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Nah didnt count that one

Thanks Richard, always appreciate you as a regular fan and Real Seeker despite our disagreements on the Shroud. I had fun being on the show and would gladly come back anytime for any topic if I'm invited. That said, we did have a Round 3 potentially agreed to but I think bringing on the experts would best be edifying for this audience rather than a debate with me and Otangelo- with the proper prep both of us would do a good job defending the Shroud I'm sure, but no where near Bob Rucker or Tom McAvoy themselves, so I asked them and they agreed on their end to do show with Nathan and James on the C-14 and Radiation image formation hypotheses- just waiting to confirm the details of date/time, etc with everyone. That said, hopefully Digital Gnosis and James have convinced you that the traditional painting hypothesis is false given even they admit that STURP was right as per Garlaschelli that the image fibers are coloured due to oxidized cellulose and not from paint/pigment itself- would love to see if you still follow McCrone or have moved on to Garlaschelli type mechanisms or not?

@@RealSeekers I have a very wide definition of what a painting is. Most people think about a painting as being made with brushes and paint, but I think that any image created by a human being could be described as a painting, regardless of what materials they used, or how it was applied. I think Shroudists take advantage of this double meaning so that when STURP said it wasn't a painting, they take this to mean that it wasn't created by a human being - this does not follow, however. It's still a mystery how the Shroud was created, but then it's also a mystery how the Pyramids were created, that doesn't mean we're justified in ascribing them to aliens, as some do.

@@richardhunter132 Oh I didn't know that you meant that, I thought you literally meant with a brush like McCrone did. In Shroud studies you need to be more specific I think as most differentiate Garlaschelli and others as non-painting artistic methods. BUT, Im understand what you mean by the term now so I will bear that in mind going forward.

No, I don't think God, as a Real Maximally Great Being, could do things for no reason. One of the conditions for Libertarian freedom is the rationality condition and thus, I think all freewill choices of significance at least require a rationale or reason for them. In the case of God creating the Universe and everything thing that happens in it working in accordance with His providential Will to cause/accomplish His ultimate goal/s (including the goal of having as many freewill humans as possible achieve their ultimate purpose in creation), then God needs a reason for every event that happens in creation as every event is necessary to arrive at the final destination. Now, is it possible God can do trivial actions that don't require a reason like choosing to twiddle his thumbs like we do for example- philosophers disagree on this, but I think God has perfect rationality and a reason for all He chooses to do.

@RealSeekers Thank you! I will think about this some more.

@@EatHoneyBeeHappy You are most welcome, thanks for giving it some due consideration :)

Yep, that verse is literally on my wall as one of my favorites :)

Thats not poisoning the well

@@DigitalGnosis Yes by the strict definition since this wasn't preemtive. But my point still stands. If you are having a debate with a person, and they are giving you responses that would make sense in their world view, then constantly stating things like "I guess we're not going to get anywhere." not even agree to diagree, but insinuated that IP just can't understand you point isn't the same. IP brings up a study to argue for it as supporting evidence for a premise. James attacks it based on an argument Michael never made, when Michael shows he's not arguing for what James is saying, James just replies with something like "since you aren't going to argue that today." when IP never argued that. Today or yesterday. It was always an assumption made by James that IP was arguing that. All that is to me is signaling to the audience that IP is not an honest actor. Maybe poisoning the well is not the best technical definition of it, but it is something similar.

I think IP misquotes the studies he uses. James did a bunch of videos and posts responding to each claim. IP also responded but IPs takes are very heterodox and unlike James he doesnt understand the actual science he is referring to and mishandles papers.

@@DigitalGnosis Please show me where IP is misquoting these papers. I feel like you guys just assume that he's doing this but never prove it. Do the authors not draw the same conclsusions as he does? Sure, but that was never the argument. He was giving arguments to support his idealism world view. He is giving arguments to support his premises, not his conclusion. If you guys are going to say IP doesn't understand the science, then prove that. Stop talking to us like we are just too stupid to understand these concepts.

