Christianity has a long and fascinating history when it comes to its love of “holy relics”, artifacts purported to be from the Terra Sancta preserved to remind contemporaries of the real existence of scripture's setting and characters. These range from the mythical Spear of Longinus or Holy Grail, to the up to 18 different Holy Prepuces—the magical foreskin of baby Jesus—all of which have been sadly lost to time.

For fairly apparent reasons, the various Christian institutions which make up its Church have a poor track record when it comes to mounting a non-abortive defense of their plausibility, much less prove their authenticity. For that reason, the fascination of these artifacts and their associated medieval “pilgrimage industry” have largely stayed in the past. This sense is imbued in all parts of modern Christianity: Rome has over time cooled to the reality that nearly all of these are clear medieval forgeries, concocted out of either genuine piety and/or documentation, or for a lesser desire for tourism to one's city. Protestants tend to have no issue universally calling them tricks of the devil to deceive one into pagan idolatry. The Eastern churches tend to keep their head down, opting for a mystical relationship to “icons” and their spiritual significance as symbols, rather than scrutinizing their archaeological, scientific authenticity as Westerners would. In short, much of this fanaticism over relics has fizzled over the centuries across the developed world.

That is, for one exception: the Shroud of Turin. This one relic, for a number of reasons, has survived the filter of the Enlightenment that other relics such as the Knife of the Last Supper could not. It is, as of today, the single most studied and talked about religious relic on Earth: hundreds of studies which use combinations of over 112 disciplines have been published seeking to provide evidence for or against its authenticity. The disappointing part about that fact is that seemingly no one who talks about the Shroud has read any of them, but merely talk about the headlines, abstracts, and generalized heuristics surrounding the research.

This would be especially problematic had this Sindonology not itself been one of the most pointless and disappointing academic enterprises to have ever been launched.

Let us assume that we have everything this field desires. We saw the pollen studies, the anatomical studies, the WAXS dating paper, and completely rejected the three radiocarbon datings; and we therefore accept that the Shroud is dated to the time of Christ, from Israel, and wrapped a victim of Roman crucifixion. Fantastic—now how do you prove this was actually Jesus himself? Aside from the rarity of crucifixion victims being permitted a burial, I promise you there are plenty of unnamed candidates as far as 1st Century Jews crucified by Romans goes. Furthermore, even if we assume this victim was Jesus, how does this prove he was resurrected, is God? Most modern scholars are comfortable in stating that Jesus was crucified, wrapped in linen, and buried in a tomb. In our best case scenario, the Shroud tells us nothing we haven’t already known and accepted for some time.

Still, it is perfectly reasonable why the relic has found itself firmly in the hearts and minds of so many, and why its study is so contentious. This would be a direct copy of Jesus Christ’s face in our possession—but only if we can first show it isn’t a medieval forgery. Indeed, this is the default, and effectively the null hypothesis. Just 35 years after the Shroud suddenly appeared in the French village of Lirey, Pope Clement VII was already instructing locals on pain of excommunication to toe a careful line, writing to them:

“It is to be formally announced to them, in a loud, clear voice, with no obfuscation, that the image or representation before them is not the true Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ, but a painting or canvas made in the form of or as a representation of the said Shroud, of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Really, it wasn’t that impressive of an artifact to medieval Christians anyways. You could barely see anything on it without standing back at a specific distance, it was scarred by water and (later) fire damage, and there were plenty of other shrouds circulating at the time. Better to move on to more visceral things. This attitude remained all the way up until the end of the 19th Century, when the first photographs of the Shroud were being taken. While developing the film, the photographers finally found that visceral quality that had been unseen for hundreds of years. In a photonegative, looking right at you, was the face of Jesus.

And so like the typical Westerners we are, seeking to methodologically waft God out of a test tube, so begun this great scientific enterprise. Anatomical studies were performed in the early 20th, and the first councils and research groups were formed in the 1930s, including the Cultores Sanctae Sindonis. At the 400th anniversary of its appearance in Lirey came The Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), and a decade later the infamous radiocarbon dating saga. Since then we’ve seen millions of pages written on an endless number of disciplines arguing back and forth on whether or not Clement was mistaken regarding its authenticity. If you think any real progress has been made in this regard, you’d be mistaken.

