Science meets Religion:   Shroud of Turin

from Overcoming Prejudice in the Evolution Creation Debate by Dr R. Gary Chiang

4. Science Stumbles Over the Shroud

This first photograph of the Shroud marks the beginning of its modern scientific study. Heller has estimated that since Pia’s time, and prior to the radiocarbon dating studies, between 100,000 and 150,000 scientific man-hours have been spent on the Shroud with the best analytical tools available.   Yet despite being the most studied object on earth, the evidence cannot tell us if the Shroud is a fake, nor can it tell us how the image was imprinted on the Shroud.   Essentially, we are left with accepting one of two hypotheses as guided by our own personal prejudices: The Shroud is a fake, produced in the 1300's, either as a joke, or to help raise funds for a struggling church; or the Shroud is the actual photographic imprint of a man crucified as Christ was.

The debate in the scientific world does not center around the image being Christ for there are no scientific tests to determine if it is Christ.   If the man on the cloth looked like Jesus, this would serve as proof that it is Jesus, but we have no pictures of him.   Instead, the debate in the scientific world questions whether this image can be Christ, a hypothesis that can be rejected in one of two ways.   First, if this image can be explained as a piece of artwork painted by human hands, then it was not created by a supernatural event associated with the resurrection.   Second, if the cloth on which this image has been placed is not at least 2000 years old, then the cloth is too young to have been around at the time of Christ.   The opinion that the image was a painting has been, as noted previously, expressed ever since the Shroud first appeared in recorded history. The opinion that it is too young to have wrapped the body of Christ has been around since the radiocarbon dating experiments.   How do these opinions hold up in the face of all the other scientific data?