James has a bunch of videos on this

The ultimate point is because that was the only way He could save as many freewill creatures as possible that is why He did what He did in the way He did it. If God did as you say then this would entail that less souls would have been saved in the end. Again only God in His omniscience understands all the causal chains long term to understand how many souls in this world freely choose to be saved vs. another world with a different series of events. On a more local level, I can imagine that God did this to inspire people to be critical thinkers and to be Real Seekers instead of just lazily believing a claim at face value, He wants people to probe deeper and press the details to discover truth as this helps us develop a character with various traits fit for salvation.

@@RealSeekers You seem to have a really low opinion of God. I could easily think of a system where 100% of freewill creatures would be saved.

@@xjoseywales Even if what you say is true, it wouldn't be a low opinion of God since God can't determine a freewill creature to choose anything let alone salvation, so it would rather be a low opinion of freewill creatures in general. But yeah, I don't affirm Transworld depravity on my end, so I agree there may be possible worlds where all freewill creatures choose salvation and/or even better never choose to sin and Fall to begin with, but I don't think those worlds are as good or valuable as this world because in such worlds I posit that far less people choose salvation compared to this one and there may well be other benefits of this world which includes some people in Hell compared to that one.

You're right this wasn't a debate and was never intended to be so I didn't prepare in that way or prepare at all- my goal was just to raise issues I had with the 10 hour video and give my feedback on things I agree or disagreed with and introduce them to lines of evidence they didn't cover.

That was my first thought when I heard about the silly challenge to recreate the Shroud. Apparently I need medieval fabric, then I have to create the image on the Shroud and then I have to wait 700 years while trying to recreate the damage to the original to get a perfect replica. Sane people will already be satisfied when someone created a replica that comes pretty close.

It's called pulling your priors out of your posterior.

Wow, I think this is huge nitpick, my point wasn't that they are exactly the same literally, but that Applied Optics is a highly respected science journal just as much as Nature or Scientific American is, it is not a puff piece journal along the lines that James and Nathan claimed Heritage was with the WAXS study. Just to clarify, are you denying that Applied Optics is a quality journal or not- was I correct that it is a credible peer-review journal or not?

​@@RealSeekers I didn't object to them being exactly the same, I objected to them being treated as equally prestigious, which your comment here also does "just as much as Nature". And then you compare to Scientific American, but Scientific American isn't a journal at all. It's a magazine that gushes about science stuff, but it doesn't publish academic articles at all. Comparing it to either other publication is even worse. Muddying the waters on this kind of stuff matters, whether you think it does or not. If you don't know this stuff, don't make claims about it.

@@mind_onion Yes you literally did object to this by taking me out of context and being too hyper-literal. All I was saying is that Applied Optics is a quality peer-reviewed science journal that is to be respected just like Nature is- that is literally all I meant by that one quick sentence. I think it is uncharitable to pretend like I was literally saying they have the exact same impact factors or something. As to Scientific American, I meant Science, the latter was on my mind because I'm reading Paul Vignon 1937 paper in Scientific American proving the Shroud is authentic right now, so it was on my mind. But I think sometimes skeptics are sometimes way too hyper-literal and eager to take things out of context when someone says something. I remember another skeptic wrote an entire Blog cutting me up because as I spoke in the moment I conflated 26 Journals proper with 26 papers in journals and pretended I didn't know the difference- obviously, I know the difference, but I was just speaking in haste and so I say things wrong at times.

@@RealSeekers It's not "to be respected just like nature is". I don't see how you aren't getting the point. And whatever you're reading in Scientific American isn't a "paper", it's an "article" as in "magazine article", like the ones in Playboy. Scientific American is as scientifically prestigious as Playboy. If you "obviously know the difference", then use correct terminology. It's not OK to be sloppy about this.

@@mind_onion I think you are right that it is better to be precise at all times, but unfortunately that is not the way I am unless I'm writing academically otherwise I usually say the wrong words at times or in writing have poor grammar. People are always on me about things like this but I just find them petty and trivial so truth is I don't care, so long as someone ought to reasonably understand what I'm saying then it isn't an issue for me. By my calling Paul Vignon's writing a "paper", this isn't a big deal to me esp. given the context that you've already said Scientific American isn't a peer-review journal but a magazine and I've confirmed this so saying well you should have used "article" not "paper" is just nitpicking to my mind, sorry this is a casual online message board, I'm not writing my Master's Thesis here.

