Prior Prejudices and the Argument from Reason, or,why some don’t think consciousness is supernatural

Dangerous Idea

I find the argument from reason (hereafter known as the AFR) by C. S. Lewis & elaborated further by Victor Reppert to be unconvincing and inconclusive. Philosophic assertions and counter assertions consist of drawing lines where each philosopher thinks they ought to be drawn, based on a variety of factors, but neither philosopher focuses on the same factors, nor finds them equally relevant. Hence the disagreements.

For instance, naturalists concentrate on what they can discover experimentally about the nature of consciousness and cognitive processing. We are not always conscious. And most of our bodily movements, as well as our juggling of thoughts when arguing, resemble reflexes that do not require much effort once they have been repeated long enough and integrated into the brain-mind.

I have a previous piece that questions C. S. Lewisʼs AFR, and a piece that mentions Evangelical Christian philosophers who do not support brain-mind substance dualism but instead support brain-mind monism. But below I want to discuss differences of focus, prior prejudices or assertions that may explain why philosophers continue to disagree concerning the AFR.

  1. Atoms cannot think.

  2. Atoms cannot think logically nor rationally.

  3. There can be no guarantee of correspondence between what a brain made of atoms “thinks,” and the world “out there.”

Concerning 1) Atoms cannot think.

Agreed, an individual atom does not appear to be able to think. Nor has the question been answered how consciousness exists inside the conglomeration of atoms known as the human brain. Naturalists admit it is a great question, a mystery. But they also know that the brain is unlike any other organ, it is especially active, electro-chemically speaking, even magnetically speaking. Naturalists also know that the same atoms found in a rock, if arranged in a different fashion, make up a computer. So naturalists are aware that differing arrangements of atoms can produce different things. And that inspires naturalists to continue to learn more about the brain and its electro-chemical system and 100 trillion connections in an attempt to solve such a mystery. After all, if the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldnʼt.

Naturalists point out that both the brain and the sense organs attached to it are made of atoms. And the senses take in data that is stored in the brain. We see, hear, smell, taste and touch the human-sized world around us. Atoms are at the bottom of everything we sense, but we live at the top of things and neither the bottom nor the top need be an illusion. The top is just as real, in fact itʼs more real for us than the bottom of things. The top is what we sense, what our brain-minds process, analyze, compare and interact with, and that information is stored in the brain, which remains active (waves of electrical activity passing through it) even while we are at rest or asleep. What is it doing both day and night? Presumably itʼs processing, arranging, filing things away, both cementing and loosening memories and learned behaviors, basically, recreating the world, or a facsimile of the world, inside itself, and running that facsimile in a perpetual loop subject to both external and internal feedback, a process that we are not aware of consciously.

A naturalist thinks there is enough input from the world and other people and even from inner dialogues to keep the process of “thinking” running, and leading naturally from each thought in our life to the next. So there is no separate “decision” made by us to “think,” we are continually doing it, we move from thoughts about breakfast to the meaning of life. Sometimes when weʼre in the middle of one thought, deeply concentrating up on it, another pops up or slowly intrudes that is entirely different. Itʼs a perpetual process.

When we “think,” our memories, and the discrete sights, sounds, smells that went with them, including othersʼ descriptions of their experiences in books weʼve read, all come into play. A naturalist imagines that the brainʼs electro-chemical impulses, revolving perpetually through the brainʼs different regions, pick up relevant bits from different portions, unconsciously. There are approximately 100 trillion neuronal connections with electro-chemical impulses passing through many parts of the brain at the same time. Scientists have recently detected specific points or nodes in the brain where data is more focused in its flow, like major communication hubs of the internet. Some circuits are presumably more well traveled than others — the circuits that presumably make greater sense out of the world.

Naturalists donʼt deny that the process of consciousness and thinking remains a mystery. Advances have been in the investigation of memory formation, along with advances in brain mapping that allow the study of unique fractures in consciousness that occur during seizures … showing that it may be possible to differentiate consciousness into functional components, rather than assuming it is an indivisible quality of mind. We are also learning more about the brain-mindʼs experience of emotions, and their importance (emotions have been discovered to play a crucial role in impelling concentration — people with damage to their brains that impairs their emotions no longer “want” do anything, let alone ponder long trains of thought). According to Richard Restak, neuroscience experiments have taught us more in the last decade than in the previous hundreds of years about topics like the brain and time, simultaneity, cause-effect, empathy, memory, and our mental representations of ourselves and others. Weʼre learning more about the specificity or lack thereof of the brainʼs perceptions, the manner in which it draws basic distinctions, as well as the ways a brain can be fooled, or fools itself, and what types of cognitive biases brains share.

To sum up the naturalistsʼ position (I hope fairly), it seems to them that “we” donʼt move thoughts around in our heads. The perpetual movement of thoughts inside the brain-mind system is what constitutes “us.” Another way of putting it is that we donʼt have thoughts, nor do thoughts have us, instead we are thinking and consciousness personified. We are the process, the process is us.

To help me envision thinking as a natural process I sometimes toy with a particular analogy, that of the brain-mind sorting out discrete bits of data into broader patterns in a manner akin to a Pachinko gaming machine, but I only use the analogy in the broadest sense and this is not meant to explain how thoughts are stored in matter but merely to illustrate the way a simple arrangement of balls, pins and gravity leads to different patterns. Below is an image of such a machine:

Metal balls descend from the top of the machine and the balls bounce left or right after striking each pin on the way down. Sometimes a ball will bounce left and then right alternately all the way down to the bottom, winding up directly beneath the place from which it first entered the Pachinko maze. At other times a ball can wind up far from where it first entered, by bouncing right, right, right, or, left, left, left. When many balls are released a pattern emerges at the bottom in which some balls can be piled in a tall vertical stack, with less tall stacks to the right or left and no balls in other places. But eventually all the balls exit the maze in different patterns each time one plays the game. The analogy Iʼm drawing is with a process of “settling over a complex terrain.” The brainʼs structure with its 100 trillion inter-neural connections, is a complex terrain, one that started to form with oneʼs earliest experiences. In fact the brain of a baby begins with far more neurons than it will require to function later in life, and it soon begins to loose them at a high rate as the baby starts to make sense of the world. Some neurons are used more than others, oneʼs that make sense of the world via continual feedback from the world. The neurons that are not used to make sense of the world begin to wither away. If this did not happen, then we wouldnʼt have trains of thought, weʼd have too many junctions for our electro-chemical impulses to keep crossing over in too many directions, and weʼd never make sense of anything. It seems that spaces need to develop, separate trackways form, so only with the death of vast numbers of neurons will the most well used tracks appear so the baby begins to make increasing sense out of the world. At least thatʼs one theory Iʼve heard that explains the large numbers of neurons lost by children after birth. After that process of “whittling down neurons” one is left with a complex terrain that more closely fits reality, the world. The brainʼs electro-chemical impulses might be considered “the balls” bouncing round that complex terrain at the speed of electricity, and settling out into different patterns based on the complexity of the terrain.

