Design in the Shroud of Turin - The Shroud of Turin Website

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6not tear the thread fibrils. However, the decomposing body would surely have leftsome evidence of rot on the cloth lying under the body. Since no rot on the clothbearing the dorsal Image exists, the first possibility is rendered implausible. Thesecond possibility is that the body was removed from the Shroud and perhapsplaced in something else. However, the act of removing the body, some parts ofwhich would be stuck to the cloth by the dried blood, would tear the bloodimpregnatedfibrils. The absence of torn fibrils suggests that the body was nottaken out of the Shroud. It might be objected here that the body might have beentaken out of the Shroud before the blood in contact with the cloth had a chance todry. But then it is difficult to understand how the detailed Image of the Man on theShroud could have been formed, for, according to this suggestion, the Man wouldhave been in the Shroud only for only long as it takes blood to dry, probably anhour at most. This response is admittedly speculative, for no mechanism by whichthe Image might have been formed is presently accepted by those most closelyassociated with research into the Shroud, but it is difficult to conceive of an Imageforming so quickly that the blood did not have time to dry. 7 The third possibility isthat the body somehow “disappeared,” perhaps by weak dematerialization.7 Ian Wilson has discussed the remarkable images of plants resulting from having been pressedundisturbed for many decades, in The Mysterious Shroud, p. 114f. These images are very detailedand three-dimensional, but they took many years to be produced.
7Trenn argues that the theory in question postulates a “radiation event” thatcould account for the medieval carbon dating claimed in the 1988 test, for thetheory implies that freed neutrons from the nuclei would have converted some ofthe nitrogen in the Shroud into carbon-14, thereby producing sufficient additionalamounts of this isotope to make the Shroud look medieval rather than ancient. 8Trenn observes that this theory is testable, for an implication is that the carbon-14amounts would vary over the surface of the cloth. Cloth in the immediate vicinityof the Image would have a higher concentration of carbon-14 than cloth on theedges. This implication has not been tested over the entire Shroud, to myknowledge. The theory’s testability is sufficient to render it scientific ⎯ at least oncertain views of what constitutes science. Moreover, its capacity to explain manyfeatures of the Image is sufficient reason to give it serious consideration.The purpose of this essay, however, is not primarily to describe the basisfor this theory’s feasibility, but to discuss the way in which the conjectureddematerialization suggests an argument from design.Evidence of DesignThe theory under examination conjectures that one specific Mandematerialized. It claims that the Shroud in which the Man was wrapped, althoughpressed against his body, did not dematerialize along with the body. Jackson and8 The possibility that the Shroud was irradiated by neutrons was briefly discussed by physicists
Page 1 and 2: DESIGN IN THE SHROUD OF TURINPHILLI
Page 3 and 4: 3The Theory of “Weak Dematerializ
Page 8 and 9: 8Trenn do not specifically comment
Page 10 and 11: 10dematerialized, or only atoms of
Page 12 and 13: 12feature found in the fine tuning
Page 14 and 15: 14about human dissolution of the mo
Page 16 and 17: 16circumstances is that the molecul
Page 18 and 19: 18APPENDIXThe evidence indicating t
Page 20 and 21: 209. The dorsal foot imprint has an
Page 22: 22Tribbbe, Frank C. Portrait of Jes

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