My point wasn't that they are exactly the same literally, but that Applied Optics is a highly respected science journal just as much as Nature or Scientific American is, it is not a puff piece journal along the lines that James and Nathan claimed Heritage was with the WAXS study. Just to clarify, are you denying that Applied Optics is a credible peer-review journal or not?

@ Scientific American isn't a journal at all.

@@mind_onion Yeah I clarified below somewhere, meant to say Science not Scientific American. Anyways, you agree that Applied Optics is a quality journal right? This is all I was saying and I'm correct here guys, we should all be agreeing on this point.

@RealSeekers Look, I think the problem is the only obstacle cranks tend to encounter is peer review, so they see it as a binary: pass peer review = good, dont pass = bad. And while it is very bad to not pass peer review, its literally the lowest bar we have in science, the lowest hurdle. It's just meant to keep the absolute worst stuff out, and it very effectively filters tons of bad work by cranks and quacks. But the reason I keep harping on this is because peer review so effectively filters cranks, it can create the misperception that anything that passes peer review is quality. But plenty of not great work can make it past peer review, peer review isnt a stamp of quality and trustworthiness, even though the lack of it is a stamp of poor quality and untrustworthiness. Applied Optics is not a journal Im familiar with, and thats not a great sign, since Im a physicist. I admit optics isnt my field, maybe its regarded as ok in an optics field, I'd guess not the best, since the best optics journals are going to be more general physics journals whose names Id recognize. Ultimately, what you are actually after, what is going to be a mark of trustworthiness is going to be reproducibility and scientific consensus, and I can confidently say you dont have that. And that I'd say is the knock down argument against what you're trying to do: ultimately your efforts are trying to make an end run around scientific consensus building and instead making appeals to the general public; drawing conclusions by trying to get ahead of the scientific consensus, and thus effectively making unwarranted speculations rather than conclusions with robust scientific backing.

@@mind_onion Actually I totally agree with you on the peer-review issue generally speaking and it's why I kind of just agreed with James and Nathan when they said they needed to check the papers I cited for themselves to see if the science was good or not. The STURP papers and the ones I cited are good quality science, if you don't believe me read them for yourself. The papers themselves mention the limitations and talk about the need for future confirmatory testing, etc. The problem as I see it is that I think a lot of skeptics just dismiss any and all peer-review papers on the Pro-Shroud side as crank work and mindlessly accept the 1-2 papers that back up what they want to hear. I mean, neutron absorption is mentioned in the 1989 Journal Nature itself so it was known about back then and could have been tested for, but they did bad science, there would literally be no debate today had they done good science and tested to falsify this as a possibility. The Journal published a paper where the authors purposefully fudged the data and hid this from the public until a FOIA request forced them to reveal the raw data in 2017. Various scientific protocols which amount to common sense were breached in the handling of this C-14 test. Yet skeptics overlook all of it to hang on to the only evidence (as they see it) that proves the Shroud is medieval. Look, I went and read Tom McAvoy's paper now to remind myself of the details and even he admits future testing on alternative sources of UV intensity alteration need be investigated, but it certainly would not be what James or Nathan suggested with acidic pigments, the peaks are too abnormal for that as I assume they will also affirm since I sent them those papers to read on their end now. But let's pretend that I'm not warranted in concluding anything on this basis yet. We are still in a state of agnosticism, skeptics haven't proved the anonymous C-14 data is result of some natural mechanism like petroleum in the cleaning procedure of one of the labs vs. some kind of natural or supernatural neutron irradiation- the empirical data known to date just doesn't, of its own merits, distinguish between these two hypotheses and thus you are not warranted in believing the Shroud is actually medieval on the basis of the results. Skeptics at best try to appeal to philosophical criteria to favour their side like Simplicity in the case of Reason to Doubt or the Problem of the Priors for miracles, but I don't think many philosophers find these kinds of arguments persuasive. As a physicist, you must understand all that we were saying as philosophers, probably better than all three of us on the show, has any empirical way of adjudicating between neutron irradiation and different cleaning procedures via petroleum ethel been provided- if not, then why should I believe the skeptic has meet their burden of proof to prove their claim that the Shroud actually is medieval when it is equally probable that it is from 30 A.D. and neutrons account for the erroneous C-14 data?