A pertinent quotation before I end comment 1):

I have a problem with the “C” word (i.e. consciousness), because no-one ever defines what it means. Those who do define it do so using other pieces of undefined terminology, and when you ask for definitions you find that they are circular. We all have a personal experience of something that we have agreed to call “consciousness”, but this gives us only the illusion that we know what we are talking about.

My own (unoriginal) view is that “consciousness” is an emergent property of a large network of interacting neurons. The network observes itself, because each part of the network interacts with other parts of the network, so the various parts of the network create a “virtual reality” for each other. It is not a big leap to then see how the experience that we call “consciousness” is one and the same as this “virtual reality.” Also, the network is coupled to its external sensors (e.g. eyes, ears, etc), so the networkʼs “virtual reality” is steered around by external inputs.

A corollary is that lots of different types of network can have “consciousness.” (Steve)


Concerning 2) Atoms cannot think logically nor rationally.

True, individually and on a purely atomic level, atoms show no evidence of doing so. A naturalist might add that the only atoms in the cosmos that we know for certain can employ abstract logic and reasoning are those found in the human brain. But those are atoms working in unison, arranged in an order that is indebted to an evolutionary progression of species over time, and which also depend on the cerebral development and sensory input a human baby processes on its way toward adulthood, a baby that must also be raised by other humans. (Without being around humans that speak a language and who themselves are embedded in a culture with a long history of acquiring knowledge that baby might not even learn how to speak, let alone be able to employ abstract logic and reasoning, i.e., if raised instead by dogs, it would probably bark.)

Second, what are logic and reason? Are they things or processes? I suspect that language fools us into thinking that all nouns are objects of some sort, because by naming something we make it appear more static. Writing down words in a book indeed makes them appear more solid and static, but such words mean nothing unless humans are actively processing them, thinking about what they are reading with their mind, making the information in the book come alive.

It takes a human to recognize what makes sense and what doesnʼt. Humans generalized and eventually summarized what they discovered and named it, “the laws of logic.” But humans didnʼt stop there, Aristotleʼs basic rules are no longer all there is to logic. Today thereʼs fascinating discussions concerning the nature of logic, non-classical logic, logical pluralism, paradoxes, vagueness, contradiction, questions concerning liars and heaps, new essays on the a priori, the origins of reason, the origins of objectivity, epistemological problems of knowing, empty names, shadows, holes, the law of noncontradiction, transconsistency, as well as discussions of learning, development and conceptual changes. Click on the words highlighted in this sentence for book lists concerning such topics as the philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of mind.

How mysterious is it for a brain-mind to come up with something that it calls “logical distinctions?” Is it a mystery that some things resemble (or donʼt resemble) other things? “A equals A,” “A does not equal B,” “A is greater or lesser than B,” and so forth. Such recognitions, illustrated symbolically, are so basic that even the simplest and earliest of electronic computers was capable of running symbolic logic equations. In contrast note that computer programmers have had a devil of a time trying to develop a computer that can sense, recognize and react to similarities and differences in their immediate environment. Animals do far better than computers in the latter respect. Even amoeba can detect, pursue and trap prey, all without a brain. Above the level of amoeba thereʼs the worm Caenorhabditis elegans with only 302 neurons in its brain by which is it able to sense its surroundings and react to them. Join together 100 billion neurons with 100 trillion connections between them and you have a human brain, capable of much, much more.

The human brain can think symbolically, but of course if it couldnʼt we wouldnʼt have language in the first place, let alone logic and math. But logic is self-referential and axiomatic, starting with “A=A” just as math begins with “1=1.” Reality is trickier. And one must experiment, question and juggle ideas to test how they match up, and continue to experiment to discover more. Itʼs an ongoing process, but so is all thought.

Also, apparently due to natural limitations of mind and language, no one system can categorize and catalog all of nature. Librarians recognize such a difficulty whenever someone writes a book that crosses genres or crosses scientific disciplines, or when geographical boarders and names of countries change, along with the many different languages with words unique to them, not to mention the subtle way words may change their common usages or meanings over time. Psychology is like that too, attempting to define peopleʼs behavior patterns using a limited number of terms, but peopleʼs dispositions and motivations lie along a spectrum, making strict categorizations of each personʼs “psychology,” difficult to say the least.

Anyone can form their own system of categorization, but all system require perpetual tweaking, from the Dewey Decimal System of organizing books in a library — to the Library of Congress System — to Googleʼs system of ranking links via algorithms that seek hub sites that link to other hub sites with a similar focus, and comparing number of “hits” at each hub for different words — which provides an analogy for how a neural network functions, and as google continues to refine its algorithms based on the worldʼs search patterns, until perhaps the worldʼs search patterns can provide a simulation of the brainʼs own patterns, I say perhaps.

Some categorization systems are more comprehensive and capable of absorbing new categorizes as they arise or change, while others grown more unwieldy over time as categories continue to multiply and change.

What about the vagueness inherent in words themselves, the fuzziness? Take the word “heap.” If you start with a tiny particle of something, and add another, then another, exactly at what point do all the particles become a heap? At what exact point does a chairʼs width make it no longer a chair but a couch? Or think of the many things upon which one might sit upright, called “chairs,” everything from the standard four legged chair to an amorphous bean bag. There is no divine “chair” in some world of Platonic absolutes. Speaking of fuzziness, if we had the technical ability to replace individual base pairs in the DNA of a chimpanzee, making each of its genes more closely resemble those in the DNA of a human being, after which replacement of which DNA base pair could you now declare the chimpanzee to be a human being? What if one reversed such an experiment, changing a human being into a chimpanzee one DNA based pair at a time?

Lastly, what about mathematical equations? Are they more mysterious than language or logic? Or can they also be understood as human made models of reality as in the previous cases? An analogy may help us decide. Letʼs picture nature as consisting of squiggly lines. We want to understand those lines better. A scientist can not concentrate on all of reality with all its squiggly lines at once. So he concentrates on one squiggly line at a time, tying to isolate that squiggle and then tries to devise a mathematical model that approximates the movement of that line, hoping that such an equation continues to prove useful when he widens the picture in both time and space and reintroduces more of natureʼs other squiggly lines back into the picture, some of which may influence the movement of the original line in ways he canʼt predict. In other words, mathematics is like building models that mimic things we see. But models are not reality in themselves, nor are words equal to things. Nor are maps equal to the territory. Models, words, maps are approximations, the best we have to work with. For a recent book the delves into such questions see, Why Beliefs Matter: Reflections on the Nature of Science by E. Brian Davies, and also this list of books on the history and philosophy of mathematics.