This article is not a “deep dive” into the evidence and counterevidence to the Shroud's authenticity. There is no point: as it turns out, Sindonology is evidently not a serious science in any sense of the word. One only has to become familiar with the published research and arguments contained within them to quickly come to this conclusion. My position is, if not already evident, that the Shroud is indeed of medieval origin. If you want “deep dives” to that effect, see this video from biblical scholar James Tabor or this website of Hugh Farley’s dedicated to the issue. There is enough content out there already on the granular details of the evidence, good content even if often hidden in old literature, and I want to waste as little space as possible on that topic.

What instead will be discussed is the degree to which this entire enterprise has been a complete and utter waste of time for all parties involved, illuminating (again) a strange and reciprocally abusive love-hate relationship between Christianity and science. This is firstly an appropriately bemoaned “science of miracles”, but secondly (and worse) a “competitive science” of sorts which seeks to establish new fields for the express purpose of validating preexisting religious beliefs, where traditional fields and methodologies have long since discarded them. This is something that I have written about before on another example of a type of “Christian science” attempting to engage and compete with traditional science on its own terms, that being creationism & evolution:

Creationism has, however, ceded territory in some significant ways. Bryan’s argument in Tennessee v. Scopes was that science, no matter what it may ever present, shall always be subservient to the revealed, infallible Word of God. He would be dismayed to learn that this has been entirely inverted in our day. Creationism, perhaps because it had no other choice, subjected itself entirely to the realm and methodology of science. In some ways, it is a type of science of its own. This inversion has spanned across the entire Christian enterprise: they apply modern physics to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the Discovery Institute produces research articles on intelligent design and irreducible complex proteins, chemists study the blood type and pollen content of the Shroud of Turin in a field of science of its own making called turinology, and pilgrim-archeologists comb the entire Sinai and floor of the Red Sea for the tent stakes of Moses’ camp. In its attempt to win in a contest of truth against scientific materialism, Christianity has found itself entirely subservient to it. This is the great irony of an attempt to prove the Bible's independent validity and utility through entirely extrabiblical methodology. The cross is stuck under the microscope.

The Macroevolution Fallacy

Gildhelm

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May 26, 2025

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In the case of the Shroud, it is even more confusing as this battle was entirely unprompted. No one cared for it before 1898—it meant little to them—their belief in the resurrection of Christ had no relation to it. But as it has been before, Christians have submitted themselves entirely to the Great Enemy of scientific materialism thinking their assured victory in that skirmish will reward them greatly. They are in for a disappointment.

In addition to this problem, another similarity between this and the Shroud is that the scientific arguments appear complicated and rigorous, but are in fact mirages for painfully pointless and unconvincing methodology. Take, for example, the often-cited 1973 “pollen analysis” by Max Frei-Sulzer, which purports to show that the Shroud is covered with the pollen of species only found in the Levant, ruling out an origin in France. The methodology was straight forward: sticky-tape the surface of the linen, put it under a microscope, and compare the structure of the pollen. And, what do you know, the pollen was identical to that of the native Judean flora! That simple, right?

Let’s try a short exercise. In the image below are pollen samples belonging to 16 species of Quercus, oaks. All but 2 are native to China: one from Mexico (Q. glaucoides), and one from India (Q. semecarpifolia). Now, we aren’t palynologists like Frei, but how do you fare? Which of these 2 look like they aren’t Chinese oaks?

To me, the outliers are (M) and (J). But if you agreed, we’d be both wrong. It’s (O) and (G), two grains that look almost completely identical to a few of their Chinese counterparts. Point being, it is incredibly difficult to be able to identify species by pollen. It would be like trying to identify mammals by their sperm morphology. It’s not a DNA test or unique fingerprint, the morphology of pollen is often almost entirely preserved within families and genera, and these could be from essentially anywhere on the world as is the case of the oak.

