tightly bound to hunch the shoulders and extend the arms would the hands be able to reach so far down. But whether this forced, careful pose could be accomplished by manipulating the appendages while being wrapped is doubtful and is not recorded in the shroud figure.

From what I have been able to determine, crossing the hands of a corpse over the genitalia is very atypical, if it is ever done. This observation is supported by examining images of a number of mummies. Normally proportioned humans do not have arms long enough to achieve this posture. And placing the hands directly atop the sexual organs would be considered perverse in most societies—all the more so if the posture involved skin-to-skin contact. Nor is there a need to use the hands to visually hide the genitalia for prudish purposes inasmuch as the corpse is dressed in some manner. When a corpse is arranged with the body and legs stretched out straight, the arms are usually placed in a relaxed posture along the sides of the body.

It is possible that the proportions of the figure have been altered due to shrinkage or stretching of the cloth. There is not an apparent mechanism for shrinking the cloth, however, since it is unlikely to have been washed with agitation. If the shroud has shrunk significantly then the absolute head size problem is reduced although the brain volume would still be low for a modern human of its size and the excessive total/head height ratio remains, while the total height is even more excessive. It is more plausible for the cloth to have stretched. In that case the total height problem is lessened, but the excessive total/head-height ratio remains, and the head and brain it contains were even more shrunken—heading down to the australopithecine level. Neither shrinkage nor stretching alters the very low EQ value. Alterations in the size of the figure in the cloth since its creation do not solve its problems.

If Jesus had the proportions of the image in the shroud, then he was a severely deformed and pathological person who would have cut a shocking figure as he walked down the streets and paths of the Holy Land. Exceptionally tall for his time and place, his rather narrow head was so shrunken and low browed that it would have indicated a unique form of hypocephaly so serious that it would have impaired his mental function, leaving his intellectual performance similar to that of protohuman. Overly long arms would have hung at his sides, with one exceptionally elongated, the other less so because of an atrophied lower arm. It is hard to see how such bizarre attributes would have not been mentioned in an account of his life, assuming anyone bothered to record it considering the circumstances. Because the proportions of the shroud image are essentially impossible, the figure cannot represent that of an actual person.

Other features of the shroud figure confirm that it is not real. If the cloth were actually draped upon a 3-D human face, then the facial image would be grossly distorted laterally when flattened out—this obvious defect is the initial reason this artist rejected the authenticity of the object upon first viewing it. The top of the head should also have been recorded if the cloth enclosed the head. These problems in translating a 3-D head into a viewer friendly 2-D image are why the 2009 replication noted above utilized a bas-relief mask (which like the Turin image is too small). The hair drops vertically as if the man were standing rather than falling back from the head on the front and back images as expected of a corpse. The indications of wounds in the wrist are not necessarily compatible with a crucified body because nailing the wrist risked killing the victim quickly by cutting a major artery—wrist cutting being a common means of suicide. Instead the palms were probably nailed to the T cross, with the wrists bound to the bar by rope in order to prevent the hands from pulling out of the nails.

The image—despite its remarkable attributes and the considerable skills of its clever creator—is an obvious and seriously flawed artistic fraud. The questions therefore shift to why the errors are present. The small size of the head is easy to explain. A standard convention of Gothic art was too elongate the body relative to the head, there are innumerable examples of the distortion which was commonly applied to images of Jesus. Body elongation is a means of increasing the impressive majesty of the person being represented. In contrast an overly large head looks juvenile. This illusion was used by Leonardo in his classic but not accurate Ideal Man, and is still exploited in comic book super heroes. A low forehead is also a Gothic convention seen in Jesus figures of the time; this facilitates reduction of overall head height without having to shrink the face so much that the distortion is overly obvious. The responsible artist (assuming the fraud was not a team effort) was probably under intense pressure when generating the deception. Either he was taking the risk of committing a major con on his own, or was under inducement or coercion for nefarious purposes of some sort by someone of greater power and influence to produce a sufficiently convincing object. There are indications that the shroud was part of the fake relic trade of the period.