Philosophical world views are models as well, not reality. Thereʼs always some way for a philosopher to add qualifications and hypothetical explanations and maintain their world view in the face of questions. And we each have our own estimates of the worth of othersʼ ideas and experiences, based on our own, along with whatever world view weʼve relied most heavily on in the past that made the most sense to us and which our brain-mind stubbornly maintains rather than switching world views every week. The fact that philosophical world views are all models also reminds me of the words of E. M. Cioran:

The great philosophical systems are actually no more than brilliant tautologies. What advantage is it to know that the nature of being consists in the “will to live,” in the “idea,” or in the whim of God or of Chemistry? A mere proliferation of words, subtle displacements of meanings. “What is” loathes the verbal embrace, and our inmost experience reveals to us nothing beyond the privileged and inexpressible moment. (E. M. Cioran, “Farewell to Philosophy” in A Short History of Decay)

Further reading: “Theismʼs Pyrrhic Victory” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy 40 : 4 (2002) by Paul Jude Naquin, Louisiana State Univ. Naquinʼs paper addresses Plantingaʼs evolutionary argument against naturalism in Warrant and Proper Function. “The goal of this essay is to show that traditional theism suffers from a malady similar to the one that Plantinga claims to find in metaphysical naturalism.”


Comment on 3) There can be no guarantee of correspondence between what a brain made of atoms “thinks,” and the world “out there.”

Well, “guarantees” are difficult to come by in any field of purely philosophical investigation. Joseph Campbell expressed the natural relationship between the human mind and the cosmos in this manner:

We are children of this planet … we have come forth from it. We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking. And the earth, together with its sun … came forth from a nebula; and that nebula, in turn, from space. No wonder then, if its laws and ours are the same.

Another interesting fellow, Robert Anton Wilson, put things this way:

I donʼt believe anything, but I have many suspicions. I strongly suspect that a world “external to,” or at least independent of, my senses exists in some sense. I also suspect that this world shows signs of intelligent design, and I suspect that such intelligence acts via feedback from all parts to all parts and without centralized sovereignty, like Internet; and that it does not function hierarchically, in the style an Oriental despotism, an American corporation or Christian theology. I somewhat suspect that Theism and Atheism both fail to account for such decentralized intelligence, rich in circular-causal feedback. I more-than-half suspect that all “good” writing, or all prose and poetry that one wants to read more than once, proceeds from a kind of “alteration in consciousness,” i.e., a kind of controlled schizophrenia. [Donʼt become alarmed — I think good acting comes from the same place.] I sometimes suspect that what Blake called Poetic Imagination expresses this exact thought in the language of his age, and that visits by “angels” and “gods” states it an even more archaic argot. These suspicions have grown over 72 years, but as a rather slow and stupid fellow I do not have the chutzpah to proclaim any of them as certitudes. Give me another 72 years and maybe Iʼll arrive at firmer conclusions.

Consider this essay my own personal experiment in philosophy, subject to revision of course.

It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds…when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. (Voltaire)

I wonder how will people react if it should be proven that the brain-mind is a sort of “machine?” Some will be crestfallen, exclaiming “Weʼre only machines! Woe is us!” But others may react differently, exclaiming, “Fascinating! I never knew machines could do that!”

— (E.T.B., paraphrasing Raymond Smullyan)


On the Mindʼs Imperfections and Other Tell Tale Signs that Thinking is a Function of the Natural World as Illustrated by Excerpts from the Works of Logan Pearsall Smith.


Self Analysis

Arenʼt they odd, the thoughts that float through oneʼs mind for no reason? But why not be frank? I suppose the best of us are shocked at times by the things we find ourselves thinking.

Microbes

But how is one to keep free from those mental microbes that worm-eat peopleʼs brains—those Theories and Diets and Enthusiasms and infectious Doctrines that we catch from what seem the most innocuous contacts? People go about laden with germs; they breath creeds and convictions on you as soon as they open their mouths. Books and newspapers are simply creeping with them—the monthly Reviews seem to have room for little else. Wherewithal then shall a young man cleanse his way; how shall he keep his mind immune to Theosophical speculations, and novel schemes of Salvation? Can he ever be sure that he wonʼt be suddenly struck down by the fever of Funeral or of Spelling Reform, or take to his bed with a new Sex Theory?

Edification

‘I must really improve my mind,’ I tell myself, and once more begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh in the tumbling chimneys.

Smithʼs remarks on Edification remind me of this quotation from a young and up and coming philosopher:

“I will begin with two ordinary cases of weakness of will. First, a case of akrasia (the state of acting against oneʼs better judgment) at bedtime. I am watching television and I realize that it is 2 a.m. I am tired, and I know that I really should go to bed. Tomorrow morning the Formal Epistemology Workshop begins, and I would like to attend as much of it as possible so I can learn something about formal epistemology. But the witty dialogue of the Buffy rerun and the winsome smile of the redheaded supporting actress have their grip, and even as I tell myself that I really should go to sleep, I stay where I am and keep watching television for another hour.” — Neil Sinhababu, “The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended,” Philosophical Review 118.4 (2009), pp. 498-99)

The Goat

In the midst of my anecdote a sudden misgiving chilled me—had I told about this Goat before? And then as I talked there gaped upon me—abyss opening beneath abyss—a darker speculation: when goats are mentioned, do I automatically and always tell this story about the Goat at Portsmouth?

Desires

These exquisite and absurd fancies of mine—little curiosities, and greedinesses, and impulses to kiss and touch and snatch, and all the vanities and artless desires that nest and sing in my heart like birds in a bush—all these, we are now told, are an inheritance from our prehuman past, and were hatched long ago in very ancient swamps and forests. But what of that? I like to share in the dumb delights of birds and animals, to feel my life drawing its sap from roots deep in the soil of Nature. I am proud of those bright-eyed, furry, four-footed or scaly progenitors, and not at all ashamed of my cousins, the Apes and Peacocks and streaked Tigers.

Longevity

‘But when you are as old as I am!’ I said to the young lady.

‘But I donʼt know how old you are,’ the young lady answered almost archly. We were getting on quite nice.

‘Oh, Iʼm endlessly old; my memory goes back almost for ever. I come out of the Middle Ages. I am the primitive savage we are all descended from; I believe in Devil-worship and the power of the Stars; I dance under the new Moon, naked and tattooed and holy. I am a Cave-dweller, a contemporary of Mastodons and Mammoths; I am Pleistocene and Eolithic, and full of the lusts and terrors of the great pre-glacial forests. But thatʼs nothing; I am millions of years older; I am an arboreal Ape, and aged Baboon, with all its instincts; I am a pre-simian quadruped, I have great claws, eyes that see in the dark, and a long prehensile tail.’