Indeed, one of the most common criticisms of Frei is that he was somehow able to identify these species from pollen grains at a rate far and beyond what the field is typically capable of. Of 58 positive identifications he made, 56 were down to a species. This is completely unheard of in the field of palynology, which rarely even progresses into genera, sticking to “types”. Worse, there wasn’t a control or reference panel of any sort. Should these plants actually belong to, in keeping with our example India or Mexico instead of China, we would have no clue: Frei only analyzed plants of this region.

Uri Baruch, who reexamined dozens of Frei’s pollen slides, was only able to confirm three or four, depending on who you ask. Even today, Shroud adherents aren’t quite sure what the identification of these pollen samples are, other than that they’re definitely from the Levant—of course! Hugh Farey writes:

Recently, criticism has focused on one particular ‘smoking gun,’ Slide 6 B/d, which, according to the grid drawn up in 1973, was taken from the part of the Shroud including the image made by the hair and beard of the left-hand side of the face.

This slide, it was claimed, had a huge assemblage of identical pollen piled at one end. McCrone claimed that it also had an unusually large number of cotton (glove) fibres, suggesting that the tape had been peeled back from the slide and pollen dabbed onto it. This was the slide he referred to in Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud, and also the one on which Uri Baruch identified 91 specimens of Gundelia tournefortii, one of the only four species level identifications in which he concurred with Frei. As Gundelia tournefortii is an unattractive, insect-pollinated, extremely thorny desert plant, the pollen was at first claimed to be from the crown of thorns (adding a new twist to the story, as Christ would have wreathed in flowers). However, in 2001, Thomas Litt, another palynologist, of the University of Bonn, was given the chance to study some of the famous slides, and decided that the pollen wasn’t from Gundelia at all, but more likely from a thistle of the genus Carduus. Ignoring the fact that thistles are found all over the world, pro-authenticists seized upon Carduus argentatus, an Israeli thistle, as the species represented on the Shroud.

—Problems with Pollen, Hugh Farey, BSTS Newsletter 79, 2014

So hidden under this often-cited “slam dunk” study we have a failure to replicate, curious methodological anomalies, disqualifying problems with “chain of custody”, and even credible accusations of outright fraudulent manipulation. Sounds a lot like the criticisms we hear about the carbon dating project, doesn't it? By this point it should be clear where I am going with this, but I will give another, more recent example of how the research in this field is shockingly juvenile at its core.

You may have seen or personally participated in the recent euphoric wave of “Shroud evangelism” of the online tradcel commentariat class, excitedly promoting a “new study” (actually published in different articles from as far back as 2014) which proves a dating to the time of Christ, once and for all! Remember this corner of the Shroud which was submitted to 3 independent carbon dating laboratories, all returning with a medieval date, that critics say was impossibly contaminated by fire, gum, repairs, and radiation? Well, researchers from the Italian IC-CNR plucked this exact section again and concluded that the “TS diffraction peak intensities are very close to those of the FII sample I-profile, taken from a sample whose Historical Record (HR) and ¹⁴C dating is 55–74 AD” using a novel form of dating. The tradcel commentariat was, of course, thrilled.

Some may notice within this couched language that there’s no actual dating at all in this study. Let me explain: The researchers estimated the age of the Shroud by calculating a novel metric they termed CB_nor, a normalized aging estimate based on the amount of chain breaks in a cellulose fiber measured by x-ray, given by the following impressive equations:

Looks serious! These are obviously professionals. I don’t say that tongue-in-cheek, they know how this technology and this math works. But how can they get “the goods” out of the Shroud? They got a number of different fabrics from different times and calculated their CB_nor, pairing them with known radiocarbon dates. If you haven't caught on yet, the methodological rigor of this study is, quite literally, “this fabric is somewhat similar in decay to that fabric”.

This isn't a dating method, it's hardly even useful data! Who at all is satisfied by the finding that the linen of the Shroud was spun sometime after the Siege of Masada, indicated by it having a lower CB_nor than the Masada linen? That is IF the temperature and humidity assumptions for a provenance no one knows hold true. The researchers expect us to take this data seriously, but not FULLY seriously, otherwise we would be forced to conclude the fabric post-dates the death of Christ by 200 years!