Hindered by the Christian mores of the time against scientific investigation of the human body, Gothic artists lacked the superb anatomical knowledge possessed by many Renaissance artists. So although the artist followed standard Gothic practice of elongating the body relative to the head, and because the overall height of the figure had to be kept within human norms since a taller figure would have been clearly fake, the head ended up too small, representing that of a young teenager with a beard. This was acceptable because of the tendency of humans to not reliably notice such deviations in 2-D images as opposed to an actual person. It is possible that the artist knew the head was not big enough. Perhaps he was playing a little joke and/or seeing what he could get away with vis-à-vis his gullible audience. Or, perhaps the artist was concerned that if he instead made the head the right size, contemporary viewers that were attuned to reduced heads on Gothic renditions of human figures would think there was something wrong with it. Maybe he would have thought the head too big if he made the forehead the right size. He was unaware that the resulting brain volume would be down at the level of the ancestors of H. sapiens, helping to disprove the authenticity of the burial shroud.

In addition, the artist was faced with a serious particular problem. If the figure were intended to represent the deceased Jesus inside the shroud, then it had to be naked. But a picture showing the genitalia of the Son of God just would not do, so something had to be done to seem to cover the groin. The only available means was to use the hands, even though doing so with an actual corpse would be considered highly indelicate and is not practical. If the artist tried to do so in a realistic manner by using himself or a model to observe the arrangement, he would have realized that outright artistic fakery was necessary. It is at least as likely that he made no special attempt at anatomical realism. But notice that the hands do not actually cover the groin, one hand is too far to the side and the one on the shorter arm is too high, yet the genitalia are not visible to offend the pious viewers. At this point the artist was sufficiently sloppy or prankish to not bother to make the lower arms even close to the same length—he may have failed to appreciate these errors, thought they were a joke or a test of gullibility, or did not care. Portraying the hair accurately for a corpse would have looked odd to viewers; that it is unrealistic may have been another little prank.

Whatever the motives and thinking of the talented shroud artist, he accidentally and/or deliberately left glaring clues that the image is a piece of fraudulent art of the Gothic genre produced in a prescientific era. The gross incompatibility of the figure with a real man means that the latter could not have been used in producing the image. The form may have been dry painted on the cloth freehand. If it is some sort of transfer image it was based on another artistic object, perhaps a bas-relief sculpture. The advocates' argument that the exact method of producing the shroud image must be known before it can be proven to be a fraud is a standard example of paranormal illogic in which modest difficulties with the conventional explanation causes the gullible to conclude that the extraordinary explanation is superior. This line of reasoning misleads some to attribute the Pyramids of Giza to ancient aliens, and it is unknown how the Greco-Roman civilization sustained the industry needed to design and manufacture precision gear machines such as the fantastic Antikythera mechanism. Because it was concocted in secret using little known or lost ancient technologies, it is improbable that the specific method of creating a subtle forgery can be determined centuries later.

Since the cloth is a proven fraud all attempts to show otherwise are at best misguided and gullible, and perhaps fraudulent. They should be abandoned in the same manner as should attempts to show an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell, NM. It is notable that the History Channel documentary made no mention of the proportional peculiarities of the shroud image. Doing so would have made it much more difficult to sell the idea that the cloth covered Jesus when he rose. Their audience was therefore seriously misled. Documentaries that claim the shroud is real should no longer be produced, and those programs that make the claim need to be withdrawn. The news media must be inherently skeptical of pro-shroud claims. The Catholic Church needs to drop its current stance (whatever that may be) and issue a statement that the shroud is definitely not associated with the historical Jesus, and is an artistic rendition of a postexecution corpse—otherwise the Vatican is abetting the efforts by shroud proponents that in effect propose that Jesus was hypocephalic among other oddities. Future research should be done to further confirm the age of the cloth and to better determine how the images were invented.

