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

Trusting Carbon Dating

Carbon 14 testing is another scientific method that we intuitively trust. But field archeologists and historians who regularly use radiocarbon dating know only too well how anomalous radiocarbon dating results can be. They know that carbon 14 dating procedures are best used for testing organic archeological finds that have been left undisturbed and protected from the environment and people. That, of course, was not the case with the shroud. Archeologists also know that it is important to obtain multiple samples at diverse places on an object to be tested, and then by statistical method determine a reasonable range of ages for the object.  That also, was not the case with the carbon 14 testing of the shroud.

Yet, even with ideal conditions, carbon 14 results are sometimes highly erroneous. In one test, living snails – at least alive until just before testing – were found to be 26,000 years old. In another test, a newly killed seal was found to have died in A.D. 700. Bone tools made from caribou ribs were once found to be twenty-seven thousand years old while a core sample from the innermost portion of the same caribou bone was found to be only 1,350 years old. There is the unexplained mystery of Mummy number 1770 at the Manchester Museum in England that has wrappings that date 800 to 1000 years younger than the body they contain. Other mummy samples have demonstrated this same peculiarity in which cloth wrappings are measured to be newer than the bodies they contain. This could only make sense if the mummies had been rewrapped hundreds of years later. Egyptologist cannot support such supposition.