The Turin Shroud: Evidence for Everything

Over at Imaginative Conservative an article of mine surfaced from my pilgrimage to Italy in 2015 to venerate the Shroud of Turin.

In the article I outline some of the well known discoveries and some of the more recent, and go on to speculate about how the Shroud of Turin is the evidence that so many atheist demand.

How so? Firstly, the forensic and scientific evidence related to the shroud needs to be analyzed. I’m speaking about the weave of linen which is consistent with 1st century Jewish burial cloths, the type of flax used in the linen which is also consistent with the time and place. Then there is the evidence of pollen collected from the shroud which matches its supposed provenance and history. There is more stuff along these lines. Simple scientific and forensic findings.

The second point is the remarkable connections with the unique crucifixion of Jesus Christ: the wound in the victim’s side, the evidence of the crown of thorns, the legs being unbroken and the evidence of his face being beaten and his body being flogged. All these points were unique to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and not just any crucifixion victim.

The third point is where the miraculous comes in. No one has been able to replicate the amazing light seared image on the shroud. The best explanation is that it was a burst of radiant energy from the moment of the resurrection itself.

If so, then we have evidence for a genuine miracle.

Why is this evidence for everything? Because the materialist worldview is based on the belief that the natural world is a closed system. It is a closed system because there is not other force greater than that system outside the system which could intervene and interrupt that closed system. There is certainly not external intelligent force to do so.

For the materialist the system MUST be closed. This is the weakness of the materialist point of view. All it takes is one miracle to break their fragile worldview. Just one miracle means that the system is not closed, but open to outside forces that can intervene and interrupt that system. If the miracle is consistent with the rest of our body of knowledge, if it is rational (rather than random or absurd) and if it makes sense with the rest of our proposals about reality, then the materialist edifice must crumble.

There is enough evidence about the shroud (for those who will examine it with an open mind) to bring one to the point of saying, “Here is evidence of a miracle” and if that, then much else must follow.

Go here to read the whole article.

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