1:56:01 desperate projection

Oh yes!

​@@RealSeekers Hi Dale, can you explain why you choose to have 11 premises? I mean when someone says something like this it raises so many red flags to me it's difficult to even express. I guess I can just say that in my experience it's the sort of thing people say when they are grasping at aesthetics of looking like they understand how philosophers argue, rather than actually understand.

@@mind_onion Hi, yeah absolutely so I'm not sure what you mean here as I didn't choose to have 11 premises, that was more just the number that I got when I put down my argument into written form to get to the conclusion that Christianity is true or more specifically that it was God-endorsed as the means by which I could achieve my ultimate purpose in creation. In terms of this being an indication that I don't know how philosophers argue, well I can say this that the 11-premise version is not a proper argument, it is more a list of premises that help guide someone into understanding my reasoning for how I arrived there, but the structure of the argument needs fixing up- I wrote this before I ever had formal training in logic. In fact, when I presented the argument on Reason and Theology, I reduced it down to 8 premises for time sake and again not a proper argument due to laziness, see that show here = th-cam.com/video/AsBNwZZ9LXc/w-d-xo.html I will say that I have my Masters in Philosophy and have actually taught courses in logic to first year University students and so I have a very good and detailed knowledge of how to form valid deductive arguments as well as cogent inductive ones but the truth is I haven't put in the time or effort to fix up my argument officially since validity is something really easy to accomplish if I put my mind to it. But I assure you, the premises themselves that I based my faith on are sound and well-thought trough despite any technical imperfections in the logical structure and formatting of the argument as a whole and I could easily fix the latter in short order when I get some free time.

@@mind_onion Oh I think my response got deleted due to a link. Ok here it is again without the link but the name of the video instead. Hi, yeah absolutely so I'm not sure what you mean here as I didn't choose to have 11 premises, that was more just the number that I got when I put down my argument into written form to get to the conclusion that Christianity is true or more specifically that it was God-endorsed as the means by which I could achieve my ultimate purpose in creation. In terms of this being an indication that I don't know how philosophers argue, well I can say this that the 11-premise version is not a proper argument, it is more a list of premises that help guide someone into understanding my reasoning for how I arrived there, but the structure of the argument needs fixing up- I wrote this before I ever had formal training in logic. In fact, when I presented the argument on Reason and Theology, I reduced it down to 8 premises for time sake and again not a proper argument due to laziness, see that show on Michael Lofton's podcast called "Why Agnosticism is WRONG and Christianity is TRUE w/ Dale Glover & Luis Dizon". I will say that I have my Masters in Philosophy and have actually taught courses in logic to first year University students and so I have a very good and detailed knowledge of how to form valid deductive arguments as well as cogent inductive ones but the truth is I haven't put in the time or effort to fix up my argument officially since validity is something really easy to accomplish if I put my mind to it. But I assure you, the premises themselves that I based my faith on are sound and well-thought trough despite any technical imperfections in the logical structure and formatting of the argument as a whole and I could easily fix the latter in short order when I get some free time.

No idea? I specifically stated and stated correctly what it meant- did you just miss that? 95% degree of confidence means that we have 95% certainty that the Shroud's actual calendar age is within the 2 sigma level range of dates (aka. 1260-1390) range- that is literally what it means. How can you say I have no idea?

Because when asked what confidence intervals are, and what they show in this case and why, you had no answers. You also accused me of doing frequentist statistics despite THIS being a frequentist test. Basically, theres no substance there - you dont understand the things youre appealing to or what youre saying when you say these sorts of things (which is why you couldnt explain them to us and dont understand the objections we have). Im not trying to be mean but this shows me that you have almost no understanding of what it is youre saying about these statistical things.