This is the first of its problems, what about the mechanical stress of folding we know occurred—would this not accelerate chain breaks? I will not dwell on a full “refutation” of this series of studies, but see this article from Hugh Farey for a million other reasons why the methodology of this study just won't cut it. What is telling to me is that this method, despite being heralded as an impressive and accurate form of non-destructive dating, has been used exclusively in shroud research. Another issue is that it directly contradicts other dearly held mytho-scientific beliefs about the Shroud, such as that the image was caused by a radioactive blast of neutrons when Christ’s body disappeared. This, apparently, did not degrade the cellulose fibers in any way.

With these two examples, I hope that you now see my complaint. Like it is in creationist “science” such as that as the infamous Behe & Snoke critique of evolution, we are presented with what is often a perversion of scientific reasoning, which appears credible and authoritative but in fact remains far into the interior of No Man's Land. One slight pluck into the methods, intentions, and/or results of these studies often forces the entire structure to crumble. Perhaps you could say that of any scientific endeavor, but here we are looking at over a century of scientific inquiry into a single artifact that has been unable to say anything conclusive at all. That is not because it is too contentious—was evolution v. creationism safely “uncontested” before the Pope himself declared the war over?—but because none of it is convincing. Even when new “groundbreaking research” emerges, it serves only to provide even more division in what can be confidently stated about the Shroud. Frustratingly, there is no indication this will ever change. Perhaps this is why the mainstream of these fields seem completely disinterested in its alleged findings and innovations.

One final comment of this theme, and this time on studies of those who seek to disprove the authenticity of the Shroud. A common critique from adherents is that it is impossible to recreate the Shroud in a way that meets specific criteria about it: its xray qualities, lack of pigments, and so on. The problem with recreation isn’t that there’s no way to do it, but that there's so many possible ways that we aren’t sure which one to take most seriously. There’s Dr. Nicholas Allen’s (very convincing) hypothesis of a “camera obscura” sunlight exposure technique, there’s a recently-published 3D analysis showing it required a low-relief imprint on a sculpture or cadaver, and there’s Luigi Garlaschelli’s complete recreation of the Shroud using medieval chemicals. All three of these methods are different and incompatible in significant ways. Convinced yet?

In sum, I’m happy to leave the individuals who dedicate their lives to arguing back and forth over this relic to their careers. Personally, I find the evidence unconvincing and at an eventual point tiring to be bombarded with. It does not even pass the test of first impressions: when I see the Shroud, I sense that I am presented with an image of Gothic artwork clearly emphasizing crucifixion wounds for dramatic effect, out of keeping with both Jewish burial customs and Roman crucifixion methods: the nails went into the side of the ankles rather than the front, and the feet were not laid on top of one another as they were in artwork showing him on the cross.

What we can say for certain about the Shroud is that it is, at least, a depiction of Christ as he was laid in the tomb. It is covered in the wounds and marks of the horrific torture and death through Roman crucifixion. For nearly every generation of Christians except ours and of the last century, and for every Christian culture extraneous to the West, this was enough. From this image, believers can meditate upon that final day where their Lord took upon the most grievous injuries known to man at the time and suffered pain and death and the greatest possible extent—only to rise from a now-empty tomb, and with that act achieve what had been promised for generations prior. Salvation.

This is what Christians believe, and the authenticity of the Shroud has no bearing upon it. For skeptics, even a full delivery of the Shroud’s authenticity is unlikely to move the needle beyond what is already accepted, that a man named Jesus was killed and buried in a shroud. For that reason, it seems more fruitful to treat the Shroud as an icon of mysterious origin rather than submitting to that gnawing Faustian spirit and attempt to explain every fiber of it through alchemical analyses. If Christians are not careful, I think they may lose the entire point of it all in that process.

For now, the Shroud is good only for that, and for content. There is my contribution to the latter.

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