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

How Wrong Information Shapes Worldview

Malformed perspectives and misunderstood history shape our worldviews. It makes dark ages of the Middle Ages. It helps sustain a feeling about an era when theologians debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. It is unlikely that they did so. This false idea seems to have originated with Isaac D’Israeli (1766-1848), the father of the great British Prime Minister Benjamin D’Israeli. Isaac took great pleasure in lampooning the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas had wondered if an angel, in moving from one place to another, passes through the area in between. He also wondered if several angels could be in the same place at once. The myth of the dancing-on-a-pin question, it seems, was nothing more than D’Israeli’s comical restatement of Aquinas’ ruminations. 

Malformed history also fuels a picture of an age of naiveté in which it is easy to suppose that anyone in the medieval era could be duped into believing anything so long as the Church fostered false information. It is easy to suppose – believe – imagine – that anyone could be duped into thinking relics were real when they were not. It translates to our modern worldview that we should be suspicious of all relics that had an historical footprint in medieval times. How right are we in being suspicious?