Conversation with an Athiest

During the Covid lock-down, I began a campaign to have billboards with The Holy Face on a plain background, just to let people know that Jesus is still here.

I recently received an email from “Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist”  who commented as follows:

I’m not trying to disparage your faith, but a) you know the Shroud of Turin has absolutely no proof of authenticity, and has in fact been wholly and thoroughly been, on the contrary, debunked, right? You may as well put up billboards with the meme of Ewan McGregor from Star Wars erroneously captioned “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”, and they would equally both depict “the face of Jesus.” They just look silly to anyone who knows anything about “The Shroud”.

My primary issue, however, is that while you’re throwing away money (tax exempt money I might add, which is a whole other huge issue) on silly billboards, you COULD be spending that money aiding families struggling with the economic reverberations of the COVID crisis, or feeding the hungry, or, to be more Lansing-specific, giving that money to the many many homeless in our city. If your your money is exempt from being taxed, the taxes of which would go to important social programs, you could at least then use it toward an actually net-positive goal. All your billboard does is… well, just exist. What a waste. It’s on par with giving starving children in Africa bibles instead of food.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents. I know you people actually do feel like you’re doing something good, I don’t contribute any nefarious motives to you at all, for that I actually think you’re good people trying to do a good thing. But pause and think for a sec – what does this actually, directly, physically accomplish? In this case, absolutely nothing.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist™️,

– A.

My response came as follows,

Dear – A.

Your opening statement may have been meant to be a challenge.  If so, I would like to counter your statement, because I also began my journey as an agnostic (I know there is a difference between agnostic and atheist, but we’ll save that for another time).   Like it or not, atheism is a religion, just like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.  The centerpiece of atheism is that God does not exist.  In order to bolster that claim, certain arguments are made, based on observations and writings of others that are presented as “truths”.

You claim that the Shroud of Turin has absolutely no proof of authenticity and has been thoroughly debunked (your truth).  By “debunked” one may infer the reported results of the 1988 carbon-14 testing, a centerpiece of belief for atheists and agnostics.  If this were true, I would have to agree with you.  However, there are other researchers who would disagree with the 1988 findings.

• In 2000 Joe Marino and Sue Benford published a studythat hypothesized that the reason the 1988 C-14 dating of the Shroud resulted in a date range of AD 1260-1390 for the cloth was because of a sixteenth-century repair done with cotton and dyed to match the color of the older linen shroud.
• In 2005, Ray Rogers, former head of the Shroud of Turin Research Project and a confirmed agnostic, verified Benford and Marino’s hypothesis on YouTube.
• In 2011, Joe Marino published “Wrapped Up In The Shroud” chronicling his work.
• In 2017, Tristan Casabianca submitted a Freedom of Information request to the British Museum and was allowed to see the data behind the 1988 carbon-14 dating.  The following article in Aliteia describes his work.  He writes,

“Our statistical analysis shows that the 1988 carbon 14 dating was unreliable: the tested samples are obviously heterogeneous, and there is no guarantee that all these samples, taken from one end of the sheet, are representative of the whole fabric. It is therefore impossible to conclude that the shroud of Turin dates from the Middle Ages.”

The thesis that the Shroud was a European artifact created in the middle ages does not hold water.  Consider the following:

• The Shroud has properties of a photographic negative.  In other words, black is white and vice versa.  What artist from the middle ages would dream of painting such a thing?  In addition, there are no tracings on the Shroud outlining the “intended image” that an artist would draw prior to applying the (non-existent) paint.
• Not only are colors/shadings transposed, but also right becomes left and vice-versa in the Shroud, as in a mirror.  Artists in the middle ages had problems with the shape of the human anatomy, much less drawing it “backwards”.  By the way, Leonardo DaVinci wasn’t born until 150 years after the Shroud first went on display in France in 1353.
• There is no paint, dye, mineral or chemical distinguishable on the body image.  The only dye discovered on the entire cloth was from the corner from which the carbon-14 sample was taken, raising the claim of contamination.
• However, there is human blood in multiple locations on the Shroud, type AB, which indicates the crucified victim was of the Semitic race.  Even more intriguing, the image “disappears” under the blood stains.   The inference by forensic scientists is that the blood was deposited on the Shroud before the image was made.  What artist is capable of laying human blood in random places on a cloth, then matching it perfectly with the anatomy of the man in the Shroud?
• There were 58 different pollen samples taken from the Shroud by Max Frei, an Austrian criminologist.  He identified 28 of them as coming from the area near Jerusalem and Jericho.  Ten of them can only be found within a 10 kilometer radius of Jerusalem.

