Senate Dunk It Or Debunk It! Now disc: The Oak Island Money Pit

Time for a re-boot me thinks SuperWatto!

 

Sure. Got a topic?

 

Alright alright it is indeed high time for a new round.
Time for...

THE SHROUD OF TURIN

The shroud of Turin is the actual clean linen cloth in which Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus Christ (Matthew 27:59). This relic, though blackened by age, bears the faint but distinct impress of a human form both back and front. The cloth is about 13 1/2 feet long and 4 1/4 feet wide. It is clear from the marks perceived that the body was laid lengthwise along one half of the shroud while the other half was doubled back over the head to cover the whole front of the body from the face to the feet.



That the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is taken for granted, in various pronouncements of the Holy See cannot be disputed. An Office and Mass "de Sancta Sindone" was formerly approved by Julius II in the Bull "Romanus Pontifex" of 25 April, 1506, in the course of which the Pope speaks of "that most famous Shroud (præclarissima sindone) in which our Savior was wrapped when he lay in the tomb and which is now honorably and devoutly preserved in a silver casket." Moreover, the same Pontiff speaks of the treaties upon the precious blood. Composed by his predecessor, Sixtus IV, in which Sixtus states that in the Shroud "men may look upon the true blood and portrait of Jesus Christ himself."

Just a couple months ago, new research proved that the Shroud stems from the first century.

This is the real thing, people. Or ya wanna prove me wrong?

 

How much of an exact copy is the one picture which zooms in on the face vs the one that is an overall body shot? I'm thinking in terms of evidence presented (which has nothing to do with this topic) by an author named Erich von Daniken in his book Chariots of the Gods. In the book, von Daniken provides images from Aztec temples which supposedly show an alien "astronaut" blasting off in a space craft. Except when compared side by side with the actual stone images, von Daniken's "pictures" darken in some areas to diminish them, while highlighting other sections to focus on them based on what he either wanted to others to see, or what he subconsciously saw himself. In other words, von Daniken's images didn't automatically prove or disprove his idea that aliens visited ancient Aztecs, but there was a bias contained within his own copies of the actual images carved in stone, because the actual images were less "space-like" than von Daniken detailed.

What I'm asking is:
1)has it been established that an actual 1st Century human was wrapped in this-DNA, etc... or is just a personification of a different image on the cloth? (or maybe absent of living tissue, carbon, etc.. the cloth simply covered a bronze statue or other artwork that bled though and was found?)
2)Would a normal decaying body thousands of years old leave a dark impression in a cloth, or is this something only Jesus' nature would burn into an image?
3)Do Biblical scholars agree that the actual Jesus Christ looks like the popular depiction of-ie, long hair, beard, moustache, etc...

 

I'm questioning that 'new research' only as it's proving tricky to find other sources mentioning it, and it's very different from past testing.

 

I think I have a book on this somewhere. I will see if I can dig out.

 

Part of the reason it seems the dating is still up in the air is because of a study published in 2005 by Raymond N. Rogers, retired Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Volume 425, Issues 1-2, Pages 189-194. Titled "Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin," the paper concludes: "As unlikely as it seems, the sample used to test the age of the Shroud of Turin in 1988 was taken from a rewoven area of the Shroud. Pyrolysis-mass spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the Shroud."
The 1988 study referred to was the most famous debunk of the Shroud as a pre-medieval artifact in that it was the samples taken at that stage which were dated to circa. 1500 or so. Where the error happened was because of the Shroud's long history: on December 4, 1532, the shroud was damaged in a fire in the Sainte Chapelle, Chambéry (where the shroud was housed at the time), seriously damaging all its furnishings and fittings. Because the Shroud was protected by four locks, Canon Philibert Lambert and two Franciscans summoned the help of a blacksmith to prise open the grille. By the time they succeed, Marguerite of Austria's Shroud casket/reliquary as made to her orders by Lievin van Latham has become melted beyond repair by the heat. But the Shroud folded inside is preserved bar being scorched and holed by a drop of molten silver that fell on one corner.

Chambéry's Poor Clare nuns repaired the Shroud on April 16, 1534, sewing it onto a backing cloth (the Holland cloth), and sewing patches over the unsightliest of the damage. These repairs are completed on 2 May. Covered in cloth of gold, the Shroud was returned to the Savoys' castle in Chambéry. Eventually, it wound up in Turin again where it remained into the modern period.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church was then idiotic enough to go and try and restore the Shroud: in 2002, a small group of textile experts, headed by Mechtild Fleury-Lemberg of Switzerland, performed a dramatic and radical "restoration" of the Shroud under the auspices of the Archbishop of Turin and his advisors at the Turin Center for Shroud Studies, and with the full permission of the Vatican. They removed the thirty patches sewn into the cloth by Poor Clare Nuns in 1534 to repair burn holes from the 1532 fire. They removed the backing cloth (frequently referred to as the "Holland Cloth") that was sewn onto the back of the Shroud in 1534 to strengthen the fire damaged relic. They photographed the hidden back side of the cloth and then re-attached a new, whiter linen backing cloth. They use lead weights suspended from the edges of the Shroud to "flatten" many of the creases in the cloth and apply steam to certain areas to help accomplish this. They handled the cloth without gloves or special clothing. They scrape away the charred edges of all the burned areas and collect the scrapings into small containers. During a continuous period of thirty-two days, they exposed the cloth to significant amounts of potentially damaging light and the polluted air of Turin. They performed this restoration in secret, without consulting any of the world's Shroud experts (including most of their own advisors) that could have contributed important scientific guidance to ensure that no valuable scientific or historical data was lost or damaged during the restoration.