‘Good gracious!’ said the terrified young lady. Then she turned away and talked in a hushed voice with her other neighbor.

Weltanschauung

When, now then then, on a calm night I look up at the Stars, I reflect on the wonders of Creation, the unimportance of this Plant, and the possible existence of other worlds like ours. Sometimes the self-poised and passionless shining of those serene orbs is what I think of; sometimes Kantʼs phrase comes into my mind about the majesty of the Starry Heavens and the Moral Law; or I remember Xenophanes gazing up at the broad firmament, and crying, ‘The All is One!’ and thus, in that sublime assertion, enunciating for the first time the great doctrine of the Unity of Being.

But these thoughts are not my thoughts; they eddy though my mind like scraps of old paper, or withered leaves in the wind. What I really feel is the survival of a much more primitive mood—a view of the world that dates from before the invention of language. It has never been put into literature; no poet has sung of it, no historian of human thought has so much as alluded to it; astronomers in their glazed observatories, with their eyes glued to the ends of telescopes, seem to have had no notion of it.

But sometimes, far off at night, I have heard a dog howling at the Moon.

Apotheosis

But oh, those heavenly moments when I feel this three-dimensional universe too narrow to contain my Attributes; when a sense of the divine Ipseity invades me; when I know that my voice is the voice of Truth, and my umbrella Godʼs umbrella!

Last Words

I got up with Stoic fortitude of mind in the cold this morning: but afterwards, in my hot bath, I joined the school of Epicurus. I was a Materialist at breakfast; after that an Idealist; and as I smoked my first cigarette I transcendentally turned the world to vapor. But when I began to read The Times I had no doubt of an externally existing world.

So all the morning and all the afternoon opinions kept flowing into and out of my mind; till by the time the enormous day was over, it had been filled by most of the widely-known Theories of Existence, and emptied of them.

This long speculation of life, this syllogizing that always goes on inside me, this running over and over of hypothesis and surmise and supposition—one day this infinite Argument will have ended, the debate will be for ever over, I shall have come to an indisputable conclusion, and my brain will be at rest.

Tim McGrew and the Ring of Truth — The Undesigned Coincidences in Scripture? Or Redactions with Marcan Priority?

Dr. Timothy McGrew

On Jan. 9 2011 Dr. Tim McGrew delivered a sermon titled, “The Ring of Truth” at First Baptist, Keener, Lousiana. You may listen to it here. It was delivered in a heartfelt fashion and meant to confound those who do not know Christ by presenting evidence of “the undesigned coincidences in Scripture,” based on an “old book” that McGrew had been reading recently.

I listened to the sermon because it was noted on the facebook group, Dissecting Apology.

Below are my comments.

Tim McGrewʼs failure to enlighten his audience concerning the most widely accepted answer to the “synoptic problem” (Marcan Priority) was in evidence throughout his sermon.

  1. The first point Tim raised concerning what he called the “undesigned coincidences” in the Gospels is that the Gospel of Matthew mentions Jesus being struck and the guards saying “prophesy, who struck you?” Tim says this makes no sense, striking a person and asking “who struck you,” without adding that Jesus was blindfolded. And then we read in Luke that indeed, Jesus was “blindfolded.” McGrew thinks this constitutes an undesigned coincidence between those two Gospels, possibly even evidence of separate eye witness testimony to the same event. But McGrew neglects to mention the mainstream explanation that both Matthew and Luke reproduce over 90% of Mark, the earliest Gospel. And Mark mentions, “they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, ‘Prophesy’!” Therefore all that McGrew has demonstrated via his first example is that Matthew and Luke both reproduced a great amount of Markʼs story but in this one case Matthew sloppily forgot to add mention of the “blindfold,” while Luke did include that bit from Mark and added the phrase “…who struck you?” So Tim has demonstrated yet another reason to accept that Mark was the earliest Gospel written, followed by Matthew and Luke that built their stories on Mark.

  2. Timʼs second example likewise points to Marcan priority over that of Matthew. Tim mentioned the story of sick people whom Matthew says came to Jesus “when it was evening,” without explaining why they waiting till eventing to come to Jesus for healing. But the earlier Gospel, Mark, contains the same story and explains “it was the Sabbath,” and thatʼs why the sick waited “till evening” to come to Jesus in Matthewʼs version. Therefore, Matthew assumed Markan priority and the first two examples that McGrew discussed both demonstrate Marcan priority. They demonstrate nothing miraculous.

    At this point, based on Timʼs first two examples, I began to suspect that Tim got hold of a book so old that its author still assumed MATTHEAN PRIORITY, namely that Matthew was the first Gospel composed, not Mark. But most scholars agree today that Mark was the first Gospel composed, NOT MATTHEW. See this short video on Marcan priority, click here to watch.

  3. 3) Timʼs third example involved the Gospel story about three apostles going up a mountain and seeing Jesus transformed, glowing, along with great Hebrew prophets. The story has been named the transfiguration, and itʼs hard to imagine anyone remaining silent about seeing such a miracle. Thatʼs why Tim said Lukeʼs ending of the story (“they told no one”) made little sense, and why he claimed that by an “undesigned coincidence,” Mark explained Luke, since Markʼs version of the story ends with, “Jesus charged them that they tell no one [until later].” But this is not an undesigned coincidence itʼs a third example of Marcan priority in action, since Mark was the earlier Gospel and the others followed Mark, sometimes with little explanation. In fact this old book that Tim is citing provides many of the basic reasons why scholars eventually came to reject the traditional view that Matthew was the first Gospel composed, and instead began arguing in favor of Marcan priority.

    I could even add a note concerning the idea that the apostles came down from the mountain on which Jesus had been transfigured and “told no one,” since that applies not only to Markʼs tale of the transfiguration but also to his tale of the empty tomb, i.e., Markʼs Gospel ends with this sentence, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Some scholars a bit less devout than Dr. McGrew suggest that the use of the idea that “no one was told” might signify that both the miraculous story of the “empty tomb” and the miraculous “transfiguration” only began circulating later among early Christians and were not part of the earliest Christian stories about Jesus. If the writer admits that “no one was told” about such things till later, then people only heard about such stories later. So such amazing miracles might be later legendary accretions, not part of the earliest stories about Jesus. Also in both the case of the transfiguration and the empty tomb tale, only three people are mentioned as having seen either: “Three male apostles” in the case of the transfiguration, and “three women” in the case of the empty tomb. In both cases according to Mark, “no one was told” about such miraculous tales until some time later.

