Skeptical Dictionary Position Softened

Robert Carroll’s Skeptics Dictionary has softened its once hardnosed refutation of the cloth’s authenticity since Thermochimica Acta published Rogers’ findings:

Of course, the cloth might be 3,000 or 2,000 years old, as Rogers speculates, but the image on the cloth could date from a much later period. No matter what date is correct for either the cloth or the image, the date cannot prove to any degree of reasonable probability that the cloth is the shroud Jesus was wrapped in and that the image is somehow miraculous. To believe that will always be a matter of faith, not scientific proof.

First off, Rogers did not speculate that it was 3,000 or 2,000 years old. What Rogers argued was that the lack of vanillin in the fabric of the shroud was a serious challenge to the carbon dating. Given a plausible range of average ambient temperatures during the life of the cloth, chemical kinetics demonstrates that the cloth is somewhere between 1,300 and 3,000 years old and not about 700 years old as the carbon dating suggested. Second, we need not ascribe miraculous causation to the image, as Carroll suggests, to infer at some level of certainty that it might be the shroud Jesus was wrapped in. There might be, as Rogers and other think, a perfectly natural chemical explanation for the images. The suggestion that the image might be from a much later period is interesting but improbable. One historical claim in support of such an idea, as we will see, doesn’t stand up to objective history or scientific analysis. Carroll perhaps is right when he states that the date cannot prove that the cloth was Jesus’ burial shroud. We need not cut off the debate, as Carroll does, by proclaiming that belief in its authenticity is simply a matter of faith. Yes, scientific proof might not be possible yet or ever, but a combined conspectus of history and science may be enough to infer that authenticity is the best explanation.