Same scale comparison of the shroud figure to a typically proportioned male and Abraham Lincoln (all traced from large scale photographs, scorch marks on shroud are included as landmarks). Total height, head height, and head breadth in mm measured by bars are typical man (1730, 245, 150), shroud figure (1860, 225, 130), Lincoln (1920, 245)—because the typical man is balding less hair was deleted from the height, the hair of Lincoln is also matted down somewhat and he was wearing deep heeled shoes that were deleted from his height (averaged between the two feet). Short horizontal bars on total height bars indicate total/head height ratios, larger arrow for shroud figure indicates total height if its ratio were typical, smaller arrow is total height if the ratio were as high as Lincoln's. Note that the heads of the typical man and Lincoln are similar in size to one another despite their great divergence in total height, and both of their heads are significantly taller and broader than that of the shroud figure whose forehead is much shallower.

http://secweb.infidels.org/article815.html

[Calidus]

This is for Notyou2

Your statement is so vague and not true at all. I did however research this person: Jacques deMolay

Authors of the Second Messiah Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas claim that the image on the shroud is that of Jacques de Molay. In 1307, De Molay was charged with heresy by king Philip IV of France. According to the authors, de Molay was tortured at the direction of the Chief Inquisitor of France, William Imbert.

They have only two reasons why they believe this shroud is the same one that was put on deMolay.

1. They simply say: "The use of a burial shroud is defended by suggesting that the Knights Templar used shrouds in ceremonies." -thats like saying I have an old baseball glove used by Babe Ruth, just because I know that he used a baseball glove in order to play baseball.

2. Knight and Lomas base their speculation partly on the 1988 radiocarbon dating, which has since been proven invalid. Details of why it's invalid our in my post which I admit is quite long, but it seems you didn't even read it.

There are many problems with this hypothesis, but a few clear ones (again mentioned in my post) come to mind that I would like you to explain before you just throw names out there without researching the shroud yourself.

Why does the image appear as a photographic negative (photography not even invented in the 1300s)?
Why is there pollen from the areas of Jerusalem when it seems that these shrouds used on those tortured (like Jacques deMolay) were quite a common practice? Did they always go out of there way to get shrouds from around the world?

Lastly, I really don't see how you can say the Chatholic church tortured the guy when it's clear that it was an act under King Philip IV of France.

[john9blue]

Yes, because we are going to believe an article from infidels.org instead of centuries of scrutiny and debate.

[notyou2]

I simply threw out a hypothesis like you did.
Why is that you are allowed to put forth a hypothesis and no one else is?

[Neoteny]

Yes, because we are going to believe an article from infidels.org instead of centuries of scrutiny and debate.

Way to discount evidence out of hand. This is why nobody listens to you. What do centuries of debate conclude about Jesus covering his junks?

Also, the original looked like an uncited chain email...

[john9blue]

Way to discount evidence out of hand. This is why nobody listens to you. What do centuries of debate conclude about Jesus covering his junks?

Also, the original looked like an uncited chain email...

"nobody listens to you" lol sure Neo. I'm not dumb enough to believe an article that claims there are obvious glaring damning disproportions that nobody has noticed after tons of close scientific examination. Maybe when someone else other than a website devoted to atheist propaganda can confirm these findings, I'll give it a second look. Until then, you're the one that nobody is going to be listening to (other than people who are already atheist and chuckle at any blasphemous text they can find because it's "funny" to them).

Amazing how people can suspend disbelief when they are told what they want to hear.

[notyou2]

I don't laugh at atheist stuff, I feel sorry for you and the world. Its religion that causes all the hate in the world. WAKE UP

[john9blue]

I don't laugh at atheist stuff, I feel sorry for you and the world. Its religion that causes all the hate in the world. WAKE UP

Then how do you explain all the shitty online comics floating around with an obvious anti-religious agenda? Everything's a joke isn't it? Nothing is sacred, right? And you think I'm the one that needs to wake up.

[PLAYER57832]

The shroud covered Jacques de Molay after the catholic church tortured him to death. It is not the shroud refered to in the scriptures as it is not old enough to be that shroud

I have never seen this hypothesis. Is there evidence?
(One problem is that the shroud does seem to be from a crucified man. Many people other than Christ were crucified, but was Jacques de Molay?)