  4. Timʼs fourth example involves the fourth Gospel,the Gospel of John, but it raises no questions since most scholars agree the fourth Gospel was the last one composed and drew upon previous stories found in earlier Gospels. Tim points to the story about “the feeding of the five thousand,” which appears in both Luke and John, and which both agree took place around “Bethsaida.” John, a later Gospel than Luke, added that the apostle “Philip” was from “Bethsaida,” thus adding an apostleʼs name and some words from “Philip” to the story in Luke. There is no mystery in that case, just later legendary accretion. The story of the feeding of the five thousand has been embellished. Speaking of which, the Gospel of John also added a new line from “Philip” in chapter 6, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” The author put that new line right at the beginning of Jesusʼ ministry, then Philip immediately goes to Nathaniel, who meets Jesus and declares, “You are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” This is unlike the earlier Gospels in which declarations of Jesusʼ “son of God” status and messiahship only appear later in Jesusʼ ministry, and Peter is the only one brave enough to speak them, and Jesus applauds Peterʼs perception. Therefore one must at least question the Gospel of Johnʼs stories about Philip, Nathaniel, et al, in comparison to whatʼs in the earlier Gospels. And not only in this case but also in others the Gospel of John goes overboard in announcing who Jesus is. While the earlier Gospels typically have Jesus keeping even his Messiahship a secret.

    The Gospel of John is very heavy on everyone knowing who Jesus is right from the start of Jesusʼ ministry. The prologue of the Gospel of John leaves little doubt as to who the author wished to picture Jesus as being, and this last written Gospel also has John the Baptist speak about Jesus as if the Baptist knew Jesus was “the lamb of God,” right from the start.

    In fact the Gospel of John admits it was written “that ye may believe,” and ends with “it is more blessed to believe without seeing,” and that “if all the things Jesus did were written down the world probably couldnʼt contain all the books,” which strike me as special pleading and less than convincing hyperbole.

    The Gospel of John also consists of seven miraculous signs followed by “I am” statements, “I am the way the truth and the light, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the light of the world, etc.” This is not the Jesus from the earlier three Gospels about whose Messiahship he told his own apostles to remain silent. Furthermore, Jesus in the Gospel of John never speaks a single parable (compare the earlier Gospels in which Jesus speaks to the people “in nothing but parables”).

    So how reliable is the Gospel of John historically speaking? Scholars doubt that it contains many actual words of the historical Jesus, especially when compared with the parables of Jesus in the earlier three Gospels.

    Even the story about Nicodemus meeting Jesus at night in John seems suspect since the conversation includes Nicodemus being confused about a word that has a double meaning in Greek, but only a single meaning in Aramaic, and Aramaic is the language that would have been spoken at that time and place. So the story of Jesus meeting Nicodemus “at night” and revealing the secret of being “born again,” may also be an invention. Click here to read more on that question.

    There is much to be said about differences between John and the earlier Gospels and theologians like James D. G. Dunn have already said them as well as other prominent theologians. But Iʼve included a summary of some of the points raised if you click here and here.

    McGrew contends that the story in the Gospel of John has the “ring of truth, fiction isnʼt like this.” I would say the opposite, based on the examples of Marcan priority above, and based on comparisons of the first three Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) with the last written Gospel (John).

    The most prominent view among biblical scholars, for obvious reasons, is that the Gospels are literary works, with Matthew and Luke reproducing over 90% of Mark right down to incidental connecting phrases in Greek. (Greek wasnʼt even the language Jesus and other first century Jews spoke, which was Aramaic.) The literary roots of the Gospel tree lie in Mark which was edited and added to by Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of John came last. Based on the sophistication of its theological ideas one would expect it to be the result of later contemplation and speculation concerning Jesus, it also begins not with Jesusʼ baptism as in Mark, nor with Jesusʼ birth as in Matthew and Luke, but even earlier than Jesusʼ birth, i.e, “in the beginning,” mimicking Genesis.

    And speaking of Timʼs mention of the Gospel of John adding “Philip” the apostle to the story of the “feeding of the five thousand,” and adding the city that was mentioned in Lukeʼs earlier Gospel as Philipʼs “home town,” that is not the only example of the Gospel of John amalgamating names and details from earlier Gospels in order to create new stories peculiar only to the Gospel of John.

    Another case even more obvious is that of the story found only in The Gospel of John, of “Lazarus” and his sisters, “Mary and Martha,” and how “Mary sat at Jesusʼ feet,” “anointed them” with perfume, and “wiped them with her hair” in the town of “Bethany.” (John 12) Stories that contain all the details employed later to form the story in John are found in the earlier three Gospels:

    Mark 14:3—An unnamed woman anointed Jesusʼ head in Bethany at the house of Simon the Leper.

    Luke 7:37-38—An unnamed sinner anointed Jesusʼ feet and wiped them with her hair in Nain at the house of a Pharisee.

    Luke 10:38-39—Mary, the sister of Martha, listened at Jesusʼ feet in an unnamed town at her house.

    Matthew and Lukeʼs tales could be later variations of the original story in Mark, i.e., edits, redactions, as Strauss suggested, with the story in the Gospel of John being the final and most elaborate variant, amalgamating information from the previous stories.

    Did you ever get confused about similar events like those listed above? Say, in a Sunday School discussion, you mixed up the name of the town where the woman anointed Jesusʼ “head” with the name of the town where the woman anointed Jesusʼ “feet.” Was it Nain or Bethany? Or you confused the woman who “anointed” Jesusʼ feet with the woman who “listened at” Jesusʼ feet? The unnamed sinner lady in Nain, became, until you looked it up, Mary, sister of Martha? Well, something like that appears to have happened in the minds of Christians before the Gospel of John was composed, the last written of the four Gospels. By that time, similar persons and events from the earlier Gospels may have become amalgamated in peopleʼs minds. In John 12:3, Mary, the woman who simply “listened” at Jesusʼ feet per an earlier Gospel (Luke) is now also anointing them and wiping them with her hair in the last written Gospel (John)! And the unnamed woman of the town of Nain who wiped Jesusʼ feet with her hair in the home of a Pharisee (Luke) became “Mary, Marthaʼs sister who wiped Jesusʼ feet with her hair” (John). And Mary whose hometown was not named in Luke is now given a hometown named “Bethany,” based on the earlier story in Mark about a woman who anointed Jesusʼ “head” and lived in “Bethany.” And the Mary in Luke who is not said to have spread any ointment on Jesus is now depicted as have spread expensive “spikenard ointment” on Jesusʼ feet, just as the lady in the earlier Gospel, Mark (and possibly Luke) did. Only this time it is not at “Simon the Leperʼs house,” nor at the house of “a Pharisee,” but at “Maryʼs house.”

    If the Gospel of John was composed last, after such stories were known from the earlier Gospels itʼs easy to see how people could have combined each name and place cited in the earlier Gospels to create the new story that appears for the first time in the Gospel of John.

