I tell you what, folks. It never ceases to humor me how True Believers will grasp at anything and everything in order to "prove" their faith is the truth. The latest example of this involves… again… the Shroud of Turin.
During a restoration, the back covering of the Shroud was removed. And lo and behold, what did the restorers faintly see? Another face! Yes, there's an image on the backside of the shroud, much fainter, and actually, not identical to the image on the front. But the True Believers are insistent that this proves the authenticity of the Shroud, because it would be "impossible" to fake this.
Of course, what really gets my goat is the fact that so many of these people point the finger at us atheists, claiming that we're just a bunch of nay-sayers. We'll cry "hoax" at anything they come up with, they say.
Well… not to get snotty or anything… but can you blame us?
The history of Christianity is rife with hoaxes and forgeries, going back even as far as the second century. Take the writings of Josephus, for example. Held by many to be the famed historian's account of Jesus, the account itself does not appear in any copy of Josephus's writings prior to the fourth century. In other words, someone else added it later. Or take the recent hubbub over the James ossuary. Again, the reference to Jesus was added later, by someone else.
With these and other examples of forgery being firmly established, it immediately requires the rational mind to automatically view any other alleged relic with skepticism.
We must consider that it was possible for a talented artist of the medieval period to have painted the Shroud… whether in a deliberate attempt at hoaxing others, or simply in an attempt at recreating realism in the art form. Certainly, da Vinci could've pulled it off. And it's very telling that the images on opposite sides of the fabric do not match exactly. Could it possibly have been that the fainter side was the "draft" version?
The debate over the Shroud has raged for centuries, and will probably continue long past my lifetime. One can easily find online any number of sources on both sides of the argument that "prove" it to be a hoax or "prove" it to be authentic.
But of the two, consider this: The best that could ever be established about the Shroud, with regard to authenticity, is that it dates to the alleged time of Jesus. But what does this accomplish? There is still not conclusive proof that Jesus existed. And even if there were, there is nothing to conclusively tie the Shroud to that person. Was Jesus the only person crucified in the first century? Nope. So even if the Shroud dated to that period, it could've been wrapped around anyone. It is only the assumption of the faithful that the Shroud came from Jesus instead of anyone else.
Still… my money's on "hoax." Anyone care to place a bet?