@@DigitalGnosis No problem, I don't take you as being mean just brutally honest as you see it. I'm doing the same. I had the answer and I said it in the show, I think you guys were to quick to put words into my mouth here. There was one point where you claimed I was conflating your credence level with statistical degrees of certainty in the paper based on you claiming to be 90% confident or something. When you clarified what you meant, I responded properly and your response was simply to dismiss statistical standards as being relevant when in fact they are in this case- the 95% degree of certainty is a requirement. You hand waived that away claiming that journals these days don't care about that kind of thing, but I'm not sure I believe you (not saying I confidently disbelieve you either) on that front as the scientists who are actually publishing in these journals know continue to stress it as important. I trust them over you simply because I know them better and know they know what they are talking about. So yeah, I'm sorry, this commenter said I didn't understand what the 95% degree of confidence/certainty meant in relation to the 1989 C-14 paper and I clearly did since I defined it properly. I notice you don't dispute what I said it means in this critique, so I'm curious am I wrong when I say, "95% degree of confidence means that we have 95% certainty that the Shroud's actual calendar age is within the 2 sigma level range of dates (aka. 1260-1390) range". I mean, if you can prove that isn't what it means, then I will happily take the criticism. You were the one who muddied the waters on this front. As to the frequentist stats issue where you think I was misunderstanding how it used with respect to the miracles question, I raised that as my way of correctly describing your position that there are "infinite" (or a lot) of options God could have done in raising Jesus and then pretending that entails that there is 1/infinity prior probability that God raised Jesus using neutron irradiation. Under my use of Bayes, this would entail you arguing that there is 100%-1/infinity = 99.9999999999999999 and so on probability that God DIDN'T in fact raise Jesus from the dead using neutron irradiation which is clearly wrong and why the 50% agnostic range is proper in the absence of any reason to think the hypothesis is in fact probable or improbable on the background knowledge. Playing the odds is NOT a sufficient reason that makes the truth of the Rez or even Rez via neutron hypothesis probable or improbable to be true. Again, I understand that wasn't what you or James were arguing here, but this why we had the disagreement on the 50% vs. 1/infinity prior prob question. But yeah, there is no worries, as long as your not insulting or purposefully disrespectful, I see nothing wrong with you giving me your sincere opinions on here and I will do likewise, its how we get to the truth.

What Im saying is that all the claims youre making require understanding and making the statistical argument which is still not something youve done.

@@DigitalGnosis OK but that just seems very vague and non-informative, you are making hasty judgements about my level of understanding on tangential issues and then claiming I don't understand something which I've clearly just shown I do understand. I'm not pretending I understand everything that I presented as there were 2-3 areas when pressed I did admit I didn't understand the technicalities partly due to my forgetting the details over time and since this wasn't a debate, I didn't do any prep work of re-reading the papers to remind myself of everything, I didn't expect you guys to press me as hard as you did, but I'm glad you did and I'm glad you are willing to let me come back once I have re-read the papers again. But yeah, I'm happy to admit I'm wrong and maybe I am misunderstanding something and don't realize it, but in terms of the specific thing I was said to be ignorant on, I'm clearly not as I defined it and it's significance correctly and mentioned correctly as to how this matter relates to the two competing hypotheses we were examining. The stats prove that only have 68% degree of confidence that the Shroud actually dates between 1260-1390 and this is not good enough to rely on those results. The raw data (including the slope/gradient proven through our limited data set without assuming that can be extrapolated to the rest of the cloth necessarily) shows that we require an explanation for the anomalous data because it is statistically significant. You guy assume, Oh that can easily be explained by positing that Oxford's use of petroleum in the cleaning process caused this result while I can equally explain them through neutron absorption. Then, you presented your take that the neutron absorption is a priori improbable because of your take on the prior prob of miracles of God of this specific nature vs. all the other miraculous ways He could have raised Jesus. I presented my arguments from the Sudarium of Oviedo (which is not as powerful or conclusive for sure, but I think does count since there are only a limited number of plausible places the Sudarium could be put and one of those does yield the needed 700 A.D. Also, I presented Tom McAvoy's paper based on the UV Fluorescence as ways to support the neutron theory over and against your petroleum hypothesis. The only thing I can think on the stats of the C-14 dating that I didn't and still don't understand perhaps is your comment about the chi-square test and their need to use a t-test instead. On that front even you seemed a little unsure of yourself when I pointed out the C-14 scientists themselves used in the 1989 Nature paper. I also seem to remember Bob Rucker challenging the chi square test as an error as well, but after looking into it he confirmed that he was wrong and the 1988 C-14 scientists were right to use it. So, I'm pretty sure you are wrong in what you said, but I confess I have no understanding as to why or how on this front. Anything else on the stats from the C-14 that I lack understanding on or is the chi-square thing what you had in mind cause everything else, seems like I understand it pretty clearly to my mind.