    Furthermore, only the Gospel of John depicts “Lazarus” as a real person. Luke mentions a real Mary and Martha, but says nothing about them having a brother, nor in which town they lived, nor anything about Mary sitting at Jesusʼ feet nor anointing them. So the Gospel of John appears to combine a town name, sisterʼs names, anointing stories, and a figure in a parable that are all found in earlier Gospels (the “Lazarus” figure from a parable in Luke), and formed a new story to demonstrate that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life.”

    In the parable in Luke a poor beggar named “Lazarus” dies and goes to “Abrahamʼs bosom,” while a rich man suffering in nearby “Hades” sees “Lazarus” and pleads with Abraham to “send Lazarus to my Fatherʼs house, to warn my brothers…so they may repent [and avoid going to Hades],” to which the answer was, “… neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.”

    Think about it… a “Lazarus” who dies and someone who hopes Lazarus will be “raised from the dead” to “persuade others” “to repent.” But such persuasion is predicted not to work. Thatʼs in Luke.

    Now compare the last written Gospel, John. “Lazarus” is now a concrete person, the “brother” of Mary and Martha mentioned in Luke. (Neither is this Lazarus a poor “beggar,” since heʼs rich enough to have his own tomb.) He is “raised from the dead”—a parable come true.

    And, as in the parable, such a miracle fails to persuade those who refuse to listen to Moses and the prophets, namely the Pharisees: “Many therefore of the Jews, who had come to Mary and beheld what He had done, believed in Him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees, and told them the things which Jesus had done.” The Pharisees refuse to repent, and even decide, after hearing of this great miracle, to seize Jesus and have him executed. What a coincidence. Two “Lazaruses,” one in Luke and one in John, both die, both illustrate that “even though he be raised from the dead, they will not be persuaded,” in fact, “Lazarusʼs resurrection” in the Gospel of John elicits even a stronger negative response.

    Not surprisingly, when you add a whole new miracle found in none of the other Gospels, and make it the focal point for the Phariseesʼ decision to have Jesus seized and executed, you have to do something with the fact that all three of the earlier Gospels agreed that it was Jesusʼ overturning of the tables in the Temple that made the Pharisees decide to have Jesus crucified. So the author(s) of John decided to move the table-turning episode from the end of Jesusʼ ministry to the beginning of Jesusʼ ministry. All so that the Pharisees would decide to have Jesus seized and killed due to the unsettling nature of the stunning new resurrection miracle that only appears in the last Gospel.

    The moving of Jesusʼ “table-turning” episode from the end of all of the earlier Gospels to the beginning of the last written Gospel makes it appear quite obvious that it was now necessary to make room at the end of their Gospel to display the totally new miracle and make it the new reason why the Pharisees decided to seize and crucify Jesus.

    This new resurrection story is also featured in the same late Gospel that concentrates on seven miraculous signs in Jesusʼ ministry, the Lazarus miracle being used to illustrate that Jesus was “the resurrection and the life.” The author has Jesus speak those very words, along with a lot of “I ams,” one after each miraculous sign. How unlike the Jesus who is portrayed in the earlier three Gospels, who asked his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Messiah, and who did not speak in such an “I am” manner even after healing people, performing exorcisms, or raising the synagogue rulerʼs daughter who was “at the point of death” (in Markʼs version) or who had “just died” (per Matthewʼs version).

    The Gospel of John is primarily a theological creation. It does not begin with the words of Jesus, but with the authorʼs own theological claim about Jesusʼ identity (“In the beginning was the Word…”) Also in the first chapter the author has John the Baptist state twice (“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,” and, “Behold the Lamb of God” John 1:29,36), and has Jesus die at the same moment as the Passover lambs are being slaughtered. But no such words are spoken by John the Baptist in any of the earlier Gospels, nor is Jesus sacrificed on the same day as the lambs in the earlier Gospels. In fact in the Gospel of John the last meal of Jesus was simply an “evening meal” while Passover was approaching.

    The Gospel of John is also the only one that includes Jesusʼ long-winded prayer in the garden, allegedly spoken on the eve of his death. Keeping in mind that the latter prayer was uttered only once in Jesusʼ life, and while the apostles were all asleep, or at least falling in and out of sleep, it seems quite a feat to be able to recall and later write down all twenty-six verses of it (chapter 17). The Gospel of John also contains a long sermon by John the Baptist, but it sounds more like the authorʼs introduction to the Gospel than any of the Baptistʼs spoken words in the three earlier Gospels. Scholars also point out that for a work traditionally assigned to “John the apostle” itʼs odd that it fails to include any mention of “the transfiguration,” an event that only John and two other apostles allegedly witnessed according to the earlier three Gospels. Lastly, the Gospel of John ends by stating that it was written “that ye may believe.” How objective could such a work be?

  5. Timʼs fifth example involves the ending of the Gospel of John wherein is found a scene thatʼs indebted to something in an earlier Gospel, Matthew. No mystery there, not when you consider the chronological order.

  6. Timʼs sixth example involves Jesusʼ response to Pilateʼs question, “Are you the king of the Jews?” and Jesusʼ reply, “You have said it.” After which the Gospel of Luke says that Pilate “released him.” Tim says that “You said it,” is like the English idiom, “You said it yourself.” Though the latest Anchor Bible commentary on Mark translates Jesusʼ response as “You are saying it,” and the commentator adds that such a phrase “merely shifts the responsibility for a positive evaluation of Jesusʼ kingship onto Pilate” (as pointed out in the New Anchor Bible Yale Commentary on Mark by Joel Marcus). Tim wonders why Pilate would release anyone who admitted he was “a king.” Though it would actually have to be Pilate admitting Jesus was a king. At any rate, Tim then reads some passages from the last written Gospel, John, to compare them with Lukeʼs, and Tim says the passages in John “explain” the Luke, because John has Jesus explain to Pilate, “my kingdom is not of this world.” So Tim thinks John explains Luke as an “undesigned coincidence” demonstrating separate eyewitness testimony.

    But, aside from the fact that no apostles are recorded as being there to hear any of these alleged conversations. And aside from the fact that the stories we have about Jesusʼ trial before Pilate were all composed by Christians who DID believe Jesus to be the king of the Jews, itʼs not surprising that such a scene exists in the Gospels.

    And Tim leaves out the fact that the Jews are the ones bringing Jesus to Pilate, probably already bruised and bound, in a position of impotence, the exact opposite of the unfettered power associated with kingship, and the Jews are the ones accusing Jesus of claiming to be “a king.” So the irony is in the Jews turning in one of their own bound and bruised and making all manner of accusations against him. In other words, Pilate is depicted as being baited by the Jews to kill one of their own, probably an amusing situation when you consider the essence of the scene. Matthew follows the Markan version closely and fills in the essence of the scene a bit more, adding, “For he [Pilate] knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.”

