Shroud of Turin

This is the thing that changed my mind about atheism.  In retrospect, perhaps it was too easy.  I saw this on TV, but since then, I have become quite suspicious of television and media in general.  Perhaps I was misled?

As I have written before, the truth is a slippery thing.  As I wrote yesterday, everything we are has been given to us.  Perhaps, in consequence of this observation, I surmise that I wanted to believe in it, but never saw anything in my life up to that time that was conclusive enough for me to be a believer.  When I saw this on TV back then, I changed my mind.  Or so I thought.  One can kid oneself quite easily.  This too, I have learned in all these years.  How do you know the truth?

Yesterday, I spent most of the day watching videos.  One of these was about the Shroud.  So, now what do I think of it?  I pondered on this question, and just now decided to write a little about that.  One thing that made me hesitate was that if I can figure out a theory for explaining the image in the cloth, it may make people lose their faith.  I wouldn't want to be responsible for that.  But the truth is a hard thing.  You cannot turn away from it.  So, I decided to go ahead and write.  I wouldn't be considered an authority, anyway.

Not that I have figured out something significant.  But a theory just popped up in my mind that may explain it.  Furthermore, there is no way for me to test the theory.

But before I mention the theory, there is one explanation that can be ruled out.  It wasn't a painting.  This was the explanation given that seemed to stick for a long time, but eventually it had to give way because there's no evidence whatever that it was a painting.

Here's one possible explanation that could be tested, but permission would probably be necessary before it was allowed.  Let's say a radioactive source was ingested and the radioactivity made a type of photographic negative on to the cloth.  You could test this by making a replication of the cloth and then having a subject ingest a certain amount of radioactive substance.  Obviously, the amount ingested couldn't be a fatal dose.  You couldn't get permission to kill people willy-nilly until the right dose was obtained.  There may be problems running this type of experiment.

Well, you could always test animals.  But the PETA crowd may object.

The question is, could you obtain an image like the one on the cloth in this fashion?

What brought about that question is that an energy source must come from somewhere in order to make an image on the cloth.  It can't be outside the body.  It must originate from within the body.  For if it were outside the body, the energy source would hit the cloth first.  How could that make an image if the energy source hit the cloth first?  So, it must come from within the body, I surmise.

A bit of thought may rule this out though.  Maybe such an experiment wouldn't yield what you might expect.  It may give some different results.

All of this may have been covered in a report, by the way.  Studies of the Shroud have been made.  Perhaps the best thing to do would be to study those and make a conclusion based upon that.  A single view of a video isn't enough to make an informed decision on what to believe about the Shroud.