(Most of this history was taken off this website: http://www.shroud.com/history.htm . I do like the fact it calls any history prior to 1349 as purely conjectural.)

It's a photographic negative of the face. That image has been around a long, long time - it might date back to 1896 IIRC. If you want to look at the shroud, here's the full length of it. Has comparisons of the shroud before and after the restoration in 2002, including pictures of the dorsal view (i.e. the back.)

On the DNA, hair length, and so on, there's a handy FAQ at that same site: http://www.shroud.com/faq.htm#7

 

Study is a really polite word for it, have you read the actual letter? I just did since I thought it sounded interesting - it basically consists of Rogers looking at photographs that may or may not be consistent with the samples that the Carbon-14 testing was performed on, doing a sketchy sort of "vanillin-dating test" that's got something of a shaky theoretical chemistry foundation, and all in his home laboratory. If Rogers hadn't previously been on the board for the journal some seventeen years prior, and on death's door at that, I don't see it getting published. It's notable that within two years nearly every single one of his points had prompted a counter-point, and notably one of the other co-workers on the original STURP published a paper that flat-out contradicted all of Rogers' conclusions in Radiocarbon v. 52, 2010, pp. 1521-1527. I don't think Rogers 2005 is taken very seriously outside of apologist circles.

Ditto the Fanti results which are just a cavalcade of chuckles. Mostly because the freaking Archbishop of Turin called BS on his samples. Which... you know, that usually bodes ill.

 

I wasn't exactly expecting there to be much less. There's really been too much contamination over the centuries to make a firm guess one way or the other. The fact the thing appears more or less out of nowhere in 1352 isn't exactly fantastic for its archaeological verifiability, but it certainly stands as an impressive piece of art at the least.

 

Not to mention that, on some light reading, the 1988 study on the dating of the Shroud also seems to have been its own cavalcade of chuckles given the hissy fits the various scientists were throwing at each other regarding the issue. For a group of staid, disinterested scientists they didn't exactly cover themselves in glory during the testing. Unfortunate, to say the least.

 

...in the interests of moving this sucker along, I'm happy to concede "Most likely an impressive devotional work of art rather than the burial shroud of Jesus." If we're taking votes for future topics, I'd like to suggest one: Oak Island, or more specifically the Money Pit said to be on it. Does it contain Captain Kidd's treasure? Marie Antoinette's jewels? Nothing at all? Was it a brilliant piece of engineering, or simply a natural sinkhole?

 

I agree that there is just no credible evidence whatsoever which supports the proposition that this shroud is the burial shroud of Jesus. I say "debunked". To take the burden off SuperWatto perhaps we can open it up for people to post the topic?

 

We need a topic that people can actually defend. Preferably passionately. I seriously wouldn't know where to begin to defend this bugger, unless I take a radically devout position. And that would be unconvincing and hard to keep up.

That's why I started that WTC subtopic - hoping to ensnare some conspiracy theorists that we could debate. But I'm afraid that, without Blue Jedi and Merlin Ambrosius, we're all debunkers now...

 

I'd like to go with the Money Pit. There's actual facts to be argued there.

 

Okay, if Oak Island doesn't pass muster, how about this one, which might at least invite some thought: was Abraham Lincoln assassinated as the result of a grand conspiracy and not merely the "small" conspiracy centred around John Wilkes Booth? This centres around the idea that Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war, was involved first in a plot to kidnap Lincoln and then in the plot to assassinate him? Do we think we've got enough knowledge/research skills to meaningfully debate that one?

EDIT: Never mind, that one can wait another time.

 

The Oak Island Money Pit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island

This one goes back two centuries, to 1795 and three guys: Daniel McGinnis, John Smith, and Anthony Vaughn. After observing a circular depression and associate tackle block at the southern end, they attempted to excavate it, finding layers of logs approximately every ten feet, and abandoned their efforts at 30 feet.


They were not the last to attempt to excavate Oak Island, however. Return expeditions came to Oak Island in 1804, 1849, 1861, 1866, 1893, 1909, 1931, 1935, 1936, 1959, and 1971. None of them have progressed past 235 feet, primarily because of the nature of the pit-it has channels to the ocean that make it continually re-flood. There have also been at least six deaths involved with faulty equipment or natural phenomena (IE lack of oxygen below ground).

Current theories include it holding:

-Captain Kidd's treasure

-Naval treasure

-Marie Antoinette's jewels

-The Ark Of The Covenant (hopefully future explorers bring adequate eye protection)

-Freemason artifacts

As a starting point: It's not pirate treasure. Pirates did not typically bury treasure; rather, they spent it between voyages. Kidd was, of course, a possible exception, although his buried treasure on Long Island has never been found.


Personally, I'd say it's a highly unusual cavern/sinkhole combination-there are apparent underground connections to the ocean, and sinkholes can be very old:

http://geology.knoji.com/ten-marvelous-sinkholes-in-the-world/

 

Sinkholes may be odd, but layers of wood every 10 feet or so on the way down? We've found plenty of structures whose purposes are not immediately apparent but bare the hallmarks of some level of engineering and this seems to be one of them. The usage of coconut fibers for packing and also being found in the pit seems to agree that there would be something that had been transported there, as coconuts don't exactly migrate.

 

Perhaps there were some African swallows involved...

One thing to consider is that it could be both natural and engineered. It's often easier to take an existing structure (including a natural formation) and modify it to suit your needs. So, it could be a natural sinkhole that was modified by someone to suit their purposes.

 

My theory? Someone (pirates or whoever) started building it for a storehouse for something or other -- but gave up for the same reason the treasure hunters do: they couldn't keep it from flooding, so they basically said, "**** it" and gave up.