    The question is, do we have to look forward in time to the Gospel of John (per McGrew) to explain why the earlier Gospel of Luke said Pilate found Jesus “innocent?” Or should we perhaps look backward in time to the earlier Gospel, Mark, for a reason why Luke summarized the scene as one in which Pilate found Jesus “innocent?” I think Marcan priority explains Lukeʼs mention of “innocence” better than later Johnnine literary additions to the story.

    In Mark, “The chief priests accused him [Jesus] of many things. So again Pilate asked him, ‘Arenʼt you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.’ But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.” There is nothing in Mark, the earliest Gospel, about Pilate finding Jesus “innocent.” Mark only stresses that “Jesus still made no reply.” And Pilate was “amazed” enough to give the people a chance to set Jesus free since it was supposedly part of the Passover festivalʼs regular practice that Pilate would agree to free one prisoner to the people. [Was there ever such a practice? How much of that tale is historical and how much legendary?]

    So we have in the earliest Gospel no mention of Pilate finding Jesus “innocent,” we have only “amazement” at Jesusʼ “not replying” to all the accusations being made against him.

    Later, in Matthew we have what Mark wrote plus this, “For he [Pilate] knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.”

    Only in Luke do we finally have the claim that Pilate found Jesus “innocent.”

    And then by the time the Gospel of John was written the story grew to a conversation between Pilate and Jesus:

    “Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ ‘Is that your own idea,’ Jesus asked, ‘or did others talk to you about me?’ ‘Am I a Jew?’ Pilate replied, ‘Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?’ Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’ ‘You are a king, then!’ said Pilate. Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’”

    The chronological development of the story of Jesusʼ trial before Pilate from Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, as I have pointed out above, has all the marks of the ring of fiction, not truth.

For more info see Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite by L. Michael White (Chair in Classics and Christian Origins and director of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins at the University of Texas at Austin). It covers a host of essential topics. And click here for additional works that intelligent Christians ought to read.

The Shroud of Turin: Points to Ponder

Before introducing questions raised by John Calvin (the Protestant Reformer) concerning the Catholic relic known as the “Shroud of Turin,” letʼs examine the images below:

Shroud of Turin

The full shroud (the burn marks on the sides of the cloth were from a church fire in 1532).

Points to Ponder

  1. The face on the shroud seems abnormally long and skinny, especially considering that the shroud was draped over the face in a rounded-contoured sort of way, which means the face itself had to have been slightly skinnier than the already abnormally skinny impression of the face on the shroud. The face also seems out of place when compared with those of other middle aged Jews during the Roman period in Palestine as seen when you compare the final image above with the previous ones. Instead, the face on the shroud seems more in place in European medieval religious art.

    People who defend the shroud as authentic claim that Jesusʼ head may have been bound by a separate cloth, making the face appear skinnier. But its overall bony structure still appears like an abnormally long and thin face. Another suggestion by shroud defenders is that Jesus was emaciated. But apart from an alleged fast in the wilderness at the very beginning of Jesusʼ ministry, the Gospels do not suggest Jesus was emaciated growing up, nor that he was emaciated after that original fast in the wilderness. Instead the Gospel writers say that Jesus attended a wedding, was invited to dine by others, and he was accused of eating with sinners presumably on a fairly regular basis, Jesus himself said in a parable that it was not time to fast during his ministry, and there was plenty of food left over after one of his alleged miracles, and Mary and Martha prepared a meal for Jesus and his disciples, and Jesus had enough energy to turn over tables and beat people out of the temple with a cord, and Jesus and his disciples also enjoyed a last supper.

    Close-up of the face on the shroud

  2. Authors Joe Nickell, in 1983, and Gregory S. Paul in 2010, separately state that the proportions of the image are not realistic. Paul stated that the face and proportions of the shroud image are impossible, that the figure cannot represent that of an actual person and that the posture was inconsistent. They argued that the forehead on the shroud is too small; and that the arms are too long and of different lengths and that the distance from the eyebrows to the top of the head is non-representative. They concluded that the features can be explained if the shroud is a work of a Gothic artist. [Wikipedia 1/2/2011]

  3. If God really saw to it that a magical image of Jesus was preserved on a sheet of linen for 2,000 years, why is there controversy? Couldnʼt God have ensured the conclusive nature of tests?

    Instead we see shroud defenders complaining that the pieces of the shroud submitted for C-14 dating in 1988 were not pieces of the actual shroud, but much younger pieces taken from linen stitched to the shroudʼs boarder over 1000 years after the shroud itself was first woven. So after God had specially created and preserved this holy relic for 2,000 years, God couldnʼt also inspire someone to submit the right pieces for scientific dating measurements?

    Instead, the Church prays and surrenders some pieces of the shroud and God leaves the world with more controversy?

    In 1988 three different laboratories (in Arizona, Oxford and Zürich) were asked to perform SEVERAL tests on each of FOUR samples taken from different parts of the cloth of the shroud of Turin. This was an unprecedented number of samples, one set from the shroud and three control samples: the laboratories were not told which sample came from the shroud and which from the control objects. Sample 1 was from the shroud, sample 2 from linen from a Nubian tomb of the eleventh to twelfth centuries CE, sample 3 was linen from a mummy of the early second century CE and sample 4 was from threads removed from the cope of St Louis dʼAnjou dated to 1290-1310 CE. So it was a blind test, including control group samples to eliminate possible bias and demonstrate that the instruments were functioning properly for the dating of threads from diverse time periods. The result was that the three non-shroud samples showed their expected dates, and the shroud threads showed a uniform set of dates in all three laboratories, i.e., the linen from which the threads were taken was manufactured between 1262 and 1384 CE, medieval linen.

    At first some shroud defenders claimed some bacterial residue or ash from a fire had not been properly washed off the threads before processing them, but each lab did a thorough chemical cleansing of the threads before burning them up and measuring the C-14 in them and they achieved uniform dating results (medieval linen, between 1260 CE and 1390 CE with 95% confidence). Uniform results were also achieved for the other threads tested which demonstrated that the test was accurate because the dates were known for the other threads.

    Same face, but seen as a Photographic Negative

  4. Thatʼs why shroud defenders now prefer claiming that the pieces were from a portion of the shroud that was stitched to the main portion over a thousand years later than when the main portion was first woven.

    Of course one might think it would be relatively easy to spot differences in linen a thousand years apart in age. Even Jesus warned in a parable against trying to stitch new cloth to old, let alone cloth a thousand years newer to cloth a thousand years older.