Not sure if you saw Dale talk to Pine Creek but he said he converted to Christianity based on a 51.4% (or something similar) probability. Given his handling of bayes and knowledge of statistics, I think he should have someone run those numbers for him to see if that's actually where it lands. Maybe he deconverts if a statistician tells him he's miscalculated.

@popsbjd How lucky it didn't turn out to be 48.6%!

I went back and looked. He said it was 53.14%. 2 decimals. And he said he used Bayes theorem.

I think this is just biased ignorance on your part, granted I wasn't there to talk about my Bayes-ish approach and so wasn't at my best in communicating how my methodology works mathematically. I have done entire shows on my Bayes-ish approach including why 50% is the proper prior for any and all religion authenticating miracle claims with such a context detected. Essentially, the skeptics here didn't understand how I use Bayes whereby anything less than 50% entails that the hypothesis is probably false and everything above 50% entails it is probably true. 50% represents the true agnostic state based on the principle of indifference where one can then assess the background evidence to see if it should be lower or higher. What is crazy is thinking that because one can multiply possibilities that this raises the probability that the hypothesis is probably false. Now that wasn't what James nor Nathan were saying to be fair, they were technically correct in what they said, but that was irrelevant for my approach. Saying, well there are so many possibilities so the odds are 1 /infinity because one could posit God raising Jesus in a purple dress or green shorts or a pink tutu means there is a 1/3 as the prior probability in the sense I mean whereby this entails there is a 100%-33% = 67% probability that God didn't raise Jesus from the dead or even more specific that God probably did NOT raise Jesus in a purple dress is false and truly absurd. That is how I interpret what they are saying in my use of the Bayes-ish method whereas James and Nathan were saying no there is one hypothesis that it is true that God raised Jesus from the dead but there are many different ways He could do this and so the odds that He would raise Jesus wearing a purple dress is 1/however many options there are and then you use that as the prior prob. This is irrelevant and they've changed the original hypothesis under investigation. Anyways, I've had a total of 3 PhD statisticians at secular Universities- not Christians or people that cared about religion at all, they taught QMS and Data Management classes + 1 Masters Stats student + Dr. Tim McGrew all confirm that the way I do my calculations, while not technically speaking Bayes Theorem proper, nonetheless works for the purpose I use it for- namely to get the cumulative overall probability based on all the evidence- background and otherwise.

@@popsbjd That is correct and yes I kept things simple for people as I do use Bayes Theorem as a formula with some twists hence the Bayes-ish. When I don't have time to lecture someone on the maths issue and get into a long irrelevant debate about it because it is a side point, I usually just keep things simple and say I used Bayes Theorem- what is the problem with that?

Yep but so what? First of all, I was the guest not the host so it wasn't my choice to dwell on 2 topics for 2.5 hours, that was me just answering the questions of James and Nathan as they arose- I had a lot more topics I wanted to go over on my end but never got to. That said, you act like this inconsistent on my end when it isn't- it's true that I don't care when the Shroud dates from in relation to the question of the miraculous authenticity of the Shroud, but that doesn't mean the question of historical authenticity and the evidence for and against it is irrelevant altogether- all truth is God's truth and worthy of pursuit. There are people who pursue truth in some very seemingly irrelevant (to me) fields and who will readily admit that such pursuits have 0 impact on their religious faith- what is the problem?

