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

The Blood on the Shroud

Adler talks extensively about the blood in this paper. They are, he says, “exudates from clotted wounds transferred to the cloth by its being in contact with a wounded human male body.” It is his specialty. It has been confirmed that the blood is indeed human blood through numerous tests. The stains are from real bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. Adler wrote:

Enzymatic removal of the blood from a blood coated fiber reveals that the blood got on the cloth first and therefore protected the blood covered areas of the cloth from the image forming process. All the microscopic, chemical, spectroscopic, and immunological evidence is consistent with these images, not only being exudates from clotted wounds, but those of a man who suffered severe trauma prior to death, explaining the red color of the blood at the microscopic level. . . . That these are clotted wound exudates is clearly seen in the ultraviolet photographs where every single blood wound shows a distinct serum clot retraction ring. . . . Note that any attempt to explain the formation of the body images must take these properties of the blood images into account. One cannot simply say that the blood images were painted on afterwards. One would need a constant supply of fresh clot exudates from a traumatically wounded human to paint in all the forensically correct images in the proper nonstereo register and then finally paint a serum contraction ring about every wound. Logic suggests that this is not something a forger or artisan before the present century would not only know how to do, but even know that it was required. (40)