    Shroud defenders ought to be petitioning the church vigorously and constantly for threads from what they consider to be original sections of the linen. Even less material is required for testing today due to the heightened precision of todayʼs instruments. (And more impressive statistical methods of analysis have also been devised. See a point raised further below.) And if the date is “first century” they can rub the results in the noses of shroud doubters! Shouldnʼt the Catholic church at least consider surrendering more threads in light of its recent bad press that has catalyzed doubts concerning its openness and divine guidance? Instead, note the churchʼs reaction, the Catholic church claims simultaneously that it is not a matter of faith that Christians believe the shroud to be authentic, such a belief is not necessary for anyoneʼs salvation, and they add that they are all in favor of leaving the question of its investigation up to science, but neither are they anxious to surrender any more fibers for dating or examination purposes. Oh, perhaps another generation or two they will start to consider turning over more threads, but not now. Such a reluctant attitude makes sense from their point of view, based on a cost benefit analysis, it will cost the Catholic church far more if threads continue being dated to the medieval period, than if they can keep the “mystery” alive. (Itʼs said that perhaps 2 million may visit the shroud this year.)

    3-D Plot of the face on the shroud of Turin.

  5. Some medieval popes assumed the image on the shroud was that of Jesus, while one recent pope even approved of the veneration of the image thatʼs on the shroud, but the Catholic church (its Magisterium) has never officially declared whether the shroud is genuine or a forgery, which is the attitude the church has toward any object whose belief is not necessary for salvation, but whose veneration ensures that the church continues to receive offerings and praise. Speaking of relics, Catholic churches from medieval times till today have claimed to possess vials of the blood of Jesus, vials of the Virgin Maryʼs milk, the Holy Diaper (bits of Jesusʼ diapers), the Holy Foreskin (from baby Jesusʼ circumcision), the Holy Grail (the cup used at the last supper), the Holy Sponge (used to feed Jesus vinegar during the crucifixion), the Holy Lance (used to pierce his side), the Holy Coat (in which Jesus marched to his death), the Holy Cloth (on which Jesus wiped his sweaty bloody face on the way to the cross), the Holy Loincloth (that Jesus wore and soiled when he died on the cross), fragments & splinters of the cross on which Jesus died, not to mention over 43 known claims of “shrouds of Jesus” in Europe.

    Two possible reconstructions of the face on the shroud by artist Jan Reijnierse.

    Speaking solely of the shroud of Turin, its past remains cloaked in controversy, politics, and profits. The shroud was only first introduced to the public in 1353 and was denounced as a forgery almost immediately. Documents even show that the artist confessed. In fact the majority opinion among learned Catholics at the beginning of the 1900s, and incorporated into the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912 was that the shroud was a pious forgery. The Catholic Encyclopedia article ends with these words:

    “Lastly, the difficulty must be noticed that while the witnesses of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries speak of the image as being then so vivid that the blood seemed freshly shed, it is now darkened and hardly recognizable without minute attention. On the supposition that this is an authentic relic dating from the year A.D. 30, why should it have retained its brilliance through countless journeys and changes of climate for fifteen centuries, and then in four centuries more have become almost invisible? On the other hand if it be a fabrication of the fifteenth century this is exactly what we should expect.”

  6. What did one of the founders of Protestantism, John Calvin, think of the Catholic Churchʼs acceptance of offerings and praise for dubious relics, including the “Shroud of Turin?” Not much. Below are some of the questions Calvin dared to ask in his Treatise on Relics:

    “How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christʼs death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet? This fact undoubtedly deserved to be recorded. St. John, in his Gospel, relates even how St. Peter, having entered the sepulcher, saw the linen clothes lying on one side, and the napkin that was about his head on the other; but he does not say that there was a miraculous impression of our Lordʼs figure upon these clothes, and it is not to be imagined that he would have omitted to mention such a work of God if there had been any thing of this kind.” (1543, 238)

    An image NOT from the shroud, but a composite of what the average Jewish male looked like based on measurements taken from several skulls of middle aged Jewish men from Roman period Palestine.

    As to that image, Calvin notes that the appearance on a single cloth of such a “full-length likeness of a human body” gives its own evidence of falsehood. He observes:

    “Now, St. Johnʼs Gospel, chapter nineteen, says that Christ was buried according to the manner of the Jews; and what was their custom? This may be known by their present custom on such occasions, as well as from their books, which describe the ancient ceremony of interment, which was to wrap the body in a sheet, to the shoulders, and to cover the head with a separate cloth. This is precisely how the evangelist described it, saying, that St. Peter saw on one side the clothes with which the body had been wrapped, and on the other the napkin from about his head.”

    In brief, concludes Calvin, “either St. John is a liar,” or anyone who promotes such a shroud is “convicted of falsehood and deceit” (Calvin 1543, 239).

    Calvin also has this to say about the various Holy Shrouds:

    “Now, I ask whether those persons were not bereft of their senses who could take long pilgrimages, at much expense and fatigue, in order to see sheets, of the reality of which there were no reasons to believe, but many to doubt; for whoever admitted the reality of one of these sudaries [shrouds3] shown in so many places, must have considered the rest as wicked impostures set up to deceive the public by the pretense that they were each the real sheet in which Christʼs body had been wrapped. But it is not only that the exhibitors of this one and the same relic give each other mutually the lie, they are (what is far more important) positively contradicted by the Gospel.” (1543, 237)

    His reference to shrouds at “so many places” is not an overstatement, since there were once some forty-three of them in Europe alone, according to Thomas Humber in The Sacred Shroud (1978, 78). [Calvin quotations above were reproduced from this article that also discusses how we know that Calvin was addressing the shroud that is currently in Turin.]

  7. A recent paper, Carbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin: Partially Labeled Regressors and the Design of Experiments, May 4, 2010, suggests that the Carbon-dating of the shroud in 1988 was less conclusive statistically speaking, than claimed, but also suggests ways to make future tests even more conclusive, statistically speaking. I quote from the paper:

    “We establish the existence of a trend in the results [of the shroudʼs carbon dating] and indicate how better experimental design might have enabled stronger conclusions to have been drawn from this multi-center experiment… Until less intrusive methods of age assessment are developed, samples will presumably be confined to the edges of the TS [=Turin Shroud]. However, the preceding discussion does provide guidance on a suitable design. If n samples are to be taken, the perimeter of the material should be divided into n intervals of as equal size as possible. Locations are then selected at random within each interval, preferably subject to a restriction on the minimum distance between samples. The intervals might also be chosen to exclude corners of the material, if it is thought that contamination of these regions is more likely.”

    It appears itʼs time for shroud defenders to begin a vigorous campaign to get the Catholic church to allow more samples to be tested, and not just from the edges where the so-called “1,000 year younger” cloth [sic] is found.

Shroud Skeptics Resources

Catholic Skeptics

Protestant Skeptics

Other Skeptics