@@RealSeekers "That said, you act like this inconsistent on my end when it isn't" Sorry, I don't mean to imply that you were concealing your views or anything. I'm not familiar with you or your position at all, and was mostly expressing frustration- perhaps more with the hosts than you, in retrospect?- that I'd just listened to you defend a position you don't even care about for nearly three hours. Anyway, if you're fine with the idea of god miraculously making a shroud that's suggestive of Jesus at some point during the 13th century as part of his divine mystery, or whatever... more power to you, I guess? I wont't try to take that away from you.

@ Fair enough :)

This is true, it is a made-up term, but John Jackson gives it a precise meaning and there is no problem with doing that, we do it all the time- esp. philosophers like myself. Try giving Jackson's work a read through on the Turin Shroud Center website, you'll get your answers there for sure.

It doesn't, but saving as many free-willed souls as possible via proving evidence for the Resurrection does.

​@@RealSeekersAnd do you feel that providing seemingly baseless, ad hoc responses to the most compelling critique of the shroud s authenticity accomplishes that goal? If those who control access to the shroud truly believe it's authenticity, wouldn't allowing more rigorous, empirical testing to verify it bring more people to Christianity than these strange proxy arguments?

@@shassett79 Well it isn't baseless as per Tom McAvoy's findings and the Sudarium of Oviedo evidence, but I do think that initially the responses to the C-14 were ad hoc for sure, but simplicity is not really that important to me as a criterion- at best I think it plays the role of a tie-breaker between two competing hypotheses. By the way, the Atheists are also just as ad hoc as us in assuming that Oxford's anomalous results must be due to some natural explanation like the difference in cleaning procedure- there is no evidence that the use of petroleum in the procedure would affect the C-14 dating results in the way hypothesized- that is sheer skeptical speculation. I fully agree with you that more empirical testing is good and would conclusively put to bed any remaining issues on the C-14 issue- I'm with you, the Pope sucks and we need to pressure him for more testing- how about we all join together and protest the Pope, I'd be up for it.

@@RealSeekers "at best I think it plays the role of a tie-breaker between two competing hypotheses" I agree that it's a tie-breaker at the very best, but only in the eyes of those most predisposed to look for any reason affirm their belief in the shroud while rejecting empiricism. "Oxford's anomalous results" Not sure what you're referring to, here. The Oxford results from the late 80s dated the Shroud to the 13th century, didn't they? "the Pope sucks and we need to pressure him for more testing" We agree! That said, I must invite you to consider that this reticence on their part is easily construed as preference for keeping the mystery alive for its own sake.

@@shassett79 As to the Pope issue- we agree again, in fact I have some insider knowledge as I was personal friends with Barrie Schwortz who knew all the officials and was on the Board in Turin- he told me the Turin officials also deeply wish to test the Shroud again but the Pope won't allow it and the reason is greed, the 1988 C-14 dating shook them and they don't want to rock the boat and lose all the pilgrims coming to Turin. Again, this doesn't prove anything, the Pope doesn't know anything we don't, he is just a coward in preventing further testing as he fears what may be found out in case we get a negative result- I'd rather know one way or the other. I don't understand how you worded your first comment, I think you mean it is a tie-breaker used to prevent biased Shroud guys from dismissing empirical data or something to that effect. I disagree here, the criteria for inferring the best explanation don't care about the content of the hypothesis they are being used to judge- they work just as well against a biased Atheist and Shroud skeptic predisposed to look for any reason affirm their disbelief in the shroud while rejecting empiricism as well. No problem on the Oxford thing, it is what the whole debate on C-14 is about, essentially the newest peer-reviewed findings show that the results obtained by the C-14 scientists was erroneous due to a systematic bias/error in the results and the results from Oxford, which are way off, are what largely account for this finding. The range of dates obtained for the subsamples ranged from somewhere in the 1100's to the 1400's at the latest from what I remember. Statiscally speaking this is a big issue and shows that you can have no confidence that the Shroud's actual calendar age dates between 1260-1390.