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

Like Rare and Exceptional Art

The images are at once like rare and exceptional art, yet so unlike art. They are like subtle photographs and yet so unlike photographs. However the images were formed, the process was quick. The cloth and the body were separated soon. For after about three days, fluidic decomposition products from the body would have stained and damaged the cloth. Soon the cloth would have rotted away. Furthermore, forensic experts tell us, the images show no visible signs of decomposition. This apparent early separation of the body and the cloth opens up a floodgate of possibilities that must be reconciled to any naturalistic explanation.

When we consider chance and necessity we are toying with anthropic bias reasoning. Bayesian views of improbability are the keystones of this reasoning. But an inescapable nugget that augments such reasoning, one that defies quantification, is the value of surprise.  No matter how much we might marvel that everything for a process might come together in all the right places—chemical solids and vapors, ambient temperature, humidity, the drape of the cloth—and start and stop at the right time, we cannot help but notice something. For until and unless other examples of such images on cloths that survived decomposition in a grave are found, we must say it is unique. The surprise is that this unique and improbable happenstance is not—as mere chance would mandate—of some random person in history. And so, the unexpected significance of a naturalistic solution can only enliven the sense— perhaps inchoate and neither causal nor consequential—that there is a miracle of sorts at play. The measure of a miracle is the result and not the process.