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

No Success Yet in Creating a Similar Image

Despite many attempts to do so, no one has found or invented an artistic or crafty technique that can reproduce even a few of the characteristics of the images. But that does not mean, that in the future, someone will not find a method to create such images. But if someone does so, a tenacious question will remain:

How likely is it that there would be such a one-of-a-kind work of art for which there are no known precedents; created by methods that were never again exploited?

Any method that might be devised must be scientifically credulous, fit into the history of art and conform to the cultural expectations in which the technology was supposedly employed. If not, it will be seen as newly invented art designed to mimic an otherwise unexplained natural process or a supernatural event. The skeptic has a dilemma. To believe that the Shroud is fakery he or she must rely on an underlying belief that transcends scientific fact.

John A. T. Robinson, always creatively challenging conventional wisdom about New Testament interpretations and provenance, doubted that the Shroud was the work of a forger. On the basis of what would have been medieval understanding of scripture, he argued: "This . . . is not, I suggest, how any forger would have thought. He would have imagined it [=the sudarion, the other cloth, understood to be a face cloth] lying over the face, rather like the bogus St. Veronica's handkerchief, and incorporated its image on a separate piece of material."