While all of this cannot prove that this is the burial cloth of Christ, it cannot be disproved, either.  There is historical evidence that cannot be ignored as well.  Consider:

• There is no other person in written history that was scourged, crowned with thorns and crucified than Jesus Christ.  He suffered the punishment of a runaway slave by the Romans, yet Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea had a sign put over his execution in three languages identifying him as “King of the Jews.”
• He was buried in a rich man’s tomb instead of being thrown into Gehenna, which was a smoldering garbage pit outside of the city walls.  No executed criminal would normally be allowed to be buried in the tombs, especially one that was newly hewn out of the rock.
• The Shroud is a Jewish burial cloth that could not be shown in public during early Christendom, being a ritually unclean object.  The cloth was “folded in eight,” only displaying the Holy Face.  It was called the “Image Not Made By Human Hands.”
• Saint Paul may have referred to the Image twice in the New Testament.  The first was 1 Corinthians 13:12 and the second was Ephesians 1:3.   Numerous other early Christian and non-Christian writers made references to a miraculous “image not made by human hands” in the first two centuries.
• In 465 AD the first painting of Christ Pantocrator with long hair and a beard (with over 200 points of congruence with the image of the man in the Shroud) was made after the Shroud (then called the Mandylion) was discovered hidden in the City walls of Edessa, Turkey around 425 AD.
• In 672 AD the Justinian II, emperor of Constantinople commissioned a gold coin,  called a solidus, to be struck with the image of Christ exactly as it appears in the Shroud.
• In 1192, the “Pray Manuscript” identifying Jesus being laid in the tomb was painted.  What is unique about the painting is the herringbone twill weave of the cloth and certain burns on the cloth are also portrayed, identifying the Shroud’s existence prior to the Middle Ages
• Yes, there are breaks in the historical record of the Shroud, which leads the scientific community to question its authenticity.  However, taking the evidence in its entirety, one cannot deny that one may be looking at the true image of Christ in the Shroud.
• One artifact that has a longer, unbroken history is the Sudarium of Oviedo.  It was taken from Jerusalem in the early seventh century and transported to Toledo, Spain.  Later, it was moved to the mountains of Oviedo for safekeeping as the Moors threatened and invaded Toledo.  This is the “other cloth” that covered the face of Jesus and was rolled up and set aside, according to the Gospel of John.

You make an observation that I am wasting money on billboards instead of feeding the hungry or aiding struggling families with their finances.  You overlook the primary tenet of the Judeo-Christian religion, that is to love and honor God above all else.  The second tenet is to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  You may have overlooked the thought that one may do both.  This is not an either/or proposition, it is both/and.  Perhaps I can do both because I drive a 10-year-old car instead of the latest model.  Or I live simply and don’t buy into our consumer culture.  The fact is, my wife and I support local charities as well as raise money to feed orphans in Africa, Haiti and Detroit.  We have also helped supply several truckloads of food to be sent to Appalachia.

I am glad you don’t think of us as having nefarious motives.  We are not advertising any particular church.  We are simply making a statement for the world to see that God does indeed exist.  The lockdowns in one way have been a blessing in disguise.  It has forced people to examine their way of life and question whether there is something beyond watching Netflix 24/7.  That may be why “The Chosen” is the top crowd-funded video series on the internet world-wide.

So, what have I accomplished?  Perhaps you will consider my response, perhaps not.  Both you and I appear to have strong convictions.  I wish you well.

Thank you.