Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Terry Eagleton

The quarrel between science and theology, then, is not a matter of how the universe came about, or which approach can provide the best "explanation" for it. It is a disagreement about how far back one has to go, though not in the chrono­logical sense. For theology, science does not start far back enough-not in the sense that it fails to posit a Creator, but in the sense that it does not ask questions such as why there is anything in the first place, or why what we do have is actually intelligible to us. Perhaps these are phony questions anyway; some philosophers certainly think so. But theologians, as Rowan Williams [the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury] has argued, are interested in the question of why we ask for explanations at all, or why we assume that the universe hangs together in a way that makes explanation possible. Where do our notions of explanation, regularity, and intelligibility come from? How do we explain rationality and intelligibility themselves, or is this question either superfluous or too hard to answer? Can we not account for rationality because to do so is to presuppose it? (Terry Eagleton)

The study of the shroud, if it is a microcosm of the quest for God, must comply with the rules for as much as they are the best rules we have: the scientific method and the means for drawing the best explanations from the information at hand. We must avoid the pitfalls of pseudoscience. We must insist that everything is reasonably verifiable.

In the scientific quest for God, both sides of the fine-tuned universe are well represented by highly regarded scientists—cosmologist, astrophysicists, mathematicians, quantum physicists—and philosophers. There is or there isn’t a multiverse or there is some other explanation not yet understood. This quest will continue. The narrower quest for the historical Jesus is likely to continue unabated. So, too, the even narrower-still quest to understand the resurrection. There is a wide diversity of opinion and countless scholars. Wright lists more than 500 contemporary scholars in his book, The Resurrection.

One would hope that in the very granular study, the shroud, there would be the same give and take of scientists and historians. That just isn’t so. The last time it was so seems to have been in 1988 when dozens of scientists participated in the carbon dating of the shroud. The paper in Nature included 21 authors. Perhaps that was enough. It seemed so decisive. They are now almost universally silent. Perhaps that is justified by the new findings.

Scientists and historians long ago discovered that contending ideas is important when seeking the best possible understanding of anything even if we sometimes resist the impulse to do so. That was what Galileo was doing. It took a long time for the church to come around to his way of thinking. Darwin did the same. It took a long time for many people to accept evolution. The majority within Christian traditions—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Mainline Protestant—have accepted evolution. Unfortunately, there is little debate about the shroud’s authenticity based on new evidence.  There is one outstanding exception.